The Early Church and the 1979 ECUSA Prayer Book

The Early Church and the 1979 ECUSA Prayer Book

Not all may know or remember the intellectual justification offered for the changes in the Shape and Content and Style of Anglican Liturgy which began to appear from the late 1960s. In the ECUSA the prominent advocate of this position was Massey Shepherd and he claims it is the very basis of the mindset behind and in the 1979 prayer book.

The emphasis was particularly upon the [historical reconstruction of the] Eucharist as it was celebrated in the early Church around A D 300, before the time when Christianity became an official or the official religion of the Roman Empire.

The major source was the recovered and edited texts of Hippolytus of Rome whose works were edited by Gregory Dix and others.

As to Shape, the new Liturgy was in two halves, Word and Sacrament, and these were separated by "the Peace." Then there was the "fourfold action" within the Sacrament itself as proposed by Dix and others.

In terms of Content, the emphasis was upon Celebration of creation and redemption but with little emphasis upon human depravity and sin. There were also attempts to introduce an Epiclesis, an invoking of the Holy Spirit to descend.

In terms of Style, there was an emphasis upon Standing to Pray, and upon No congregational Confession of Sins in the Easter or the Christmas season for these were times of celebration.

Further it was said that the Church must speak in the supposed language of the people - not in a quaint or specialized way.

It was also said that the Church circa 300 was in a multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society as it is today in the West.

What in fact the modern liturgists took from the past (as if in archaeological digs for treasure) has turned out in many circumstances to be only external form and it has been used in general (not by all but by many) as a means to aid the dumbing down and the secularising of Liturgy, especially in the ECUSA.

It was one way to get rid of the doctrine, discipline and worship of the classic Anglican Way and to do so with apparently high motives - restoring the primitive.

However, in terms of the primitive, little of it was actually sought after or restored! No specific mention was made - for the purposes of imitation by the ECUSA - of the facts that in the Church of 300 there was vibrant, evangelistic faith; readiness to die as martyrs, strict morality in life and sexual relations (including no remarriage of divorcees and especially no second marriage for clergy); strict discipline in the Church over all immorality; catechumens dismissed from the Liturgy at the end of the Service of the Word; NO musical instruments of any kind but hearty congregational singing; daily morning and evening prayer; and so on and so forth.

What the ECUSA recovered via this imaginary model of 3rd & 4th century Church life was in fact not recovery at all but innovation, an innovation based on archaeological remains, that has increased in intensity as the years since 1979 have gone by.

This hypothesis here advanced is I think worth pondering for the ECUSA is now engaged in another massive re-doing of its Liturgy and we need to know what is the intellectual basis for it!


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