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What about our liturgies — where did our Morning, Evening, and Holy Communion prayer services come from (part 1)?

 

I’d like to spend the next few weeks starting with our 1962 Book of Common Prayer (still our official prayer book) and work backwards, tracing our worship to the time of Jesus if possible.

 

"The Genealogy of the Canadian Book of Common Prayer: From the 1962 revision to Israel’s Scriptures and Jewish worship"

The 1962 Canadian Book of Common Prayer belongs to a living tradition whose sources extend through the English Reformation, medieval Western Christianity, and the early Church to Jesus and the worship of Israel. Its direct textual ancestry is clearest from the sixteenth century onward. Earlier connections can be traced through individual prayers, scriptural texts, sacramental actions, and patterns of worship.

The Book of Common Prayer does not preserve one unchanged service from the time of Jesus, but brings inherited prayers, actions, and patterns of worship together in an ongoing process of selection and reconstruction.

1  The Canadian revision of 1962
The immediate predecessor of the 1962 book was the first Canadian Book of Common Prayer, approved by General Synod in 1918 and brought into authorized use in 1922. Before the Canadian revision, Anglicans in Canada used the Church of England’s 1662 Prayer Book. The direct Canadian line therefore runs backward from 1962 through 1918 and 1922 to 1662.1

The second Canadian revision was first published and used experimentally in 1959, before its final approval in 1962. Both dates consequently occur in accounts and editions of this revision. The revisers’ stated purpose was to adapt and enrich the inherited book for the Church in Canada. Its preface presents the revision as a continuation of work begun by their Canadian predecessors.2

2  The English Prayer Books from 1662 to 1549
The English succession, read backward, is 1662, 1604, 1559, 1552, and 1549. The Restoration revision of 1662 supplied the standard English text inherited in Canada. It followed the book revised under James I in 1604, itself descended from Elizabeth I’s settlement of 1559. Elizabeth restored a Prayer Book largely based on the 1552 revision after Mary I’s restoration of Latin worship.3

The 1552 revision is especially important for the later tradition. Cranmer and his colleagues extensively rearranged Communion, added the Ten Commandments to that service, and introduced the opening penitential material into Morning and Evening Prayer. These changes expressed the English Reformation’s theological commitments. 4

 

  1. Maitland, “The Diamond Jubilee of the Prayer Book”; Anglican Church of Canada, Book of Common Prayer, preface, vii.
  2. Maitland, “Diamond Jubilee”; Book of Common Prayer, preface, vii. The dates 1959 and 1962 refer to stages of the same Canadian revision.
  3. Society of Archbishop Justus, “The Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England” and “The 1559 Book of Common Prayer”; UK Parliament, “Act of Uniformity 1559.”
  4. Society of Archbishop Justus, “The 1552 Book of Common Prayer,” introductory account and reproduced service texts.

+David