“I don’t know if it’s any better with the Anglican Church in England, but the…[Episcopal] Church in America seems to have gone stark raving mad.”
Read the background and the larger quote there.
(Carl Van Vechten)
“I don’t know if it’s any better with the Anglican Church in England, but the…[Episcopal] Church in America seems to have gone stark raving mad.”
Read the background and the larger quote there.
(Carl Van Vechten)
I agree with him entirely. May I respectfully suggest to those American Anglicans who insist on, or are merely used to, the 1979 book, that you return to using Rite I if you don’t care to return to the 1928?
I’m not a specialist in liturgics, but I really think some places in the 1979 book improved on the 1928 BCP (heresy! to be sure in the eyes of some). For example, the expansion and development of The Great Litany makes it more obviously Trinitarian in emphasis and richer in its petitions. The Evening Service remains quite beautiful. The alternative consecration prayer in Rite I Holy Eucharist also seems a worthy addition to 1928. Besides …. (parce Auden), The Prayer of Humble Access remained, and the Filioque, and many other traditional prayers too. Some things were changed and a few lost. But what was added were hundreds of historic prayers and collects that have enriched our common prayer and private devotions.
Nearly 40 years ago, I joined the Episcopal Church on the strength of its “new book.” It pains me to hear it scorned. We’ll sure miss it when the next revision comes.
Ah, jhp, I joined ECUSA on the strength of the 1928, and I accepted the 1979 for a while, especially while Rite I services were still widely used. The Prayer of Humble Access is slightly modified in Rite I, and absent from Rite II. Not that this in itself is worth discarding the 1979, of course. A much more serious problem are that while traditional options for Morning and Evening Prayer, and Holy Communion, are provided, there is no traditional Baptismal rite, and the one which is there has been used by those with strong non-traditional faith leanings to make baptism all about a baptismal covenant, a new creation.
Part of the problem may be also the newer lectionary or lectionaries. As many have pointed out, the difficult passages about sexual immorality, among other immoralities, which we hear several times a year in the 1928 lectionary, are cut out, so the people don’t hear them any more.
And, with the varieties of worship provided in Rite II, along with the fact that many congregations use liturgies “based on” the 1979, but not actually following the 1979, we (while I was in ECUSA) no longer had “Common Prayer.”
I won’t be bothered with the next revision, since I left ECUSA behind.