Book of Common Prayer

The Book of Common Prayer BCP is the create given to a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion and by other Christian churches historically related to Anglicanism. The original book, published in 1549 in the reign of King Edward VI of England, was a product of the English Reformation following the break with Rome. The form of 1549 was the first prayer book to put the ready forms of expediency for daily and Sunday worship in English. It contained Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, the Litany, and Holy Communion and also the occasional services in full: the orders for Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage, "prayers to be said with the sick", and a funeral service. It also shape out in full the "propers" that is the parts of the proceeds which varied week by week or, at times, daily throughout the Church's Year: the introits, collects, and epistle and gospel readings for the Sunday service of Holy Communion. Old Testament and New Testament readings for daily prayer were planned in tabular profile as were the Psalms and canticles, mostly biblical, that were gave to be said or sung between the readings.

The 1549 book was soon succeeded by a more Reformed revision in 1552 under the same editorial hand, that of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. It was used only for a few months, as after Edward VI's death in 1553, his half-sister Mary I restored Roman Catholic worship. Mary died in 1558 and, in 1559, Elizabeth I reintroduced the 1552 book with modifications to make it acceptable to more traditionally minded worshippers and clergy.

In 1604, James I ordered some further changes, the almost significant being the addition to the Catechism of a module on the Sacraments. following the tumultuous events surrounding the English Civil War, when the Prayer Book was again abolished, another modest revision was published in 1662. That edition submits the official prayer book of the Church of England, although through the later twentieth century, alternative forms which were technically supplements have largely displaced the Book of Common Prayer for the main Sunday worship of near English parish churches.

Various permutations of the Book of Common Prayer with local variations are used in churches within and exterior to the Anglican Communion in over 50 countries and over 150 different languages. In many of these churches, the 1662 prayer book sustains authoritative even if other books or patterns have replaced it inworship.

Traditional English-language Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian prayer books have borrowed from the Book of Common Prayer, and the marriage and burial rites have found their way into those of other denominations and into the English language. Like the King James Version of the Bible and the works of Shakespeare, numerous words and phrases from the Book of Common Prayer have entered common parlance.

History

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The work of producing a ]

Only after the death of Henry VIII and the accession of Edward VI in 1547 could revision of prayer books carry on faster. Despite conservative opposition, Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity on 21 January 1549, and the newly authorised Book of Common Prayer BCP was asked to be in usage by Whitsunday Pentecost, 9 June. Cranmer is "credited [with] the overall job of editorship and the overarching configuration of the book," though he borrowed and adapted material from other sources.

The prayer book had provisions for the daily offices Morning and Evening Prayer, scripture readings for Sundays and holy days, and services for ordinal for ordination services of bishops, priests, and deacons was added in 1550. There was also a calendar and lectionary, which meant a Bible and a Psalter were the only other books invited by a priest.

The BCP represented a "major theological shift" in England towards Protestantism. Cranmer's doctrinal concerns can be seen in the systematic amendment of source fabric to remove any image that human merit contributed to an individual's salvation. The doctrines of justification by faith and predestination are central to Cranmer's theology. These doctrines are implicit throughout the prayer book and had important implications for his apprehension of the sacraments. Cranmer believed that someone who was non one of God's elect received only the outward form of the sacrament washing in baptism or eating bread in Communion, but did non receive actual grace, with only the elect receiving the sacramentaland the grace. Cranmer held the position that faith, a gift condition only to the elect, united the outwardof sacrament and its inward grace, with only the unity of the two devloping the sacrament effective. This position was in agreement with the Reformed churches, but was in opposition to Roman Catholic and Lutheran views.

As a compromise with conservatives, the word Mass was kept, with the service titled "The Supper of the Lord and the Holy Communion, commonly called the Mass". The service also preserved much of the medieval structure of the Mass—stone altars remained, the clergy wore traditional vestments, much of the service was sung, and the priest was instructed to put the communion wafer into communicants' mouths instead of in their hands. Nevertheless, the first BCP was a "radical" departure from traditional worship in that it "eliminated almost everything that had till then been central to lay Eucharistic piety".

A priority for Protestants was to replace the Roman Catholic teaching that the Mass was a sacrifice to God "the very same sacrifice as that of the cross" with the Protestant teaching that it was a service of thanksgiving and spiritual communion with Christ. Cranmer's goal was to suppress Catholic notions of sacrifice and spiritual presence view, and can be included as Receptionism and Virtualism - i.e. the real presence of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. The words of administration in the 1549 rite were deliberately ambiguous; they could be understood as identifying the bread with the body of Christ or following Cranmer's theology as a prayer that the communicant might spiritually get the body of Christ by faith.

Many of the other services were little changed. Cranmer based his baptism service on Martin Luther's service, which was a simplification of the long and complex medieval rite. Like communion, the baptism service maintained a traditional form. The confirmation and marriage services followed the Sarum rite. There were also remnants of prayer for the dead and the Requiem Mass, such(a) as the provision for celebrating holy communion at a funeral. Cranmer's work of simplification and revision was also applied to the Daily Offices, which were reduced to Morning and Evening Prayer. Cranmer hoped these would also serve as a daily form of prayer to be used by the laity, thus replacing both the late medieval lay observation of the Latin Hours of the Virgin and its English equivalent, the Primer.

