In the last 10 years of my 12 years of residence in the USA (1992 –2002) it always seemed odd – sometimes amazing -- to me that, amongst those members of ECUSA who bemoaned her downward spiral into apostasy, very few (Anglo-Catholic or Evangelical) entertained the possibility that her public, official Liturgy was a cause of, or a part of, or an expression of, that apostasy.
At the Atlanta Congress of Dec 4-7 2002 I met the same attitudes all over again! Thus I am more sad and more amazed in late 2002 than I was in early 2002!
If a Church is in doctrinal, moral and numerical decline, the probability is that anything she produces will be affected by that decline, especially if she produces a whole new prayer book and rejects her former formularies (BCP, Ordinal & Articles of Religion) in so doing.
It is hard for me to forget (a) the oft-repeated mid-Western anglo-catholic claim that the 1979 prayer book of the ECUSA is the “most catholic” [read “best”] edition of the prayer book since the short-lived first edition in 1549 of “The Book of the Common Prayer”, and (b) the persistent Evangelical claim that with the Rite II services they had a relevant means of evangelism & worship.
(a) A common anglo-catholic view has been that the first edition of the BCP was “catholic” but that it was heavily protestantised by Archbishop Cranmer to make what became the 2nd edition of 1552, which (with few changes) became the classic edition of 1662. The American Liturgical Commission (though filled primarily with modern liberally inclined liturgists) of the 1960s and 1970s had helped, it was said, to recover the truly catholic elements of the western tradition in their 1979 book of alternative services (called the 1979 BCP by the General Convention). They pointed to the new “Shape” of the Eucharist and to the inclusion of “the Peace” and the placing of the Gloria at the beginning; they also pointed to the availability of a rite for auricular confession and to the Holy Week and Easter Eve services.
What they did not often mention was that in general terms all these “catholic” provisions came in a reduced or revised form and did not have their full patristic or catholic flavour (as my learned friend Professor Caldwell often pointed out). Also they did not mention the novel expressions of the doctrine of the Triune God and of the Person of Christ found here and there in the Rite II material (see the Catechism for summaries of them) or the doctoring of the Psalter and some Canticles in order to make them serve a liberationist agenda ( e.g., “Happy are they” for “Blessed is the Man [Jesus]…” in Psalm 1) or the great changes in the Ordination Services, allowing women to be priests and bishops.
(b) At the other end of the scale the Evangelicals were all taken up with the themes of intelligibility, simplicity, accessibility, relevance and meaningfulness and so they saw in the Rite II material of the 1979 book in so-called modern English a means of making their services and outreach popular and attractive. So they paid little attention to the actual doctrinal content – i.e., they did not check it against the doctrinal content of the classic BCP & the Articles of Religion in terms of who is God, who is Jesus and what is salvation. Further, being persuaded by theories of dynamic equivalency they did not seriously consider whether the 1979 Psalter could be used for genuine Christian worship or whether the NIV and NRSV etc were suitable versions for reading in public worship.
So while Catholics were deeply upset by the feminist agenda & movement in the ECUSA with its ordination of women and the changing of God-language to please women, and while the Evangelicals were upset by the seeming setting aside of the authority of Scripture, it did not seem to occur to them that the 1979 prayer book with its additions in the 1980s, and the momentum of liturgy and doctrine it expressed, created & encouraged, actually was a vehicle for the promotion of what they disliked or hated. That is, while they used the 1979 rites in their own ways for their own churchmanship, the larger church constituency was using the rites, and those spawned after 1979 and approved by the General Convention, to promote the very agendas that the traditional catholics and evangelicals hated! And this did not seem to bother them or alert them to the true nature of the 1979 book as an encouragement on the way to apostasy.
Various reasons come to mind for the support of the 1979 book by those who claimed to be orthodox and biblical -- some knew nothing else but the 79 book and it gave them a certain measure of freedom in their own situations; others felt committed to the 79 book for it is the official Prayer Book of the Church in which they were ordained and in whose pension fund is vested their future livelihood; then the bishops had gone to great lengths to force this prayer book on to parishes; further it was the ECUSA which had (in many cases) allowed priests and laity a second marriage in church with a blessing and thus their very daily life and relations were dependent upon that Church, whose liturgy they were thus not quickly disposed to criticize.
What I have also noticed is how many persons (claiming to be biblical and orthodox) quickly come to the defence of the 1979 book and its innovations if someone, like my good friend Professor Caldwell or myself, dare to warn against what we see as its doctrinal innovations
Whatever be the fundamental reasons, it is an amazing phenomenon that those who are so critical of the ECUSA – of its bishops, its general convention’s legislation and so on -- should both use the 1979 book as though it were fully and truly orthodox, and further should call it by a name that is a huge lie (it is not a Book of Common Prayer at all but a book of varied services). It is also amazing to me that much of the AMiA seems to use this ECUSA book in their separation from the ECUSA without too much concern! But, on the other hand, the genuine Continuing Anglican Churches of America keep far from it and use only classic editions of the BCP or of the Missal; and the Reformed Episcopal Church uses the BCP 1662.
Had the ECUSA made the 1979 book (as the C of E made its 1980 book and the Anglican Church in Canada its 1985 book) to exist alongside but not to replace the classic edition of the BCP (1928 USA; 1662 England; 1960 Canada) and to be dependent upon the classic BCP for its doctrinal integrity & interpretation, then the story of the demise of the ECUSA would certainly have taken a different routing. Maybe there would not have been a demise at all! God only knows, and to him be praise and glory unto ages of ages.
----------------------------------------------
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon
No comments:
Post a Comment