Book Of Common Prayer Research Articles

Archaism, Antiphony and the Music of the Book of Common Prayer: A Mythical Amalgam

The Book of Common Prayer (BCP) is more than four hundred and fifty years old and part of the very fabric of Anglicanism throughout the world. It has a vast catalogue of musical repertory, both in the form of settings of the text of the BCP, but also settings of other sacred texts that might be used at BCP services. This music achieved an archaic personality from the early days of the BCP, but many later periods in the life of the Anglican Church have engendered and even promoted an archaic personality quite conspicuously. Musical archaism, in turn, has supported the formal, conservative and archaic personality of the BCP and its practice more generally. The music of the BCP has also engendered a patriarchal, hierarchical and antiphonal identity, all of which have strong connexions with archaism. Additionally, the Ecclesiological Movement (or the Cambridge Camden Movement) and the Tractarian Movement (or the Oxford Movement) and their systematic archaic and antiphonal schemes have also brought archaism into the company of the music of the BCP. Finally, the archaic nature of the Tudor words of the BCP is a continuous and increasing feature from about the time of the Restoration onwards. Yet the archaic identity, or ethos, spirit, or myth, that is provoked by all these ingredients may well, at times, have been a work of fantasy rather than fact.

Book Review: Paul Fromberg, The Art of Disruption: Improvisation and the Book of Common Prayer

Book Review: Paul Fromberg, <i>The Art of Disruption: Improvisation and the Book of Common Prayer</i>

Read, Mark, Learn and Inwardly Digest: The Prayer Book and Private Devotion in Prayer Book Commentaries from Sparrow to Mant

AbstractBetween the Restoration and the rise of the Oxford Movement, a burgeoning literature of commentaries upon the Book of Common Prayer were produced and circulated in England. This article traces the emergence and development of this little-studied commentary tradition in order to explore the role of the Book of Common Prayer in private devotion. It groups the literature into three primary categories based on genre and function: descriptive, historical and biblical commentaries; devotional commentaries; annotated Books of Common Prayer. I argue that this literature sought not only to defend the prayer book from criticism or inform users of its history and function but to encourage devotional engagement with the prayer book itself. Exploring the devotional strategies that this literary tradition teaches and models deepens our understanding of how the leaders of the Church of England during the long eighteenth century sought to encourage private engagement with the Book of Common Prayer.

EARLY REFORMATION ERA AND RECEPTIONISM: A CONTEMPORARY PASTORAL DIMENSION

Receptionism is an Anglican Eucharistic theological understanding that the bread and wine are unchanged during the prayer of consecration, and the faithful communicant receives the Body and Blood of Christ together with them. Though this was one of the dominant theological understandings of the Anglican Reformation Era, its importance seemed to have diminished later. Considering the dominant Anglican eucharistic theological understandings of the times, this article looks at the relevance of receptionism in today’s world in light of the articles in the American Episcopal - Book of Common Prayer, emphasising its pastoral relevance.

Jonathan Swift’s Word-Book: A Vocabulary Compiled for Esther Johnson and Copied in Her Own Hand. Ed. A. C. Elias Jr., John Irwin Fischer, and Panthia Reid.

<i>Jonathan Swift’s Word-Book: A Vocabulary Compiled for Esther Johnson and Copied in Her Own Hand</i>. Ed. A. C. Elias Jr., John Irwin Fischer, and Panthia Reid.

Books and Manuscripts 2020

Books and Manuscripts 2020

Psalms and Interpretation in Milton's Nativity Ode

Psalms and Interpretation in Milton's Nativity Ode

William Gore: A Puseyite in Parramatta

AbstractThis article examines the way one nineteenth-century clergyman of the Church of England in Australia, William Gore, was influenced by the Oxford Movement. Gore was the incumbent of the parish of All Saints Church, North Parramatta in Sydney. He implemented liturgical practices valued by the Oxford Movement, including wearing a surplice to preach rather than a Geneva gown, reading the Offertory sentences in the service of Holy Communion in the Book of Common Prayer, celebrating the Holy Communion on the saints days set in the Prayer Book and placing a cross on the holy table. He was supported by his bishop, William Grant Broughton. The reaction from parishioners was surprise, shock and opposition and he was branded as a ‘Puseyite’. This article uses local primary material, including press reports of parish meetings, to describe the reactions of parishioners in parish meetings against Gore’s liturgical uses. Gore’s activities are assessed as an important early example of the Oxford Movement’s influence in the Church of England in Australia. Gore’s practices, discussed in the public domain, provide evidence that the Oxford Movement was beginning to transform the nineteenth-century liturgical worship of the Church of England in Australia.

