SCRIPTURE, CONTINUITY, AND COMMON PRAYER:

Thoughts on the Revised Common Lectionary

Revised 2004

(This text was written as a contribution to the debate in the Parish of Saint John the Evangelist, Montreal, on a proposal from the then Bishop of the Diocese, Andrew Hutchison, that the Parish adopt the Revised Common Lectionary. It was published in a special issue of The Eagle, the parochial magazine. The St. John’s Vestry eventually voted unanimously with one abstention to continue its use of the Book of Common Prayer lectionary.)

            Several months ago in the course of conversation with a friend it became apparent that we had very different understandings of the communion of Saints, that article of faith which we have both professed on countless occasions each time we recite the Creeds. For him it refers primarily to the unity of all living Christians joined in prayer and worship. For me, without disagreeing with him, a far grander assembly is implied; a unity of worshipers across the ages, transcending time itself, and encompassing the faithful of all generations. At Morning Prayer we reaffirm our place in this assembly as we repeat the ancient triumphant hymn of the Church, the Te Deum:

The glorious company of the Apostles praise thee;

The goodly fellowship of the Prophets praise thee;

The noble army of martyrs praise thee;

The holy Church throughout all the world does acknowledge thee...

My friend did not deny this sense of the phrase, but to him it was at most a vague abstraction, decidedly less tangible than what used to be commonly referred to as the Church Militant. I think the divergence of emphasis that we discovered is symptomatic of a broad divergence of vision within contemporary Christianity. It is one that can be traced in many current conflicts, including our own parochial teapot tempest concerning the adoption of the Revised Common Lectionary.

            Many contemporary Western Christians would probably be similarly disconcerted by what the Orthodox theologian Father Georges Florovsky speaks of as “an ecumenism in time.”  The implications for the lectionary debate here are self-evident: do we read the same passages and juxtapositions of scripture upon which the Fathers of the Church and generations of subsequent homilists have preached, or do we join with contemporary Christians in a new common system of readings from Scripture? Do we align ourselves in a horizontal ecumenism with our Christian neighbours or a vertical ecumenism with those who have gone before us marked with the sign of Faith? 

            The imminence of the saints is we are told a particularly beloved concept in the theology of Oriental Christians, who stress that “the saints are among us” not just as abstract intermediaries, but present in our lives and worship.[1] Father Florovsky’s idea is taken up by A.M. Allchin who calls it the “active encounter between the Church of today and the Church of former ages....” Canon Allchin goes on to refer to those who would echo my friend: “Voices have not been lacking within the theological world which have questioned

very radically the possibility of any real unity of faith and experience across the gulfs which separate our post-critical world from earlier ages.“ He goes on to ask a series of questions:

If we allow that there is some real continuity of life and thought, how is it maintained? Do we remain true to the past by refusing to change, or by being willing to change? Can we say that it is the Holy Spirit who is the bearer and creator of tradition? Is it perhaps more helpful to speak of certain archetypal patterns in the heart and mind of men which have their own inherent validity? Shall we have need of both ways of approach if we are to do justice to the mystery of human creativity when the freedom of man is touched and energized by the activity of God?[2]

            Fundamental to Anglo-Catholic perception of our faith is the belief that we experience revelation and humanity’s covenant with God through history. We are also certain that the Holy Spirit acts through history. Ecclesiastical history seems all too often little more than ponderous footnotes to the simple lesson of the gospel parables: chaff is discarded and good seed sprouts. Tradition consists in those aspects of our history which remain alive, which nurture us and link us as a Living Temple to those in whose path we follow, and of which we are the custodians.

On Common Prayer

            Liturgical conformity was once considered a defining characteristic of the Anglican Communion. It is particularly appropriate to consider these matters at the close of a liturgical year marked by the observance of two momentous historic events: the four hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the first Book of Common Prayer and the commemoration of the death of Charles Stuart, King and Martyr, exactly one hundred years later. These two events, in a sense, are the parentheses demarcating a remarkable century which still profoundly marks our consciousness as Anglicans. However, like most Golden Ages, ours is premised more on an ideal than on reality. The famous exemplar of George Herbert, knowing that the ploughman in his fields joined with him in prayer as the bell tolled at Bemereton parish church, is the pure metal from which myth is forged. In the words of the preface of the first Book of Common Prayer “Now from henceforth all the whole realm shall have but one use....” Although this notion of nation and church united in prayer with its sovereign is at the very historical heart of Anglicanism, it has nonetheless been contradicted from its inception by those it excluded, both Recusants and non-conformist Puritans.

