The Anglican Church in North America is pleased to announce the release of Texts for Common Prayer.
Included here are the Offices of Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, and the Holy Communion (Long Form and Short Form), as well as Supplemental Canticles for Worship. These are all the “working” forms approved by the College of Bishops for use in the Province. Also bound with these working texts is The Ordinal which has been adopted and authorized as The Ordinal of the Province.
Read it all and note the link for the FAQ.
It looks as if the odious “Peace Passing” has crept in, even it it does say “may.”
Why is everyone busy trying to reinvent the liturgical wheel? In my experience liturgical tinkering almost always ends badly. What was wrong (from a Protestant pov) with the 1928 BCP?
From what it is said, and from what I’ve seen, this is extremely close to the ’28 BCP.
I’ve been told that Passing the Peace is a very, very old tradition, but one we lost track of…It’s passing God’s peace, you know…and that can hardly be wrong.
If a priest says “The Peace of the Lord be Always with You,” what on earth is wrong with us saying the same thing to others? Wouldn’t the Church Fathers agree?
The “Peace” has “crept in” to every Eucharist service I have ever attended in TEC (which for me goes back to the 1950s) or ACNA- high church, low church, even the one officiated by the lowest church ACNA bishop I have ever met.
Even though it has crept in, it doesn’t mean that it was wrong and that it never would’ve been an acceptable thing.
In my very limited experience, PtP, when it came in with the ’79 BCP services, was a jolt to folks, most of us for whom it seemed a new diversion during the service.
People’s reaction ranged all the way from ignoring the passing to fervid acceptance…not unusual.
There obviously are ways to minimize any disruption; our rector spend some time explaining the thinking behind it, and it helped our understanding considerably.
Two things; the base document is the 1662 BCP. The Peace crept into the liturgy circa 35 AD. It signified the time those not yet baptized were to leave the service. It dropped out after the “enlightenment” when the church fathers decided the mind and spirit were totally separated entities, and everyone was baptized anyway. I totally disagree that the Peace “disrupts” the service. It acknowledges that we are people of the Spirit and that our entire person, body, mind and soul, belongs to God.
We still don’t do it in my REC parish, for which I am thankful. I remember its introduction with the ’79, and many were not happy with it. I don’t mind, when visiting another parish, turning to my near neighbors with a handshake and wish for peace, but it often becomes a several minutes long group hug session, which is quite uncomfortable for me.
Other than that, I am encouraged to learn that the new ACNA rites are modeled on the 1662 and 1928.
As with so many basically good ideas, PtP is something which is usually done to great excess, and has been so at every TEC church I have attended since 1979. When the ACNA church I attend switched to the 1928 BCP, nobody complained, and there were some comments about how the service was no longer disrupted with a social activity which was much better left to the coffee hour afterwards. At lease it is so far optional. Otherwise, they seem to have a good job of going back to the basics while making it accessible to current generations.
Little or no problem with the peace, in theory. At the Orthodox parish I visit from time to time, there is something similar (which makes me inclined to accept #8’s assertion that it crept in circa 35 AD). But . . . .
In the parish my family still attends, the “peace” is more like the intermission, and it _is_ a social interaction.
The Orthodox folks I visit turn to their immediate neighbors, and simply state, “Christ is in our midst.”
Very different.