Divine Visitation: The 1662 Prayer Book’s Theology of Sickness and Plague

AbstractWhen it began to be clear that COVID-19 was a global phenomenon, clerics were scrambling for liturgical ways to address the crisis. But it turned out that most twentieth-century Anglican Prayers Books have few, if any, prayers for times of plague or great sickness. This was not always the case. In light of the current pandemic and the pastoral challenges it has introduced, this article explores the theology of sickness and plague in the Church of England’s 1662 Book of Common Prayer in light of the devastating history of plagues and sicknesses in England, both before and after the sixteenth-century reformations. This exploration makes use of the lens of ‘divine visitation’ as an ordering principle, one of the distinctive phrases that the Prayer Book uses repeatedly to speak of bodily illness.

“Essentials” for Worship: Evelyn Underhill’s Prayer Book

This article explores some of the theological principles required for effective church worship. In 1927, Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) outlined four “Essentials” or principles for effective liturgy, identified in the context of revisions to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer: adoration, the historic, the Eternal, and the interplay between spirit and sense. This article explores the extent to which these four theological principles are actually embodied in prayers that Underhill selected and wrote for retreat leading at The House of Retreat, Pleshey (north London, UK), recently published as Evelyn Underhill’s Prayer Book. Additional theological principles, not mentioned in Underhill’s “Essentials” essay but evident in her book of prayers, are also evaluated and exemplified. Underhill’s guidance to her spiritual directees about the value of liturgy in their spiritual lives is also briefly touched upon.

The Theology and Ecclesiology of the Prayer Book Crisis, 1906–1928. By Dan D. Cruickshank

Geoffrey Cuming (whose name recurs below) once told me that the only time that he ever heard his clergyman father swear was when he heard the news of the defeat in the House of Commons of the 1928 ‘Deposited’ Book of Common Prayer. On the other hand, pioneer Anglican missionaries in remote upper Burma held a special gathering to give thanks for that same defeat. One saw the Church of England as grievously damaged; the others saw it as miraculously saved. The defeat had actually happened twice, in December 1927 and in June 1928. And the liturgical texts and programme of the Church of England have been planned, drafted, authorized, and used in worship ever since, in a context shaped by that controversial defeat. The liturgical story was told with much textual detail in Ronald Jasper’s Walter Howard Frere: His Correspondence on Liturgical Revision and Construction (Alcuin/SPCK, 1954). Cruickshank, though...

A Body That Matters: Liturgy, Mediation, Performativity

Taking the liturgy of The Episcopal Church as an extended case study, this article develops a poststructuralist eucharistic theology that bears upon the theorization of religious identity, Christian liturgy, and material religion. My point of departure is the question of whether a dinner-church Communion—that is, one in which an Episcopal priest consecrates items other than bread and wine—would qualify as an Anglican eucharistic celebration if that service was conducted using the 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. To this query I respond in the affirmative. In conversation with Birgit Meyer on religious media and Judith Butler on language and matter, I argue that it is in being interpreted as the body and blood of Christ that the eucharistic elements come to be materialized as such, with the Book of Common Prayer governing that interpretation for Anglicans and giving it force.

