Tuesday, September 03, 2002

A Letter In Answer to Various Criticisms/Comments

My dear Dick Kim,

Greetings on this 3rd Day of September, 2002.

Thank you for circulating my various broadsheets and tracts on the Language of Prayer for Common Worship. The fact that such discussion creates deep emotional reaction underlines the fact that there has not YET been found a modern or contemporary idiom of public prayer (cf. the intense debate going on in the R C Church over how to translate Latin into English now, 40 years after Vatican II - also over what is suitable music for the Mass! Cf also the continuing versions of the Bible, new forms of liturgy, and so on).

I have been asking that there should be space made for the use of the classic and traditional English dialect or idiom of language of public prayer/liturgy. At the same time I hope that a suitable way of addressing the YOU-God will be found for right now we swop and change every second year in our public language that claims to be contemporary.

Thus for a long time into the future I envisage that the faithful Church will allow both the traditional language of public prayer and will seek by all good means to develop a reverent and acceptable and stable contemporary language of worship.

As you know such forms of writing as preparing tracts are not meant to earn doctoral degrees but rather to provoke thought by stating things in a direct and sometimes exaggerated way. So I have written. (Writing sermons and learned articles and books is a different technique. I use all of them!) Writing tracts opens one up to abuse and praise and I get some of each!

Please let your List know that I do other things than think about and write about language. I preached three times last Sunday on the appointed Lessons, I write devotional material, I visit the sick in homes and hospitals and all this is pastoral, based I hope upon the principles of the Gospel. I use the new Common Worship of the C of E for some services if that is the desire of the people concerned - e.g. weddings.

My hour interview today (3rd Sept, 3.p.m. Central Time on the Missouri Lutheran Station -- for access via computer go to listen to a live RealAudio stream of this station on the web by going to KFUO’s website: http://www.kfuo.org/... It looks like they also archive interviews for later listening…) is primarily on my book THE END OF LIBERAL THEOLOGY (Crossway Book, Illinois) which is about method in doing theology today. No doubt the origins of YOU-God language will be raised for it is one of the "gifts" of the revolutionary 1960s to the church in all her manifestations, Protestant and Catholic, but language is not the main thrust of the book. But we cannot escape language for it is one of those major gifts that distinguish us from the apes.

I shall not be sending any more tracts on the Language issue to you; but, I will ask your indulgence later in the Fall to advertise the forthcoming book that I am presently writing with Dr Tarsitano, "Neither archaic nor obsolete. The English Idiom of Public Prayer." I hope that your List will get this book in December 2002 and ponder the history we present and the suggestions that we offer for the glorifying of the Holy Trinity in words and deeds. We are not cranks or chaps left behind in the 1950s but rather those who are seeking to grapple with the situation before us of the need for a dignified, reverent and stable language of PUBLIC prayer for the millions on millions of English-speaking Christians around God's world. We find various devout, educated Roman Catholics most helpful and cooperative in this task!

A last word -- I have said nothing about individual private prayer. That is another topic!

thank you for your kindness and patience with me.

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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