            The reality was that the Book of Common Prayer was a liturgical and theological compromise in a society increasingly polarised even to the point of a civil war in which the very possibility of common prayer was to be as much a martyr as was King Charles. Perhaps the most heartfelt embracing of the ideal of common prayer occurred in reaction to the confusion of forms of worship that had prevailed during the Commonwealth. It is fascinating to read the testimony of ordinary Christians, including former Puritan partisans, telling of how they had come to realise that ranting, extemporary prayer, and private interpretation of the Bible were sadly wanting as foundations for religious life. Part of the English nation’s reintegration, following the Restoration, lay in its rediscovery of the beauty of Cranmer’s book, which was revised and re-published in 1662. Time might have achieved the long-dreamt-of consensus, had subsequent history otherwise unfolded. In the words of Bishop Stephen Neill:

The Revolution [of 1689] carried further the process, which had begun at the Restoration, of the recognition of the possibility of the peaceful co-existence of several Churches within a single state. Up till this time almost everyone in England had believed that there should be one Church and one only; and, in the century and a half since the Reformation, Papalists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Independents had each striven, by bitter persecution of all others as opportunity offered, to establish their own monopoly. Now men had recognized that that could not be....[3]

            Parallel forms of worship evolved even within the Anglican Communion, and were soon institutionalised. The Scottish and American Episcopalian Churches have long had alternative communion services, and the precedent was extended to the English church in the wake of the ill-fated Prayer Book revisions of 1928. The plethora of distinct liturgies adopted by various national churches over the past half century is staggering. In a certain sense, liturgical diversity is an expression of what has come to be considered one of the great strengths of Anglican experience, what is termed its comprehension. Our communion has become a microcosm of Christendom itself, drawing together seemingly disparate components united by factors far more important than those which define our respective distinctiveness; the most significant being trust and toleration of diversity. The problem of maintaining a consensus among a free association of national churches, each tempered in the crucibles of their cultural specificity, has become a crisis threatening to tear the Communion asunder. In light of the fractiousness of the recent Lambeth Conference explorations of formal unity with other Christian traditions, seems rank folly on the part of what amounts to a house divided unto itself. World Anglicanism is a fragile creature, a legacy of empire in a post-colonial era. Without central authority or uniform structures, at least we were once united by respect for the Archbishop of Canterbury, a shared history, and the Book of Common Prayer. There’s not much of that left beyond a memory that we once did share such things. We are each still formed by common experience, but as we continue to evolve in our diversity that memory will fade. Unless we can creatively recover our shared tradition, we are fated to have less and less in common with other Anglican national churches.

            In 1948 our bishops at Lambeth resolved that “the Book of Common Prayer has been, and is, so strong a bond of unity throughout the whole Anglican Communion that great care must be taken to ensure that revisions of the Book shall be in accordance with ... doctrine and accepted liturgical worship...”[4] That a mere fifty years later bishops should seek to suppress the system of scripture readings which lay at the heart of that same definitional corpus, for example, on which its magnificent collects depend, the very textual discourse underpinning our traditional experience of the Liturgical Year, is strange indeed.

            Today the spectrum of Anglican liturgical practice within most contemporary dioceses often far exceeds the traditional spectrum of low, broad and high church practise to encompass aspects of  “new age spirituality” as well as expressions of charismatic enthusiasm which at times seems to be barely Christianized shamanism. All this is tolerated, or even encouraged, by many liberal bishops who nonetheless try to insist that their entire diocese on any given Sunday or feast day is reading exactly the same passages of scripture, at least in theory, as the rest of Christendom. A number of problems here emerge. First among these is that the Revised Common Lectionary is only one of a proliferation of subtlety divergent versions in use among its English-speaking North American supporters. American Episcopalians and Canadian Roman Catholics each use different versions of the revised lectionary than that advocated for Canadian Anglicans. It also is simply erroneous to contend, as is often argued, even within the Anglican Church of Canada that there are only two alternative lectionaries, many parishes still use the lectionary found in the Book of Alternative Services. The same bishops who try to enforce lectional conformity on traditionalist parishes will often tolerate the abandonment of any ordered liturgical use of scripture in extreme evangelical parishes where the readings used in worship are entirely improvised at the discretion of their parish clergy with no, or little, regard for the passage of the liturgical year.