Confessional (Self-)Identification of the Church of England and Calvinism

The most difficult aspect of the problem of the Church of England’s identity is constituted by a lack of specific confessional orthodoxy in the reformed English Church forming the core of her identity. One of many reasons for it lies in the fact that there are no explicit doctrinal sources. The Church of England’s doctrine is dispersed over several documents, called “historical formularies”, that are either political, like the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, or liturgical, like the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal, in nature, but are neither discursive nor analytical in character. In this article, the author attempts to verify and falsify the validity of the claim that the Church of England’s hamartiology and soteriology are fundamentally Calvinistic. To achieve that goal, he turns to “Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity” by Richard Hooker, a prominent 16th-century English theologian, who played a pivotal role as the primary apologist of the “Elizabethan settlement” and a “Founding Father” of the Church of England’s orthodoxy, in order to analyse his hamartiological and soteriological views. Taking into consideration Richard Hooker’s “place of honour” in the political and religious history of the reformed English Church, the author concludes that the doctrine of the Established Church in England used by the Crown as a litmus test of political loyalty, was not Calvinistic either in its form or content, but preserving continuity with the pre-Reformation Latin theology, on the one hand, and, in the spirit of Christian Humanism, receiving and adopting Eastern Christian theological thought, on the other, it, somewhat unsuccessfully, tended towards a via media between Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, and radical reformers, i.e. was used as a negative identification tool marking the Christians of England along the “us — them” line.

The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens ed. Robert L. Patten, John O. Jordan, and Catherine Waters

Reviewed by: The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens ed. Robert L. Patten, John O. Jordan, and Catherine Waters Iain Crawford The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens, ed. Robert L. Patten, John O. Jordan, and Catherine Waters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. xxxiii + 819 pp. Resembling a full-length Dickens novel in its more than 800 pages of text and wide array of rich illustrations, The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens includes some 50 essays organized into five sections: Personal and Professional Life; The Works; Socio-Historical Contexts; Literary and Cultural Contexts; and, finally, Dickens Re-visioned. In their introduction, editors Robert Patten, John Jordan, and Catherine Waters define the Handbook's essential aim as being to "emulate the accessibility, innovativeness, and imaginative interest" (1) their subject inspires, with subordinate goals of providing "ready reference, information . . . and guidance" (2), linking recurring issues and themes among the individual essays, and thereby helping readers around the globe as they explore the connections between Dickens's age and our own. Through the extraordinary range of its coverage of Dickens and his works, its corps of contributors, and the breadth of approaches gathered within its pages, The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens more than fulfils these ambitions: it offers both an indispensable guide to its subject and a comprehensive aggregation of the many ways in which this most fertile of authors continues to be interpreted, reinvented, and adapted a century and a half after his death. The opening four essays explore the phenomenon that was Dickens himself. Channeling Peter Ackroyd, Rosemarie Bodenheimer builds on her groundbreaking Knowing Dickens as she examines "the troubled strangeness of the man" (13), considers the curious dynamics between what we know of his life and the various ways in which he reconstructed it through his writing, and, above all, emphasizes "the resilience with which he turned every aspect of his experience [End Page 379] into artistic gold" (17). An early instance of the ways in which the volume's essays seamlessly interconnect immediately follows as Leon Litvack's essay on Dickens's reading not only reminds us how voracious and encyclopedic he was but also demonstrates how profoundly he infused other texts into his own writing. One notable instance of this can be seen in the "thousands of allusions" (33) to the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer that are to be found throughout the fiction, and this in turn exemplifies the ways in which the Handbook so often directs our attention to a larger point about a subject that still remains under-explored in Dickens studies. In this instance, that subject is the role of religion in Dickens's life and work. Litvack, along with other contributors, references the two major books on this topic, by Dennis Walder and Janet Larson, respectively. But both appeared back in the 1980s and, as Jennifer Gribble's essay later in the volume demonstrates, while there have been numerous smaller projects addressing various aspects of religion in Dickens, space remains for a more comprehensive account of a subject which, if perhaps academically less fashionable, is clearly crucial to our understanding of both the author and his age. This opening section of the Handbook concludes with John Bowen's telling appraisal of the many ways in which Dickens reshaped the literary profession through his work as both author and editor, and then Tony Williams's complementary description of the man who became a public figure through not just his professional writing and editing but also his engagement in matters of public interest, such as the purchase of Shakespeare's house, and his deep and enduring commitment to philanthropic work. Part II of the Handbook is devoted to a series of essays on each of Dickens's works, together with chapters on travel, journalism, and children's literature. Almost uniform in their level of excellence, the individual essays each approach the text with a defined analytical focus, situate their discussion within the established critical conversation around the work, and offer insightful suggestions on potential future directions for study. Among the many fine contributions here a few stand out from the rest: Paul Schlicke's eloquent case for overcoming the longstanding neglect of Sketches by...

