Lex orandi est lex credendi? The God of Anglican liturgy

Abstract

It has been said that the ways in which we pray establish the ways in which we believe. Part of prayer are the words used to address the divine to whom we pray. While private prayer is difficult to examine objectively there are rich resources of public prayer. I have chosen to examine the communion liturgies of the Church of England as a set of words in which the divine is addressed and spoken of. Accepting that prayer is linked to belief, there will be insights into belief by looking at the God addressed in prayer. I chose the communion liturgies because they have been and are influential in the lives of communities and individuals within and beyond those who actively belong to the Anglican communion. To examine the texts I have used tools from the discipline of psycholinguistics, the study of the processing of language. Language processing occurs rapidly, fluidly and with complex and dynamic interconnections and so writing about these processes by separating them under headings is inevitably artificial. In examining a corpus of words it is also a way of making information and results accessible and so I offer a few of the ways of looking at how language is processed. I give examples of my findings from looking at Common Worship with Thanksgiving Prayer A although the detail is similar across the texts of Common Worship and also the Book of Common Prayer.