            There would be considerable beauty in an agreed cycle of readings from scripture that would be common to all, or even many, Christian communities. However it is hardly justifiable if it is achieved at the expense of greater fracturing within our own ecclesial family, or if it engenders the loss of authentic traditions of spiritual value. The aim of Ecumenism must never be a sort of global merger that would result in the ecclesiastical equivalent of a multi-national corporate monopoly. For decades, it could be argued for centuries,  Anglicans saw their primary ecumenical orientation to be the ancient Churches of the East. For Caroline or Non-Juror divines, as much as for Tractarians or members of the Fellowship of SS. Alban and Sergius, this yearning was the logical expression of their ecclesiological identity, their understanding of Church of England as autocephalous and orthodox. One of the grave dangers in any dialogue is that one’s apologetic discourse, and by extension one’s self image, tends to be defined in relation to one’s interlocutor. I often wonder to what extent the current aspirations for greater international authority within the Anglican Communion centred either on the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Primates is the result of the ARICA dialogue with the Roman church. Certainly a major shift in Anglican understanding of the magisterium of the Church can be discerned in contrasting the ARICA paper On Authority with Anglican-Orthodox Dialogue documents of several decades ago.[5] A strong ecumenical imperative for the continued use of the Book of Common Prayer lectionary is that in form and spirit it is imbued with the Patristic inheritance which we share with our Orthodox friends. This is surely at least as compelling a motivation for constancy as anything that might be achieved through conformity with the Lutheran or Roman Catholic communions recent adoption of some form lectio continuo in of Eucharistic worship.

            Despite the common origin of all Eucharistic liturgies in the Last Supper, to think that there ever was, or ever will be, universal norms of Christian worship this side of heaven is delusional. From earliest times autonomous liturgies arose reflecting diverse cultures which nonetheless embraced a common faith. Scripture is indeed a common inheritance of all Christians, but it is Creeds that bind us, and Christ’s body in which we are united, even when we are not in formal communion. There also seems to be a degree of intellectual dishonesty in posing, of all things, Christian Scripture as an ecumenical fulcrum. Nothing divides contemporary Christians more than our respective understandings of the Bible. Anyone doubting this need only attend to the respective proof-texting flung about in the debates of the immediate past decades. Indeed Christians have a long history of using scripture to justified arrogance, hated, self-indulgence,  even slavery and genocide. Scripture seems an over determined, inappropriate, and exceedingly misleading basis of unity.

            It is a certainty of our faith that someday there will be one common worship in which all Christians will share: the Marriage Feast of the Lamb. But this side of Heaven we must endure the Babel which is our human condition. Like those gathered in Jerusalem at the first Pentecost we each hear the same good news in a form appropriate to our distinctive cultures. All Christians can learn to rejoice in this diversity, as long as we are left to our own norms and devices, free from misplaced initiatives to impose conformity.

The Liturgical Function of Scripture

            Personally, I am less seduced by the chimerical ideal of a lectionary common to all believers than I would be by one which subsumes Anglican tradition and carries it forward into the next millennium. There are unquestionably problems with the Book of Common Prayer lectionary, to give one example, the repetition of Sunday lections at ordinary weekday eucharists. It is not difficult to enumerate its faults or even to propose remedies, but that does not necessarily imply that we can abandon it. This contradiction runs against the grain of the prevailing notion that if something is broken or flawed it should be discarded and replaced, and I am sure that will be an especially difficult idea for the proponents of the so-called RCL to understand, but it is of crucial significance.

            With the Revised Common Lectionary we are asked to accept a common use of Scripture as a palliative for the abandonment of common prayer. For over a hundred and fifty years Anglo-Catholics have compromised in the interest of church unity by using what we have always considered a flawed book. Just as much of the Church has abandoned the principal of common prayer through its adoption of a plethora of  “Alternative Services,” we would certainly be justified in demanding alternative services that express our convictions. For example we could publish a more “catholic” version of the familiar BCP Eucharistic liturgy which would preserve the glories of its Cranmerian language, integrate aspects of the original 1549 book as well as the important contributions of later Laudian or even non-juror models, adding a more explicit epiklesis, prayers for the dead, invocation of the saints, restoration of the Gloria to its ancient position, and so forth. How delightful it would be to stop flipping about in the Prayer Book and assorted photocopied sheets which we use during our worship. How grand and calming it would be to hold a properly bound comprehensive Anglo-Catholic Prayer Book along the lines of the old English Missal. But however pleasing and justified such a publication would be, it would be a betrayal of the commitment of generations of Anglo-Catholics to the ideal of church unity which use of the Book of Common Prayer represents.