Shakespeare and the Play Scripts of Private Prayer by Ceri Sullivan

Reviewed by: Shakespeare and the Play Scripts of Private Prayer by Ceri Sullivan Grace Kimball Ceri Sullivan, Shakespeare and the Play Scripts of Private Prayer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), xvi + 247 pp., 7 ills. Ceri Sullivan's monograph analyzes English private prayers within the early modern period by emphasizing specific qualities of prayer-related publications and how those features influenced Shakespeare's history plays. This book specifically identifies the ways Shakespeare's work is enhanced through historically relevant religious publications. Sullivan highlights Shakespeare's tendency to use self-composed prayer and private devotion in his plays over public sermons and extracts from prewritten documents, although this is not to say that Shakespeare entirely ignored the Book of Common Prayer. Sullivan's monograph is an example of how scholars of early modernity may gain new insight by incorporating more detailed studies of Protestant devotion into their works, something that Sullivan notes has been underemphasized thus far. In general terms, Sullivan's monograph investigates "the narrative and dramatic skills shown in early modern private prayers" and the ways that the literature of the period displays how "prayer is valued as a powerful agent of change as well as an expression of emotion" (2). Sullivan navigates these archival documents by emphasizing patterns that encouraged early modern readers to have conversations with God, whose perceived identity was shaped through both textual and less formal methods in the period. The work moves away from the binary that "devotion was ideally a matter of self- torment or ecstasy" outlined in previous texts and highlights "less zealous, more down-to-earth responses" that represent a more everyday relationship with prayers and praying (14). To cover this material in further detail, Sullivan thoroughly cultivates an arc of reasoning that moves from the foundational elements of advice texts and performances of prayer and into more specific characteristics regarding the various debates centered around the technicalities of prayer, language, and relationships with God. In doing so, Sullivan provides the framework for what private prayer means [End Page 288] within the early modern era and actively moves against assumptions that private prayer needed to be solitary, an aspect illustrated by the author's later analysis of plays like 2 Henry VI. This argument, reemphasized through the Shakespearean case studies after the second chapter, points toward an individualized relationship with God manifested through intentionality and focus, even if others listened to the prayer. As Sullivan also highlights, what is unique about the development of personalized devotions in the early modern period are the elements of creativity, encouraged by the importance placed on accessibility so all people could have a consistent relationship with God. Sullivan further underlines the debates between premeditated and improvised prayer and contention about repetition, prayer length, and the speaker's identity. However, despite these points of controversy, the primary goal for advice texts was to teach individuals to speak to God skillfully with sincerity, ingenuity, and forethought. As Sullivan indicates throughout the rest of the text, Shakespeare's characters showcase varying degrees of ability—or a lack of skill entirely—to cultivate a productive, conversational relationship with God fostered by these approaches to private prayer. Sullivan's analysis of model prayers emphasizes considerations of performance quality, emotion, and alternative perspectives through compassion for others. The work examines how these ideas are translated into 2 and 3 Henry VI through a dramatist's historiographic components, as shown through the analysis of Henry VI's empathetic consultations with God compared to the insincere prayers of politicians. Therefore, Sullivan's monograph highlights how private prayer in historical plays can offer in-depth commentary inside the narrative itself. Sullivan also underlines the beliefs about the power of individualized devotion by perceiving God's role in both the origins and outcomes of events. Although many sought a response from God through methods of private prayer, particularly in dire moments, it becomes apparent that all individuals do not necessarily achieve God's favor. Sullivan's focus on Richard III and Henry V reinforces this perspective, where characters attempt to manipulate God through prayer as vengeful cursing and fortification of militaristic strength. The characters exhibit self-certainty that allows them to link requests through prayer...

