Whose Prayerbook?

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.

On top of filling my mind with modern Roman Catholic moral theology and avoiding a Luke 23 eis-egesis (what you have to do when a passage of Scripture defies all analysis), I have, like many of my Third Year colleagues, been preparing for a Liturgy exam. Front and centre is the tradition of the Anglican Prayerbook, its history and theology. As someone who has come from a sort-of R.C. family I find this sort of thing fascinating. This has been helped by outstanding lectures from Mr Keith Condie, a highlight of the year.

But, as we all know, you don't get good marks by simple regurgitation, so I have been picking away at an Anglo-Catholic history of the Prayerbook for a different perspective. [note to my contemporaries: Make good use of the Free Book table at the MTC Library. Most of it is raving heresy, but there be gold in them thar hills!] A certain canon of Peterborough (probably now long deceased) lays his cards open in a rather vulgar fashion. Significant attention and praise is given to the 1549 book, while the chapter on the 1552 book (the most Reformed of all the Prayerbooks) is entitled 'A Victory for the Extremists'. I was shocked to discover that the Holy Communion service from that particular book is 'a liturgical mostrosity' and that Thomas Cranmer was little more than a wimp, unable to stand up to those nasty bullies from Zurich.

This little book, while now over 60 years old, contains arguments that still have currency in ecclesiological and liturgical discussion. The way that we meet and the language that we use can be very powerful statements about who we and what we believe. If you see someone at a Bledisloe Cup match dressed head to foot in green and gold there are no prizes for guessing who they are barracking for. You don't have to ask them what they think about the Wallabies as its written all over them.

I am not a Cranmer expert. I have read a few Homilies for help with exams/essays, and what I have read gives me confidence that he truly was the strong Reformer I was always taught that he was. Was he cautious? Yes. Did he want to avoid all-out religious war in England? Yes. Does this mean that we have to describe his churchmanship as Broad or even Closet Catholic? No.

In the sweet shop of Christianity, Anglicans are the Assorted Chocolate-Coated Nuts. On the outside we can look fairly similar (if we're on our best behaviour!) but our centre of faith may look and taste quite different. No better place is this seen than the Prayerbook Wars. Everyone wants to claim ownership, both of the Book and of its principle author. No-one is REALLY happy with the 1662 Book. It is not as Reformed as it could be, nor as Catholic as it could be. Those of us who fall on the more Reformed side are happy things aren't as bad as they could be. The Catholics deplore the loss of tradition still present in 1549 and are bitter about the perceived victory of the 'extremists' over Cranmer's original intentions.

So whose Prayerbook is it, the Puritans' or the Papists'? The reality is neither, for Cranmer was neither. We have to remember that the Prayerbook is NOT the same as Scripture. There is a lot of Scripture IN it, but it was never a 'pure' text. It is the work of Assorted Nuts, and is continued to be used and abused by Assorted Nuts. Cranmer would have wanted all his work to be judged by the standard of Scripture, for it is there that we find who we truly are. Our liturgy must come from our understanding of the Gospel, not the other way around. So often in this topic reference is made to systematic considerations rather than biblical ones. Of course, these two are not always in conflict, but it would be nice if sometimes the Assorted Nuts could judge the Prayerbook by the Lord who continues to speak through His Word rather than appealing to the Thomas Cranmer who speaks no more.

Currently Reading: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Currently Listening To: 'O Death' by Ralph Stanley