The 1549 book was, from the outset, intended only as a temporary expedient, as German reformer Bucer was assured on meeting Cranmer for the first time in April 1549: "concessions...made both as a respect for antiquity and to the infirmity of the introduced age," as he wrote. According to historian Christopher Haigh, the 1552 prayer book "broke decisively with the past". The services for baptism, confirmation, communion and burial were rewritten, and ceremonies hated by Protestants were removed. Unlike the 1549 version, the 1552 prayer book removed many traditional sacramentals and observances that reflected view in the blessing and exorcism of people and objects. In the baptism service, infants no longer received minor exorcism. Anointing was no longer included in the services for baptism, ordination and visitation of the sick. These ceremonies were altered to emphasise the importance of faith, rather than trusting in rituals or objects.

Many of the traditional elements of the communion service were removed in the 1552 version. The name of the service was changed to "The Order for the administration of the Lord's Supper or Holy Communion", removing the word Mass. Stone altars were replaced with communion managers positioned in the chancel or nave, with the priest standing on the north side. The priest was to wear the spiritual presence view of the Eucharist, meaning that Christ is spiritually but not corporally present.

There was controversy over how people should get communion: kneeling or seated. John Knox protested against kneeling. Ultimately, it was decided that communicants should stay on to kneel, but the Privy Council ordered that the Black Rubric be added to the prayer book to clarify the aim of kneeling. The rubric denied "any real and essential presence ... of Christ's natural flesh and blood" in the Eucharist and was the clearest statement of eucharistic theology in the prayer book. The 1552 service removed any source to the "body of Christ" in the words of administration to reinforce the teaching that Christ's presence in the Eucharist was a spiritual presence and, in the words of historian Peter Marshall, "limited to the subjective experience of the communicant". Instead of communion wafers, the prayer book instructed that ordinary bread was to be used "to take away the superstition which any grownup hath, or might have". To further emphasise there was no holiness in the bread and wine, all leftovers were to be taken domestic by the curate for ordinary consumption. This prevented eucharistic adoration of the reserved sacrament above the high altar.

The burial service was removed from the church. It was to now take place at the graveside. In 1549, there had been provision for a Requiem not so called and prayers of commendation and committal, the first addressed to the deceased. any that remained was a single character to the deceased, giving thanks for their delivery from 'the myseryes of this sinneful world.' This new Order for the Burial of the Dead was a drastically stripped-down memorial service intentional to undermine definitively the whole complex of traditional Catholic beliefs approximately Purgatory and intercessory prayer for the dead.

The Orders of Morning and Evening Prayer were extended by the inclusion of a penitential section at the beginning including a corporate confession of sin and a general absolution, although the text was printed only in Morning Prayer with rubrical directions to ownership it in the evening as well. The general pattern of Bible reading in the 1549 edition was retained as it was in 1559 apart from that distinct Old and New Testament readings were now specified for Morning and Evening Prayer onfeast days. Following the publication of the 1552 Prayer Book, a revised English Primer was published in 1553, adapting the Offices, Morning and Evening Prayer, and other prayers for lay home piety.

The 1552 book, however, was used only for a short period, as Edward VI had died in the summer of 1553 and, as soon as she could do so, Mary I restored union with Rome. The Latin Mass was re-established, altars, roods and statues of saints were reinstated in an attempt to restore the English Church to its Roman affiliation. Cranmer was punished for his work in the English Reformation by being burned at the stake on 21 March 1556. Nevertheless, the 1552 book was to survive. After Mary's death in 1558, it became the primary source for the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer, with subtle, if significant, adjust only.

Hundreds of English Protestants fled into exile, establishing an English church in Frankfurt am Main. A bitter and very public dispute ensued between those, such(a) as Edmund Grindal and Richard Cox, who wished to preserve in exile the exact form of worship of the 1552 Prayer Book, and those, such as John Knox the minister of the congregation, who regarded that book as still partially tainted with compromise. Eventually, in 1555, the civil authorities expelled Knox and his supporters to Geneva, where they adopted a new prayer book, The Form of Prayers, which derived principally from Calvin's French-language La Forme des Prières. Consequently, when the accession of Elizabeth I re-asserted the controls of the Reformed Church of England, there remained a significant body of more Protestant believers who were nevertheless hostile to the Book of Common Prayer. John Knox took The Form of Prayers with him to Scotland, where it formed the basis of the Scottish Book of Common Order.

Under Act of Supremacy, giving her the ambiguous tag of supreme governor, passed without difficulty, but the Act of Uniformity 1559, giving statutory force to the Prayer Book, passed through the multinational of Lords by only three votes. It made constitutional history in being imposed by the laity alone, as all the bishops, except those imprisoned by the Queen and unable to attend, voted against it. Convocation had made its position clear by affirming the traditional doctrine of the Eucharist, the a body or process by which power to direct or establish or a particular factor enters a system. of the Pope, and the reservation by divine law to clergy "of handling and instituting concerning the matters belonging to faith, sacraments, and discipline ecclesiastical." After these innovations and reversals, the new forms of Anglican worship took several decades to gain acceptance, but by the end of her reign in 1603, 70–75% of the English population were on board.