The Book of Common Prayer: A Guide by Charles Hefling

The Book of Common Prayer: A Guide by Charles Hefling

Ministerial Orders and Sacramental Authority in The United Methodist Church and Its Antecedents, 1784–2016

‘The [United Methodist Church] badly needs a … deep, detailed, and thorough exposition of its theology and practice of ordination, ministerial orders, and sacramental authority’ (117). This statement, located in the final section ‘Observations and Reflections’ of Rex Matthews's book, summarizes the perspective that drives the entire work. For Matthews, Professor Emeritus in the Practice of Historical Theology and Wesleyan Studies at Candler School of Theology (Emory University), the burden of the book is to understand how the United Methodist Church (UMC) came to need such an exposition. To make this assessment, he examines and analyses selected debates and decisions taken by the UMC (1968–present) and its direct ancestors (each with its own chapter): the Methodist Episcopal Church (1784–1939); the Methodist Protestant Church (1830–1939); the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (1846–1939); the Methodist Church (1939–68); and the Evangelical United Brethren (1946–68).The UMC's current situation regarding orders and sacramental administration has roots in John Wesley's organizational and ministerial strategies. Among these, in particular, are the Methodist Conference with which preachers are affiliated and in relation to which they are deployed, Wesley's ordinal within his Sunday Service of the Methodists (with rites for general superintendents, elders, and [transitional] deacons) sent to North America in 1784, and a readiness to take decisions based on pastoral or missional need. The Methodist Episcopal Church embraced this threefold inheritance and largely accepted the functions of the ordained defined in Wesley's ordinal (derived from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer), including sacramental responsibilities.Matthews details the evolving duties and authority of the ordained (general superintendent renamed ‘bishop’ in 1787) in the UMC's denominational predecessors (e.g. the Methodist Protestant Church's rejection of bishops at their founding and in 1874 the elimination of the order of deacons) and within the UMC itself. Of the three orders, the sacramental leadership of deacons (and especially questions regarding presidency at the Lord's Supper) received the most attention in these churches as evidenced by formal legislation in books of Discipline, reports of committees, discussions at General Conferences, and commentaries on denominational polity. Within the UMC, the ‘Denver Revolution of 1996’ eliminated the deacon as transitional (to elder) and redefined it as a distinct and separate order parallel to that of elder. Deacons were only to assist elders at both sacraments, though within a few years, the legislation changed to grant deacons permission for administration under certain circumstances. The loss of a transitional diaconate had implications for the order of elder, as the previous arrangement allowed for both ordination and a period of trial prior to presbyteral ordination. Candidates seeking ordination as elders were now ‘commissioned’ as they entered ministerial service as probationers, and were granted special licensing for sacramental administration in places of appointment. At present, the UMC grants sacramental authority to certain deacons though they are not ordained to a sacramental ministry, and to commissioned candidates for elder who are not ordained at all. In both cases, sacramental authority derives not from ordination, but from episcopal appointment and Conference authorization.As Matthews demonstrates throughout the book, this is hardly a new matter. Beginning with the Methodist Protestant Church in 1900, each of the denominations that directly preceded the UMC at some point approved legislation allowing certain unordained preachers in pastoral roles to preside at baptism, the Lord's Supper, or both, though this privilege had variously defined restrictions. Lengthy and lively debates preceded these approvals, and on this subject (as he did with debates related to the deacon) Matthews helpfully supplies selections from the transcriptions of the discussions contained in official denominational records. The UMC at its founding in 1968 did not allow sacramental presidency for lay pastors, but eight years later gave them circumscribed permission. Matthews observes that with changing demographics in the UMC, the numbers of the unordained who take on the sacramental function of elders is gradually increasing as the numbers of persons ordained as elders decline, making urgent the need to reconsider the relationships between ordination, ministerial orders, and sacramental authority.The uniqueness of this book as a denominational history on orders and sacraments is its clear and detailed documentation of the shifts in theology and polity that brought the UMC to its current thinking and practices. As such, it would be a useful and informative text for readers interested in Methodist history, ecclesiology, sacramental theology, and current issues related to Christian ministry.