            It is interesting to reflect on the actual historical experience with regard to the Prayer Book of Canada’s oldest Anglo Catholic congregation, the Parish of Saint John the Evangelist in Montreal. From its inception in 1861 the Parish used the 1662 Book of Common Prayer after the normal manner among advanced ritualist parishes associated with the Anglo-Catholic revival. When the first Canadian Prayer Book was introduced in 1918, its revision was found to be unacceptable and it was never used at Saint John’s. Instead, in 1930 an Anglo-Catholic compendium, St. Hugh’s Prayer Book, was introduced by Father Davison, the third rector, and five hundred copies were placed in the seats of the Church. St. John’s were not however parti pris exceptionalists: the Parish Centennial history documents an enthusiastic reaction to the second Canadian revision of the Prayer Book of 1962:

St. John’s , both clergy and people, has been happy to find in the 1962 Book almost all of its Eucharistic practices, so that the profound Catholic nature of this most important service is now felt and understood in the Anglican Church of Canada at large, and many of the principles St. John’s has stood for have now official recognition.

            I have no doubt that many classical Anglican congregations would once again welcome developments which did not compromise their mission and identity with the same enthusiasm. Needless to say our reaction to the “revisions” of The Book of Alternative Services has been more guarded. While the liturgy at Saint John’s and similar parishes is in no sense fossilised, it is a tradition which remains vital and capable of continuing evolution, but such growth can only proceed according to the laws of its own nature. Certainly the liturgy at Saint John’s has continued to evolve over the years. To be honest one cannot but wonder what their blessed Founder might think of a regular Sunday Solemn High Mass. It would certainly seem un-recognizable in relation to what Father Wood was able to do in his own era, especially in the early decades. But I am certain he would be proud of their fidelity to the spirit of what he began. The last words he wrote, appearing at the end of a letter to Father French, was the phrase Ad finem fidelis, (Faithful to the end). Any proposed modification liturgical life must be assessed not in relation to external pressures, but dispassionately in terms of the trust for which we have inherited responsibility. If we are unwilling as individuals to build upon that tradition, there are any number of other places for us to go and worship. Anglo-Catholics are not simply consumers of a splendid aesthetic performance, which we are entitled to adapt to our whims; involvement should imply a covenanted responsibility to sustain and bear witness to its identity and tradition. Ultimately we are being asked to assess whether the Revised Common Lectionary is consistent with this traditional identity of which we are at present the unworthy stewards. To do this responsibly we must consider questions of liturgical ethos beyond considerations of the norms of appropriate corporate use of Scripture in worship.

            The familiar and beloved liturgy of our Anglican tradition arose from the greater understanding of liturgical history made possible by the Humanist scholarship of the Renaissance. Like its twentieth century counterpart, this liturgical renewal sought to bring the best creativity and scholarship of its own time into the worship of the Church. The success and durability of the Anglican response to this challenge, out of all of the largely abandoned and forgotten contemporaneous Reformation liturgical models, was its cautious emendation of its Gallican and Saurum roots and the degree of its consistency with the whole worshipping tradition of the Western Church.

            Classical Anglo-catholic parish communities, such Saint John’s in Montreal, have absorbed many new or revived practices promoted by the Liturgical Movement throughout the past century. Among these are the offertory procession, first introduced at Saint John’s in 1949, and the Easter Vigil, introduced in 1960. Other usages associated with this Movement , such as versus populum celebration, were tried and subsequently abandoned as incompatible or inconsistent with the inherited and much loved ethos. The extension of the kiss of peace from the sacred ministers to the congregation in the nave, after a period of trial was deemed redundant and distracting, especially in a community which has never been shy about expressing fellowship by other means. So what is this ethos against which innovations welcomed by others are tried and rejected?

