When I call for the recovery by the Network (within ECUSA) and by Extra-Mural Anglicans of the classic Anglican Formularies [BCP, Ordinal & Articles] to stand not above or alongside but underneath the Sacred Scriptures, there are always those who respond by saying that the Formularies are irrelevant in the 21st century mission-based Church and congregation. They appear to think that all that is needed for a historic denomination is a modern version of the Bible, the Creeds in modern paraphrase and modern liturgy of a dumbed-down kind. They appear to look around and forward only, not fully recognizing what their fellow believers experienced and achieved yesterday. They need also to look up and to look backwards!
A more sophisticated kind of response that I receive goes like this. (Here I simply edit one specific response.)
‘What is needed is a contemporary edition of the classic Anglican Prayer Book (in the U.S.A. that of 1928) in good modern language and preserving in that contemporary language the doctrine of the historic Formularies of the sixteenth century. America is about change and improvement and going forward (sometimes too hastily, sometimes not quickly enough). Our cultural memory goes back to 1776. England and other major (and minor) nations have cultural memories that go back many thousands of years, to the earliest days of human civilization. We in American are not too much invested in the past. England and other old countries and cultures are deeply so. The Episcopal Church in the USA needed to grow beyond the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of American. That it should do so, in one way or another, was inevitable.
Abandonment of the great Book of Common Prayer by the General Convention was not, however, inevitable. It could have been rendered in contemporary American/English, and re-designed using current ideas about graphic design and typography to be visually more appealing and readable, holding off the drastic changes in the 1979 book for years, perhaps de-railing them altogether. We don't do much "returning to..." in America. Our landfills are stunning testimony to that. We upgrade.
Now with the magnificent English Standard Version of the Holy Bible, God has given us a grand example of how contemporary American/English can be used in a stately and holy way. The same thing can be accomplished in a contemporary version of the Book of Common Prayer.
With the new Network, formed by 12 faithful Bishops of ECUSA, there appears to be a splendid opportunity to bring forth a Millennium Version of the Book of Common Prayer. The Network Bishops can be made to feel a part of such a project, toward the goal of adopting the "new" BCP as an acceptable alternative to the 1979 book, and, we may hope, its replacement altogether after some period of become acquainted again with its history and its greatness and its basic importance in keeping Anglican Christianity alive in America.’
Comment.
I happily concede and have said many times that there are good reasons for producing first of all as a Study Text in modern standard English a modern version of the classic and historic Book of Common Prayer. This is actually more difficult than it seems but it can be done – at least a concerted attempt can be made to accomplish it. And to be done worthily it would need to preserve the structure, the content, the style and the doctrine of the original. (Note that various modern renderings of the classic text of the BCP have usually edited it in terms of leaving out the unacceptable and importing the desirable – according to the whims and fancies of those who have done the work.) To use the texts in such a book would be altogether preferable, I think, to any of the rites in the 1979 ECUSA prayer book, which is so affected in so many parts by the revolutionary spirit of the 1960s.
But to do this task – to produce this Study Edition – does not mean abandoning the original – be it the text of 1662 or of 1928 or in Canada of 1962 – either as a Formulary or as a way of worship.
We need to be aware that people who want to say goodbye to the classic texts of English Christianity – the KJV & the classic BCP & the hymns of Watts & Wesley – do not usually bear in mind the power of these classic texts to stand against the secularism, the prominent individualism and the perversions of the human rights and therapeutic cultures of our day. Modern Bible translations and Liturgies are often produced in order to incorporate one or other of these contemporary concerns of our day (from feminism to environmentalism) and so, instead of making the Church to be in the world but not of the world and yet for the world, they have the tendency to make it affirming of and confirming of the world at the very points where the spirit of the world needs to be most challenged. These modern texts are produced to be relevant to our times and that often means compromised by our times.
One great value of the use of a classic text in the historic language of prayer for worship is that it enables the user (after he has become familiar with it) to move the more quickly out of the secular world and into the presence of God, from the affirmation of the world into the beauty of holiness. The different language and style enable the soul to shift gear and to move into the highway of holiness. Further, in using a classic text the worshipper has a sense of belonging to a vast company of saints united in the worship of the Lord. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and the proof of these points is only in the regular, sincere & trial use of the classic BCP (which is in print from Oxford University Press of NYC).
Also, the importance of the classic text of the BCP is in terms of it being the embodiment of what Anglicans have called Reformed Catholicism, the polity, religion and piety based upon the Scriptures as these were received, understood and used by the Early Church. Thus the BCP along with the Ordinal and Articles (printed within the covers of the BCP) are Formularies – stating the basic content of the Catholic Faith as received in the Anglican Way.
Those who merely want the immediate, the experiential, and the relevant in their congregations often have no roots and when the strong winds blow they can be like a house built upon the sand. They have little connection with those who have gone before them in the Way and they leave little to send down the Way for the upcoming generations. In the great Supermarket of Religions that is the USA religious scene, the classic Anglican Way should be advertised as a modern yet historic Faith with ancient and sure foundations, and with a sense of the communion of the saints through space and time.
The Rev Dr Peter Toon February 4, 2004 peter@toon662.fsnet.co.uk
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