Living out nonconformity: Restoration ministers and their diaries

In 1662 the Cavalier Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity to impose ecclesiastical conformity. Ministers were ordered to declare in front of their congregations their “unfeigned assent and consent” to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The act stipulated the deprivation of those who refused and three months imprisonment for those who continued to preach. Unable to comply, some changed profession and others took the risk of gathering separate churches. However, there were some who remained involved in the national church. This article first establishes the common characteristics of three nonconforming ministers which would have made it unlikely for them to conform. Secondly, it presents circumstances, relationships and personal qualities which helped these godly clergymen to continue ministering within the Church of England post 1662. Through their autobiographies and their diaries, this article analyses the personal narratives of Ralph Josselin of Earls Colne (Essex), Edmund Trench (Kent), and Oliver Heywood (Yorkshire).

‘An English Monstrosity’? Evolution and Reception of Manx Orthography

Abstract This article evaluates perceptions of Manx orthography within Celtic scholarship. The predominant view is well summarized by Jackson (1955: 108): ‘Manx orthography is an English monstrosity which obscures both pronunciation and etymology’. Similarly, O’Rahilly dismisses Manx spelling as ‘an abominable system, neither historic nor phonetic, and based mainly on English’ (O’Rahilly 1932: 20). The article sets these perceptions in the sociohistorical context in which the system was developed by the Manx clergy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is argued that the system is neither so directly dependent on English conventions, nor so unsystematic and inconsistent, as has been often claimed. Such weaknesses as do exist from the perspective of contemporary scholars and students of the language should not necessarily be viewed as such in the light of the needs, priorities and assumptions of those who practised Manx writing in its original context. It is shown that there was in fact an increase in the phonological transparency of certain elements of the system during the standardization of the mid-eighteenth century represented by the publication of translations of the Book of Common Prayer (1765) and the Bible (1771-72). On the other hand, countervailing pressures towards phonological ambiguity, iconicity and idiosyncrasy are discussed, including the utility of distinguishing homophones; real or presumed etymologies; the influence of non-standard or regional English spelling conventions; tensions between Manx and English norms; and an apparent preference in certain cases for more ambiguous spellings as a compromise between variant forms. Negative outcomes of the received view for scholarship on Manx are also examined, with a case study of the neglect of orthographic evidence for the historical phonology of the language. The wider context of English-based orthographies for Gaelic is also briefly considered.

Katharine Burdekin and Collective Speech: Politics, Chorus and Liturgy

This paper explores the phenomenon of collective speech (or speaking in unison) in the fiction of Katharine Burdekin (1896–1963), focussing on The Rebel Passion (1929), Proud Man (1934) and Swastika Night (1937) (the latter two novels were initially published under the pseudonym ‘Murray Constantine’). Highlighting Burdekin’s abiding concern with religious rituals, it suggests that the political dimensions of Burdekin’s oeuvre can be profitably read in relation to a set of liturgical debates that go back to the English Reformation. The Book of Common Prayer, which features in some way in all three of these novels, proves a profitable site to focus questions about collective speech, its rituals seeming to model a kind of communal collectivity, but one that was imposed by political force. The negative connotations of collective speech are particularly evident in the Nazi liturgy at the heart of Swastika Night, which combines elements of the prayer book with features of the Nazi Thingspiele. Whereas Proud Man seemed to want to counter enforced rituals of collective belonging with a retooled ‘unselfish individualism’, both Swastika Night and The Rebel Passion seek to mobilise more positive forms of speaking in unison to counter dangerous conformity and authoritarianism. Burdekin even innovates a form of narration that can be referred to as ‘collective interior monologue’, as she explores the relationship between individual consciousness and collective belonging. The paper thus builds on the valuable scholarship of Elizabeth English, Daphne Patai, Glyn Salton-Cox, Adam Stock and Keith Williams, positioning Burdekin as an important and innovative novelist of ideas whose historical, religious and philosophical interests are unusually wide-ranging.