            Central to the liturgical practice of a community such as Saint John’s is a commitment to using the very best we can in our worship. We have inherited a magnificent heritage building and outstanding liturgical objects offered by generations of parishioners. This remains a living tradition evident in the care with which liturgical legacy is conserved and enriched. Anglo-Catholic worship has long been enhanced by the use of the glorious musical repertoire of the Western Church. Gregorian chant and Palestrina masses were sung at Saint John’s more than a century ago, decades before the present popularity of  Early Music. This commitment to excellence informs all aspects of our worship. It is entirely consistent that The Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible, universally considered among the most glorious texts in our language, have always been, and are likely to remain the verbal expression of devotion. Whatever their flaws, as translation or as expressions of the theology of a particular era, they nonetheless remains the most excellent vehicle of worship ever articulated by English-speaking people.

            One of the central goals of the Liturgical Movement as it has evolved since the 1960’s has been a shift of theological emphasis in the celebration of the Eucharist. The long prevailing tendency of the western Catholic tradition which placed great emphasis on the liturgical continuation of Christ’s sacrificial act, and the responsibility of all beings to acknowledge and worship their maker, has given way to greater emphasis of Christ’s people gathering in celebration and communion. These new tendencies are not necessarily antithetical to tradition, but in their application and development they have tended towards extremes. For example, most of the recommendations of The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council, which sensibly sought to balance the contributions of both perspectives, were quickly superseded by a headlong rush towards a communitarianism which represents an effective abandonment of Western liturgical tradition. This is not the place to discuss the merits of either position at length, suffice it to say that Anglo-catholics, motivated by a deep love and broad understanding of the historic arts of worship have always been receptive to those aspects of Liturgical Renewal which build upon rather than abandon inherited tradition.

            The Revised Common Lectionary has its origins in post-Vatican II era initiatives to redefine the Roman Rite Liturgy. It is one of a family of lectionaries which derive from the Ordo Lectionum Missae adopted by the Roman Catholic Church in 1969. These systems of scriptural readings are an expression of a tendency whose motivation and intent is a shift away from the focus of liturgy as an act of divine worship towards a primary emphasis on the experience of the participant. This system suggests that we read Scripture during the liturgy primarily for our edification, in contrast to the idea that scripture is read in the context of our worship as theophany, part of sacramental revelation. Crudely put, we must decide if we want to go to Sunday School or God’s Holy Temple .

            Lectionary revision has been a concern of Anglicans for at least the past century. As early as 1912, Father Percy Deermer reflected that “in 1871, the Lectionary was revised, and a great opportunity was missed, so that a new revision of the lectionary is to-day by far the most urgent liturgical need of our Church.”[6] However, what such a creative Anglo-Catholic liturgist as Father Deermer might have had in mind was more likely a restoration of the ancient lectionary more than its replacement. It is not difficult to imagine an ideal revised lectionary that would appeal to Anglo-Catholic liturgical traditionalists. It would be based on a careful study of the classical pre-Reformation lectionaries of both the Eastern and Western liturgical traditions. The Book of Common Prayer to a great extent preserves the traditional structure of readings for the major feasts in conformance with classical usage. The changes effected by revisers over the years, for example the shortening of readings by the editors of the Canadian Prayer Book of 1962, and their editing out of what might be termed “uncomfortable words,” could be stripped away. Certainly Old Testament readings, especially those selected in light of patristic homiletic precedent, and unabashedly typological, contribute enormously to the depth and beauty of our worship. Cranmer’s magnificent collects, themselves translations and amplifications of those collects long used by the English Church, would be retained, except in the most exceptional circumstances where they simply cannot be harmonised with solid earlier precedent. When unavoidable, for example for newer feasts or restored Holy Week services, appropriate collects based like Cranmer’s on ancient sources, embodying solid theology, and written in careful and dignified traditional prose could be composed. At the points where Cranmer and his sources go astray, for example in skewing traditionally associated epistles and gospels, a sensitive restoration could be effected without sacrificing what is the distinctive and valuable contribution of the Anglican tradition in the autonomous development of its Prayer Books. As R.S.P. Moulsdale once pointed out, The Book of Common Prayer has earned its right to survive even by the rigourous homogenising standards of the Counter-Reformation:

... one rule laid down at the Tridentine reformation of the Missal was that a new missal should not be made, but that the existing one should be restored “according to the customs of the holy Fathers.” One important exception was made. Any rite could be kept that could show a prescription of two hundred years. [7]

