The English language has a vast vocabulary with great variety of usage and pronunciation. Within this language and using its general structure (grammar & syntax) there are specific usages, types or idioms used for specific purposes in particular circumstances. So there is a specific type of English used in the Courts of Law, in the British Houses of Parliament, by commentators on American Football, in books and talk about computers, by scientists in specific fields of study, and so on. To be able fully to appreciate these different forms of English one has to be an insider, familiar with the context. Otherwise one may well think one understands and get the wrong idea of what is being said!
For centuries there has been a language of prayer and worship, a religious form of English, used within the churches for public worship. It may be found in the King James Version of the Bible, The Book of Common Prayer, traditional Hymnody and books of devotion and spirituality. At its minimum this idiom is recognized by the fact that always and everywhere it uses the second person singular pronoun for God. He is always "Thou/Thee" with the accompanying "Thy/Thine." But it is more than a matter of pronouns, it is a matter of style, a particular way of using English grammar and syntax to create a sense of reverence before God, of the need to repent and confess sins before Him, and of intimacy and friendship with Him through Jesus Christ by grace.
This language of prayer and worship was given its familiar form through the work of Tyndale, Coverdale and Cranmer in the sixteenth century and by the translators of the King James Version in the seventeenth century, and then perfected in general use for the next three centuries. Amazingly, in the third millennium it is still known and used but less so than thirty or forty years ago.
In the 1960s the decision was taken simultaneously by many groups - from Roman Catholics through Anglicans to Southern Baptists and with little or no direct cooperation amongst themselves - to address God in the same way that people addressed one another. Evangelicals and Roman Catholics, Liberals and Conservatives, agreed that in order to be relevant to the swiftly changing culture and society (for the 1960s was a revolutionary period for western culture) there had to be a massive up-dating
(aggiornamento) of the language of the church. No distinction was made between the internal language of worship and the external language of evangelism. It was felt that the crying need was for a contemporary form of English by which to speak to God and to speak about him. And to be truly contemporary and appeal to the young, it had to be different from, obviously different from, the traditional language of prayer and worship used in all churches (along with Latin in the R C Church) up to this time (the 1960s).
The euphoria of the time caused many to think that the production of such a language was relatively straightforward - just imitate the way that reasonably educated, but not too educated, people speak to one another and add where necessary some theological vocabulary, or look for the common denominator in everyday speech and seek to use that as the basis. There were a few, usually linguists, who studied the English language professionally and were convinced that to produce a contemporary English style for worship was easy to state but very difficult, even near impossible, to achieve. One member of the Church of England Liturgical Commission, Dr Stella Brooks, a linguist from Manchester University, pointed out the difficulties and problems to her colleagues on the Commission in the mid 1960s but she was not taken seriously by them or by the house of bishops. The general feeling was that the production of a contemporary language of prayer which addressed God as YOU was possible and only by making the effort would it be achieved.
The New English Bible, which belongs to the early 1960s, had gone some way to providing a contemporary language that could be called a new religious English but yet it had not taken the big step of addressing God as You. This revolution came with the Good News Bible in 1966 and 1967, and then appeared in an increasing number of versions as the next decade rolled by. Again these versions were criticised by competent and experienced linguists as being nothing less than bad English and not even genuinely contemporary, but the critics were dismissed as being mere traditionalists (a dirty word then and now).
Meanwhile the Vatican had decided that the Mass should be in the vernacular and that there would be one form of English for the Mass for use in the whole English-speaking world. Those who were given this task of translation were told to produce a modern rendering of the Latin original, a translation that could be used wherever people spoke English. Regrettably, none of those directly involved apparently had any experience of such work before and none had carefully studied the traditional English language of prayer to discover its genius and logic. Yet they went ahead and produced the new Mass and Roman Catholics began to address God as "You" and say, "and also with you" to the priest when he said to them, "The Lord be with you."
So by the 1970s the decision to create a contemporary language of prayer had produced a variety of attempts, each based upon different principles (e.g., "dynamic equivalency" in translation) and each working with a different definition of what is contemporary English. There were attempts to agree on how certain common texts, like the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, should be translated but this was only minimally successful.
So it is not surprising that not any of the texts produced - whether liturgy or version of the Bible - lasted very long. They were revised and revised again. Meanwhile people lost the discipline and the art of memorising Scripture portions or beautiful prayers.
Further, having gone into the contemporary mode it was felt necessary by liturgical experts in the pursuit of relevance to accommodate to contemporary pressures to adapt the language to create or to mirror social change. The most obvious example of such pressures were the changes made - and still being made - to make women feel that they are included in the church and taken note of by God. This involved the dropping of the generic "man" and the pronoun "he," the adding of "sisters" to "brothers" and even the cessation of naming God as "Father" and "King" and "Lord."
Feminism today, civil rights and peace with justice yesterday, lesbigay concerns today, and what tomorrow will the Liturgy be asked to take note of and celebrate?
Then, to make the task more difficult, modern experts find that there is no longer an English Bible to draw upon and to be influenced by. There is a Babel of versions on the market and in use, but which should be used and how long will it be available before being updated or revised?
So the modern changing social climate and cultural context, the international dimension [as English is a world-wide language], the demands of the feminists and other groups, and the lack of a common Bible, make the task of producing a modern and contemporary language of prayer to be exceedingly difficult.
What we can expect in the immediate future is a variety of efforts that are short-lived and that vary in quality and depth. And this will possibly be as true of the Roman Catholics as the Protestants, although instructions from the Vatican in recent days suggest that we can expect an improved English being used in prayer in the massive Roman Catholic Church.
Christians affected by this constant change will certainly have the intensifying feeling that they are pilgrims and sojourners in this world and will look forward in hope all the more to speaking classical Hebrew in heaven! And not being wholly sure of the true identity of the new YOU-God because of much change they will the more faithfully look forward in hope to seeing the glory of the Father in the face of Jesus the Christ as they are indwelt by the Holy Ghost.
Thus the virtue of hope is being stimulated by much change on earth, as is also the virtue of patience!
Meanwhile, in the English-speaking world, a minority ask for tolerance and space to be able to continue to use the traditional language of prayer and to follow what in 1760 John Wesley told the children. "We say 'Thou' to God and 'you' to man."
August 23, 2002
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon
Minister of Christ Church, Biddulph Moor,
England & Vice-President and Emissary-at-Large
of The Prayer Book Society of America
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