Battle of the Prayer Books

Episcopalians seem to be polls apart

It was in 1549 that the Church of England forsook the Latin liturgy and began worshiping in the king's English. By the church's good fortune, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer edited the original Book of Common Prayer with such felicity that it has stood for centuries as a literary masterpiece. Its familiar phrases strike to the Anglican mind and heart and indeed can stir anyone who loves God or great language: "Almighty and most merciful Father . . . We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us."

In the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of Anglicanism, the language of the venerable book remained remarkably close to that of the 16th century, even after its most recent revision in 1928. But Episcopalians now are on the verge of a substantial break with Cranmer. Next month, after three years of trial use, a modernized prayer book will come up for final approval at the church's General Convention.

Rather like the reasoning of liturgical reformers in Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism, the rationale of the Episcopal revisers was that the church needed an up-to-date liturgy in contemporary language that parishioners can better understand. They also wanted to make use of the latest liturgical scholarship, not only by modernizing texts but by reorganizing the parts of the service logically. The Gloria, for instance, comes much earlier than it did in the 1928 edition because that was the practice in the early church. The new prayer book also offers a choice of a fairly traditional or a modern text in the most frequently used services, and so many options within each that the priest can use many more different combinations than before. One controversial innovation is "the Peace," a pause in the service when customarily reticent Episcopalians are expected to exchange personal blessings with worshipers around them, as the Catholics do in the new Mass.

Such additions and permutations make the new prayer book nearly twice as thick as the 1928 edition. But even so, in the process many a burnished and beloved phrase has been edited flat or cast into outer darkness. In the marriage service, "till death do us part" becomes "until we are parted by death." In the renovated baptism, the priest will no longer pray that the child be given strength to defeat "the devil, the world and the flesh."

The traditional "We praise thee, O God; we acknowledge thee to be the Lord" becomes in one version "You are God: we praise you; You are the Lord."

The phrases "there is no health in us" and "miserable offenders" are excised from the General Confession. Contrition has been cut back elsewhere. In the marriage service the couple is no longer charged with having to answer for any impediment to their marriage "at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed."

Also regarded by critics as a sin of omission is the new book's loss of burial service readings such as "Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay."

The changes have produced fierce reactions from a number of literary taste makers. W.H. Auden, who saw early versions before he died in 1973, said that liturgically speaking, the Episcopal Church "seems to have gone stark raving mad." Much of the new edition is "pedestrian, second-rate, banal," snaps Literary Critic Cleanth Brooks. Episcopal leaders generally dismiss such remarks as elitist fuming. The people in the pews, they insist, are grateful for the new version.

Last week the official viewpoint and Episcopal reality seemed to be polls apart.

George Gallup Jr., who is an Episcopalian as well as a pollster, reported on a national random survey of 512 Episcopal laity and 654 clergy showing that 63% of lay members still prefer the old prayer book. Only 23% are for the new. Episcopalians no longer active in the church are more heavily in favor of the 1928 book than active members, and champions of the old book feel much more strongly than those who like the new. Gallup's data also show a church divided against itself: an overwhelming 80% of the clergy favor the modern prayer book.

The survey was commissioned by the Nashville-based Society for the Preservation of the Book of Common Prayer (S.P.B.C.P.), which has 120,000 supporters.

The society is resigned to the fact that only a miracle can avert final approval of the new book next month. What it seeks is authorization from the church convention for individual parishes to use the 1928 prayer book if they wish. Given the centrality of the prayer book to church life, the way in which the convention handles popular resistance to the new liturgy could have much to do with the future fortunes of Episcopalianism.

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