Our liturgy is more than twice that age, yet its “antiquity” is not a sufficient criterion for it’s embalming. Tradition is not archaeology; it is rather those aspects of historic experience which remain alive and vital through time.[8] The sixteenth and seventeenth century divines did not think that they were carving our liturgy in stone. They knew that “it is built up out of the devotion of every age.”[9] In the Prologue of 1540 Bible Cranmer makes allowance for those who mistrust what has not been customary, likening them to early man preferring the accustomed diet of “mast and acorns” to the “bread made of good corn” when tillage began to be used.[10] As liturgical traditionalists we should never resist change absolutely; but it is our responsibility to accept it cautiously. Cranky obstinacy has nothing more to recommend itself than does rampant faddism. We are not concerned with whether or not something “speaks to our time.” We listen for voices speaking across time. We must seek to discern authenticity, as well as efficacy, and proceed with utter certainty that any liturgical innovation is of consistent or greater worth than whatever it might displace.

            The Revised Common Lectionary poses several problems for Anglo-Catholic liturgical traditionalists. The idea that worship should encompass a sort of Bible study seminar where the class has to work their way through the whole book even if it has to sit there for three whole years, represents a serious departure from the traditional conception of the function of scripture in a Eucharistic context. It is essentially an imposition of the monastic tradition of continuous sequential scripture reading during the offices, itself appropriated from the synagogue service, onto a very different liturgical form. There is also a curious assumption implicit in this which seems to preclude both private Bible study and other non-Eucharistic corporate prayer. The primary traditional function of scripture readings at the Eucharist is to situate each celebration within the context of the liturgical year and the history of salvation.

            Those living within religious communities are able to devote a significant portion of each day to worship and contemplation, and it is entirely reasonable that they can make their way through the whole Bible over and over again in a corporate manner. Today, private reading of the Bible or organised group study seems far more suited to the lives of lay people who are less likely to participate in daily corporate worship. Most of us cannot say Mass at home but we certainly can, and many of us do, say traditional Anglican offices of Morning and Evening Prayer with its appropriate provisions for an annual reading of Scripture in lectio continua. Cranmer and his generation of Reformers thought that that the Breviary and its Lectionary could be laicised. We live in a different world than George Herbert and his ploughman and worship has undergone several significant shifts in the past four centuries, many of them distinct improvements. Even at Little Gidding, which is considered one of the most glorious expressions of Anglican spiritual tradition, the Ferrar household received the Eucharist no more than once a month. One of the most significant developments in Anglican experience in this past century has been a renewed emphasis on weekly communion, and indeed of daily access to communion for those so inclined. There are still many that cannot or do not assist even at weekly Eucharists. However we might feel about this, it is a reality of contemporary experience. To structure the use of scripture in corporate worship on the basis of the behaviour of a minority of worshipers, however faithful, seems utterly irresponsible. Of what possible purpose is a triennial reading through of the Book of Kings in its entirety to someone who only attends church on major festivals or when occasionally moved by the Spirit?

            Biblical readings do not need to be sequentially standardised and simultaneously broadcast like sports events or episodes of soap operas. It is not as if what happens to Moses and the Israelites would remain otherwise a mystery to the traveller who happened to attend a Lutheran church in Helsinki one week and assist at a Roman Catholic mass in Lima the next, assuming they were both using the same Rived Common Lectionary to begin with. The quantity of scripture to which we are exposed is utterly irrelevant. God speaks in any passage we hear if we listen. The familiarity of specific passages is hardly a problem. The words of institution in the Eucharist, forms of prayer such as the Angelus or bowing to the east and repeating the doxology, or even specific familiar readings of scripture such as the Magnificat or the Comfortable Words, far from becoming tedious are all occasions of limitless potential spiritual nourishment, specifically because of their familiarity.

