Criteria for Prayer Book Revision and the Preface to the 1549 Prayer Book

NATHAN G. JENNINGS

The Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music (SCLM) has responded to the General Convention's resolution 2015-A169 directing it "to prepare a plan for the comprehensive revision of the current Book of Common Prayer and present that plan to the 79th General Convention." It is difficult to predict in advance how the General Convention will respond, but whatever the decision it reaches, it will certainly be appropriate to reflect on the criteria underlying any plan of revision or correction, or any judgment that alteration is not appropriate at this time. I suggest we return to the criteria of the preface to the 1549 prayer book, the first prayer book in our tradition, as guideposts to look at and to reflect on before we begin to take up the task of any future revision. These criteria are: (1) that the worship of the church should be grounded upon Holy Scriptures, (2) that it should be agreeable to the order of the primitive church, (3) that worship should be unifying to the church, and (4) that it should be edifying to the people. My reasoning is not due to a belief that we ought to be antiquarian or because of a belief that the Episcopal Church is simply defined by our tradition in a strict or a legalistic way. Rather, the suggestion stems from the fact that these criteria have, in a haphazard, organic way, become a part of our "DNA," our "genetic" inheritance as Anglicans and as Episcopalians.

In addition to these four well-established criteria, I suggest another. But before I do, allow me a brief literary digression. Science fiction author Isaac Asimov devised "Three Laws of Robotics" for his fictional world. These laws were intended to protect humanity from the rising power of the robots. Yet in his short story collection, I, Robot, machines nearly take over the human race. As a result, Asimov imagined the development of a "Zeroth Law." Because the previous three had been hardwired into the robots in logical order, the scientists and engineers in Asimoz's story could not simply add a fourth law and achieve the result of human protection. Asimov described this Zeroth Law as more binding, even, than the first of the Three Laws of Robotics.

Similarly, even though these four explicit criteria of Cranmer are present in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, I propose a "Zeroth" criterion be added, in the spirit of Asimov. This Zeroth criterion is implicit in the manner in which Thomas Cranmer went about his work of liturgical reformation. I would sum up this Zeroth principle of the prayer book tradition as "continuity with immediate inheritance." When Cranmer began compiling the English liturgy for the Church of England in the 1540s, he did not do what Anabaptists, Reformed Christians, and some Lutherans did elsewhere in Europe. These other traditions, to varying degrees, simply discarded much of the previous liturgical inheritance of the Western church.

Of all the Protestant traditions, the Church of England, and therefore, our own Anglican tradition thereafter, was the most liturgical. When Cranmer applied these four explicit criteria to the reform of worship in the Church of England, the Zeroth criterion was always in play. For the most significant action Cranmer took to reform the liturgy was simply to translate much of the current Sarum use of the Roman rite — that is, the text, lectionary, calendar, and rubrics of the form of the Roman rite in use at Salisbury Cathedral — from Latin into sixteenth- century English vernacular. Simply translating into English was itself an act of reform, a radical one that was subject to much dispute. Thus the founding act of our prayer book tradition is the maintenance of continuity with previous inheritance. In this case, it was done through translation of previous liturgy. This Zeroth criterion of continuity with our immediate inheritance, like Asimov's Zeroth Law of Robotics, manifests a more fundamental commitment of our prayer book tradition than even that of the explicit four.

In the following essay, I discuss each of these criteria one by one, starting with the first and ending on the Zeroth. Each section of commentary includes what the criterion meant in its context, and how it appeared and was used during the Liturgical Movement of the twentieth century that would develop our 1979 prayer book. Then I reflect on how the criterion suggests we might best go forward with liturgical revision today.

I. Grounded upon Holy Scripture

The prayer book is the result of the Reformation in the Church of England, and that reformation was, in large part, a desire to reform church practice and teaching based on a return to Holy Scripture. At least, that is how the reformers saw their own efforts. In many ways, they lacked historically accurate knowledge of both scripture and the early liturgy that might have aided their fulfilling this goal more clearly and succinctly than they were able, however much that this was their goal.

As Cranmer went about making his changes in order to develop the Book of Common Prayer, at times he found himself unable simply to translate the Sarum rite into English due to his commitment to the Reformation's theological trends. He would then paraphrase the prayer grounded upon his discernment of its function in the liturgy into a form more acceptable to a Reformed theologian's ear and heart. His chosen method was to draw upon scripture, either by directly quoting it, or by making an allusion or reference to it, resulting in prayers more theologically satisfactory to a Reformer.

I would like briefly to note that the way in which this criterion works in Anglicanism is different than, say, the way in which the regulative criterion works in the Reformed tradition of our neighbors. The criterion of sola scriptura was applied to worship as the regulative principle by our Reformed neighbors thusly: if it is not in scripture, it ought not be in worship. To this day, certain branches of Presbyterian churches will not sing hymns during the divine service on Sunday mornings. Only psalms are sung at worship because they are found in scripture.

What is interesting here is that although the English Reformation falls under the greater...