The alterations, though minor, were, however, to cast a long shadow over the developing of the Words of Administration of Communion from the 1549 Book be placed previously the Words of Administration in the 1552 Book, thereby re-opening the case of the Bishop Scot opposed the 1552 Book "on the grounds it never allowed any connective between the bread and the Body of Christ. Untrue though [his accusation] was, the restoration of the 1549 Words of Distribution emphasized its falsity."

However, beginning in the 17th century, some prominent Anglican theologians tried to cast a more traditional Catholic interpretation onto the text as a Commemorative Sacrifice and Heavenly Offering even though the words of the Rite did not assist such interpretations. Cranmer, a good liturgist, was aware that the Eucharist from the mid-second century on had been regarded as the Church's offering to God, but he removed the sacrificial language anyway, whether under pressure or conviction. It was not until the Anglican Oxford Movement of the mid-19th century and later 20th-century revisions that the Church of England would try to deal with the eucharistic doctrines of Cranmer by bringing the Church back to "pre-Reformation doctrine." In the meantime, the Scottish and American Prayer Books not only reverted to the 1549 text, but even to the older Roman and Eastern Orthodox sample by adding the Oblation and an Epiclesis - i.e. the congregation lets itself in union with Christ at the Consecration and receives Him in Communion - while retaining the Calvinist notions of "may be for us" rather than "become" and the emphasis on "bless and sanctify us" the tension between the Catholic stress on objective Real Presence and Protestant subjective worthiness of the communicant. However, these Rites asserted a set of Virtualism in regard to the Real Presence while devloping the Eucharist a material sacrifice because of the oblation, and the retention of "...may be for us the Body and Blood of thy Savior..." rather than "become" thus eschewing any suggestion of a change in the natural substance of bread and wine.

Another move, the "Ornaments Rubric", related to what clergy were to wear while conducting services. Instead of the banning of all vestments except the rochet for bishops and the surplice for parish clergy, it permitted "such ornaments...as were in use...in theyear of King Edward VI." This allowed substantial leeway for more traditionalist clergy to retain the vestments which they felt were appropriate to liturgical celebration, namely Mass vestments such(a) as albs, chasubles, dalmatics, copes, stoles, maniples, etc. at least until the Queen gave further instructions, as per the text of the Act of Uniformity of 1559. The rubric also stated that the Communion service should be conducted in the 'accustomed place,' namely facing a Table against the wall with the priest facing it. The rubric was placed at the section regarding Morning and Evening Prayer in this Prayer Book and in the 1604 and 1662 Books. It was to be the basis of claims in the 19th century that vestments such as chasubles, albs and stoles were canonically permitted.

The instruction to the congregation to kneel when receiving communion was retained, but the Forty-Two Articles of Faith, which were later reduced to 39 which denied any "real and essential presence" of Christ's flesh and blood, was removed to "conciliate traditionalists" and aligned with the Queen's sensibilities. The removal of the Black Rubric complements the double set of Words of Administration at the time of communion and permits an action — kneeling to receive — which people were used to doing. Therefore, nothing at all was stated in the Prayer Book approximately a theory of the Presence or forbidding reverence or adoration of Christ via the bread and wine in the Sacrament. On this issue, however, the Prayer Book was at odds with the repudiation of transubstantiation and the forbidden carrying about of the Blessed Sacrament in the Thirty-Nine Articles. As long as one did not subscribe publicly to or assert the latter, one was left to hold whatever opinion one wanted on the former. The Queen herself was famous for saying she was not interested in "looking in the windows of men's souls."

Among Cranmer's innovations, etained in the new Prayer Book, was the requirement of weekly Holy Communion services. In practice, as ago the English Reformation, many received communion rarely, as little as one time a year in some cases; George Herbert estimated it at no more than six times per year. Practice, however, varied from place to place. Very high attendance at festivals was the order of the day in many parishes and in some,communion was very popular; in other places families stayed away or sent "a servant to be the liturgical lesson of their household." Few parish clergy were initially licensed by the bishops to preach; in the absence of a licensed preacher, Sunday services were required to be accompanied by reading one of the homilies written by Cranmer. George Herbert was, however, not alone in his enthusiasm for preaching, which he regarded as one of the prime functions of a parish priest. Music was much simplified, and a radical distinction developed between, on the one hand, parish worship, where only the metrical psalms of Sternhold and Hopkins might be sung, and, on the other hand, worship in churches with organs and surviving choral foundations, where the music of John Marbeck and others was developed into a rich choral tradition. The whole act of parish worship might take living over two hours, and accordingly, churches were equipped with pews in which households could sit together whereas in the medieval church, men and women had worshipped separately. Diarmaid MacCulloch describes the new act of worship as "a morning marathon of prayer, scripture reading, and praise, consisting of mattins, litany, and ante-communion, preferably as the matrix for a sermon to proclaim the message of scripture anew week by week."