            The Revised Common Lectionary seems like some vast and complex machine in which wheels and gears and cogs of varying sizes come into seemingly random conjunctures for no more specific purpose that to justify the existence of the machine itself. The most compelling reason to retain the old Book of Common Prayer lectionary is that it is not just any series of readings from Scripture. Many of the juxtapositions of texts for specific feasts date back to the first Christian millennium. They were linked to each other by some of the wisest and holiest minds with which our faith has ever been blessed. The typologies and exegesis, which they embody, are the basis of the enormous homiletic literature that remains one of the great theological treasures of the Church. For example the Epistle and Gospel lections of the First Sunday of Lent in the Book of Common Prayer date from at least the fifth century when Pope Leo I mentioned that they were already the “customary” readings of long standing. These pericopes (specific associated Scriptural readings) have been written about by the early fathers, the scholastic doctors, by both the Anglican divines and their continental Catholic peers and by the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Either or both the readings in the lectionaries found in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the Canadian Prayer Book of 1962 are the same as those of the ancient Roman Rite on twenty-seven Sundays and major feasts of the liturgical year, many of the others are of Sarum or other ancient western precedent. The interwoven themes of this tradition of scriptural juxtaposition are reflected in both the hymns we sing and the glorious anthems and motets which we treasure. They can be traced in sacred art, for example in iconography of Romanesque and Gothic architectural sculpture. (Such related images are recognized by art historians with the specific term couplings.) The intimate familiarity with these traditional pericopes which comes from their daily use, is a vital portal of entry to our religious heritage.

            The Oxford fathers profoundly understood and treasured this inheritance. John Keeble gave expression to them in one of the most popular books of his time The Christian Year.  In Tract for the Times LXXXIX  he wrote:

Surely, reason and piety teach us, that God’s providence prepared language in general, and especially the languages of Holy Scripture, and human styles of its several writers, as fit media through which His supernatural glories and dealings might be discerned: and if they be so formed as necessary to give us notions of a certain correspondence between the super-natural and the visible, we can hardly help concluding that such notions were intended to be formed by us....  We know... that the ideas having been once associated with each other, by God’s own Word. Reverential minds shall never thereafter be able to part with that association....  [T]his presumption will evidently be strengthened, as the instances which Holy Scripture furnishes multiply, and as we find, on more and more acquaintance with it, that its typical allusions are more and more developed, and come out on its surface, as stars meet the eye more abundantly, when we continue gazing for any time on what seemed at first merely a space of open sky.

            The Roman Catholic hierarchy has come to accept that pre-Tridentine Rite parishes fulfil a demonstrable pastoral need. The Orthodox Church in America allows its parishes considerable diversity not just in terms linguistic diversity but even in terms of calendars. It is hardly unreasonable that Anglican authorities should show greater tolerance to traditionalist parishes that wish to carry these ancient clusters of readings forward into the new millennium. It is quite understandable that other Christians have other priorities, including ecumenical considerations, but our communities should be allowed to preserve this aspect of our heritage as an expression of our own spiritual needs and as a resource for others that might profit its observation from time to time. In a culture changing as rapidly as our own the church needs a keel as well as a rudder. Instead of trying to thwart us, we should receive assistance and encouragement to develop as a diocesan and international centre of spiritual heritage, offering publications, audio-visual materials, classes, workshops, and other programmes based on the glorious inheritance of our liturgy, and the wisdom it embodies.

            The proponents of the Revised Lectionary and the New Liturgy also have recourse to the justification of tradition. Like contentions that the new alternative liturgies are modelled on the surviving fragments of what is known of paleo-Christian worship, lectio continua is proposed as a return to authentic early Christian practice. What is overlooked in this argument is that like much that was jettisoned as the Church matured, there were very good and practical reasons why it was abandoned. The codex, comprising bound signatures of folded pages, the familiar form of the book still in common use, was a radical innovation during the early Christian era. Described by Martial as “a book with many folded skins” it was not widely adopted until the fourth century when it replaced the more cumbersome scroll. When Christ was handed the Scroll of the Prophet Isaiah in the Synagogue at Nazara he did not select what would have been an appropriate passage, he read the lection of the day to which the scroll was unrolled. He had little choice: one recent scholar has calculated that it would have taken more than fifteen minutes to scroll forward from beginning to Genesis to the passage of which he read.[11] For the early Christians the only alternative to lectio continua would have been to prepare special scrolls with chosen pericopes in appropriate order. Although there is evidence that this had already begun, the use of clustered typological readings was largely a response to the new freedom permitted by the introduction of codices. Indeed the glorious legacy of patristic homiletics is arguably the result of this simple development. The re-adoption of sequential Scriptural reading in the spirit of reviving early Christian practice is equivalent to replacing electrical lighting in our churches with oil lamps or feeding ourselves to lions!

