More On Autonomy Arrogance and Prayer Book Reform

Further to my piece on Autonomy Arrogance and Prayer Book Reform in ECUSA, you may care to consider these quotes

See Dean Holmes' remarks in The Anglican Theological Review (Vol. LXII, No. 1, January 1980, p. 13)

"A second illustration of the dilemma of an effective interaction between theology and religion in the Episcopal Church today is in the debate over Prayer Book revision. After beginning in the 1950's with fervent protestations that no theological change was to be contemplated or tolerated, the Standing Liturgical Commission (SLC) grew progressively more silent on the subject in the face of the charges of the Society for the Preservation of the Book of Common Prayer (SPBCP) that this was indeed what was happening. No matter what one may think of the SPBCP, we know that they are correct. The 1979 Book of Common Prayer indicates a notable shift in theology from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. There is no problem with changing theology through liturgical revision; it is how Anglicans do it. But whether or not the silence of the SLC before the charges of the SPBCP was simply a matter of strategy or not, their failure to reveal to the church the theological implications of what was happening could hardly be considered an act of reconciliation between theology and religion."

You might also want to consider "A Roman Catholic's Appreciation," a review of what became the 1979 Book by the Roman liturgist Aidan Kavanagh, OSB, in The Anglican Theological Review (Vol. LVIII, No. 3, July 1976, p. 362):

"First, the Book as a whole is clearly not a mere updated revision of its predecessors since 1549. It is nothing if not a new formulary that contains some structural and phraseological traces of what has gone before but which goes quite beyond it."

Here is the key -- NEW FORMULARY and this without consulting the Anglican Communion. An autonomous act that pushed along the spirit of autonomy in the Church and led to more exercise of arrogany autonomy.

Had the BCP 1928 been retained and the new Book been the ASB or BAS or A New ECUSA Prayer Book the history of the ECUSA would have been much different!

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