Session 4 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 4 

The Episcopal Church:   Our chief heirloom     

We said that The Episcopal Church is a Christian family among other Christian families.  Along with a name, a family has features that provide unique identity.  The Roman Catholic Church has canon law, the papacy, and a theological architect like St. Thomas Aquinas as part of their heritage.  The Lutherans have Martin Luther’s prolific theological writings and the Presbyterians have the writings of John Calvin as chief heirlooms of their community identity.  What do Episcopalians have?  If we have a theological architect, it is Richard Hooker, but he does not have the exact corresponding stature in the Anglican tradition as do Aquinas, Luther and Calvin for their respective traditions.  So, what is our chief heirloom?  We would have to say it is The Book of Common Prayer.

In the mid-16^th century the Enlightenment was happening, feudal structures disappearing as well as the following: the rise of nation-state identities, spreading education/literacy, the printing press and the rediscovery of the “individual.”  Before this the individual was hidden in paternalistic structures and feudal figure heads decided for everyone in society.  In the church, clergy decided or mediated in the worship leadership in Latin prayers on behalf of lay people.  The Reformation was as much due to social changes in Europe and England as to any religious movement.  The social changes provide the conditions for the religious Reformation to take place.  The Enlightenment required that individuals become more active with their intellect in their faith and worship practices.  If a spectator laity watched the clergy perform the worship on their behalf in Latin, an uncommon language how could lay people fully participate in their faith except as dependent children?

Growing nationalism, King Henry VIII’s conflict with the Pope over an annulment and meddling in international affairs, a body of clergy influenced by the Reformation on the Continent, all gave rise to the conditions that brought into being the Book of Common Prayer.  When King Henry VIII, declared himself as one who would reform the Church in England as a non-papal catholic Church, he appointed Thomas Cranmer as the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Cranmer had been influenced by Reformers on the Continent.

A way to challenge papal authority on the Continent was to translate Scripture into the vernacular languages and not rely on St. Jerome’s Vulgate Latin version.  So what was the “common” language of the English people?  English, of course.  Cranmer penned the first Book of Common Prayer and brought the liturgy out of the exclusive grip of the clergy, the educated and the religious monastic and he made it accessible to the hearing of the average person in England.  Cranmer used various existing liturgies, reform liturgies in the Roman and Reformation traditions to create in his Tudor English what became a standard for English style. In the time of Henry VIII the Coverdale Bible in English had been placed in parish churches to be read by literate lay persons.

Cranmer collapsed the seven monastic prayer offices into Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer and this was an effort to end the division between two kinds of Christians, ordained/monastic and lay Christians.

The Book of Common Prayer, consistent with its origin of being in the common language of the people who pray, has undergone various revisions and has been translated into languages other than English.  The Episcopal Church has used five versions of The Book of Common Prayer; the pre-American Revolution church used the 1662 version before gaining their own American version in 1789.  There have been three subsequent revisions, 1892, 1928 and 1979 as well as trial and supplemental liturgies approved for use.

The Book of Common Prayer is indeed the chief heirloom of the Episcopal Church, even while we with all Christians acknowledge the Bible as the “official text book” of the church.

Exercise:

Compare your own experience of public worship.  Some other Protestant Churches have Orders of Service but give much more flexibility in choice to their clergy.  Other churches have much more “extemporaneous” prayers rather than shared “common” prayer in a textual form.  In our corporate prayer, we are all equal; no one “prays better” than another, since we are offering the prayers together.  Take a look sometime at the entire Book of Common Prayer. 

Father Phil