Tuesday, November 3, 2015

The Purpose of The Book of Common Prayer

When I first started attending the Anglican Catholic Church, I was introduced to something that was completely foreign to me, that to be honest, I had never heard of.

The Book of Common Prayer.

Not even when I was in the Methodist or Presbyterian church, I don't ever remembering using or even hearing about a Book of Common prayer.

The more I started learning about Anglo- Catholicism, the more intrigued I was about this book.

Even more so when I found out that this book was one of the reasons why The Anglican Catholic church split from the Episcopal church in the 1970's.

The version we use is the 1928 version (the 1979 version is the most commonly used one in the Episcopal church.)

My husband had a copy of it from his old Episcopal days, and gave it to me. I instantly fell in love with it. The prayers in it were so poetic, and really can tug at the heart strings, especially the general confession.

When I told some of my old Protestant and Anabaptist friends about it, they seemed confused.

The most common complaint I heard about the prayer book was "Why do you need a book to tell you how to pray?"

I would quickly respond "Have you never had a time in your life where you just couldn't find the words to pray?"

This got some of them thinking I had a point. However, my Pentecostal and charismatic friends would dismiss this retort by saying "That's what tongues are for".

It got me thinking a bit. The go to answer I had was nice, but was that it? Is that what a church would split about?

I started digging in deeper in the prayer book. Then I noticed something I hadn't seen before.

The Liturgy.

The Liturgy ( or the order of our service) is in the book of Common Prayer. Everything from morning and evening prayers, to high mass, to high holly days mass, to weddings, to baptisms, to confirmations, to funerals. It's all there.

I brought up the subject up to a few of my fellow parish family members and one of them gave me the real answer I was looking for.

The way they explained it to me, was that the Book of Common prayer gives specific direction on how the service is to flow. If a priest were to go out of line of the prayer book, the Layman (Non ordained church member) is able to tell right away, and would be able to report it to a higher authority (Such as a Bishop) to get it straighten out.

Tat was the moment I was truly in love with this book.

I remember thinking, how many churches have I been in the past that could use a tool like this.

I wouldn't have to hear a sermon about tithing every single Sunday, if the book says that day is in celebration of the Trinity.

In fact, how nice would it be if I was able to report a couple to them to a Bishop, rather than just walk away, but that's another blog for another day.

So, in short, that is the purpose of The Book of Common Prayer.

If you don't know how to pray for something, the book can teach you how to. Which, surprisingly, prayer requires learning. It's not as easy as the Evangelical community makes it out to be. In fact, they have some of their own written prayers that most don't acknowledge as the same as the prayers we have in the prayer book.

The Sinner's prayer, for example, looks pretty similar to the Prayer of General confession, if you look at it.


At it's to help keep structure and order in the church, and to keep the priest accountable. Something, that I am sorry to say, seems to be dwindling in the mainstream protestant churches.

I liked what the archbishop once said about the Liturgy in the Book of Common prayer.

"The Liturgy works to where, even if you don't like your priest, it's fine, because he doesn't get to but in very often."

Now just by writing this blog, gives me an idea for my next blog.....BUT...that will have to be for another time.



The Lord be with you.

3 comments:

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  2. I'm glad you wrote about this as most people find it strange that we pray out of a book. The term "Common Prayer" is telling already, that we are to pray with one voice and one accord. The early Christians in the new testament met on the first day of the week to break bread and say "THE PRAYERS"...indicating that scripture is referring to specific prayers. it is through the liturgy that we join other catholics in the world in the same prayers. There is no space for individualistic kind of worship in the liturgy. What I like most with Anglican liturgy is that we pray what we believe and the prayers are based on scripture. During my Pentecostal days, people were experiencing hunger for liturgy (of course they did not know this), they had started to use Psalms as prayers.

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  3. I have a prayer book for Orthodox church. I often myself in a situation that I do not feel like praying ( oh the devil does anything he can to stop us talking with our Father). They prayer book is so wonderful as I start to read it, usually my heart follows the prayer.

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