Renewal vs. Restoration

            Tradition is a winnowing of history. Like running water it erodes the folly and excesses of any given generation. In our worship we inherit the late Tudor era’s recasting of the medieval missal in light of humanist scholarship. In the Stuart era Bible we hear our language in its most magnificent form. The Victorians, both Evangelicals and Tractarians, have bequeathed us a wealth of beloved hymns. It remains to be seen what might be of lasting significance among the liturgical innovations of recent decades. Let there be no confusion on this score: the style of worship advocated by the “new” liturgists of forty years ago is no less a historical expression of subjective taste than any other generation’s contribution in the development of Christian worship. It is not inherently better, or purer, or sounder, or even more scriptural than any other approach, and to think so is preposterous presumption.  It is however a revision on such magnitude, perhaps even hubris, as to be without precedent.

            Oscar Wilde once observed that it is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned. As post-modern intellectuals increasingly abandon the hubristic certainties of the modernist monolith it is amusing to hear Pope Pius X articulating the same critique of Modernism which ones hears from the so-called Generation X.

It is pride which fills the Modernists with that self-assurance by which they consider themselves and pose as the rule for all. It is pride which puffs them up with that vainglory which allows them to regard themselves as the sole possessors of knowledge, and makes them say, elated and inflated with presumption, We are not as the rest of men, and which, lest they should seem as other men, leads them to embrace and devise novelties even of the most absurd kind....[12]

It is perhaps ironic that Dom Gregory Dix has become for some Anglican traditionalists a figure of contempt, blamed for the excesses of recent liturgical revision. In fact it is rather doubtful that he would have been supportive of much of what has been inspired by his writings, and are in fact often generous distortions of his work.

From the beginning of the sixteenth century, broadly speaking the sanction of liturgy was not ‘law’ but ‘custom’. In its nature the authority of custom is a self-enforcing thing. If a large number of people cease to observe a custom then it just ‘dies out’.... Its authority while it lives is a voluntarily accepted and natural thing, not a compulsive and artificial one.... The depth and breadth and allusiveness of the classical rites comes just from this, that their real author is always the worshipping Church, not any individual however holy and gifted, any committee however representative, or any legislator however wise... The good liturgies are not written: they grew.... All liturgies are the continuous product of the organic life, not only of individual Churches, but also in some sense of the whole Church. The liturgy is too great a thing to be controlled by individual men.[13]

            Too often “liturgical renewal” has produced a style of worship which resembles a TV game show conducted in a funeral home. Far from the simple grandeur its modernist progenitors envisioned (today rarely encountered outside of monastic contexts), it frequently combines the alienated vulgarity of mass culture with precisely the churchiosity it set out to replace. The result is often little more than a noisy excursus in bathotic sentimentality with all the spiritual sustenance of a Hallmark greeting card, the social awareness of a CNN broadcast, and the tranquillity of an aerobics class. It is increasingly argued that far from making the Church more inviting, the vapidity of such activity drives or keeps people away. A generation ago numerous Roman Catholics were drawn to traditional Anglican worship as refugees from the Roman Catholic liturgical “renewal.” Today, sadly,  that migration is reversed as scores of young Anglicans embrace conservative Roman Catholicism. What conceivable right does one part of one generation have to impose its taste on others, including both older and younger generations, which do not share their taste? It is arguable that the most arrogant and intolerant of contemporary Anglicanism are the liberals of a generation which feels that they are losing the power and influence they once enjoyed. And yet the growth of evangelical fundamentalism is surely nothing other than a reaction to their apostasy. Yet unlike those who would change us, we have no desire to force our taste on others. We simply want our old wine left in its old wineskin.

            Perhaps the Church is beginning to approach these matters with greater wisdom. It is significant to note that Bishop Paul Marshall of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, indicated his intention to ask the General Convention of the American Episcopal Church to make those who favour the continued use of its 1928 Book of Common Prayer more welcome. He proposed that the American Church “add to our long list of corporate apologies one to those who have been alienated or whose faith has been injured by any insensitivity in imposing the [revised American] prayer book of 1979.... I think I know something about liturgical history, and thus feel comfortable observing that in the American church, no prayer book was ever imposed as harshly as the 1979 book was imposed in some places. The result has been the loss of some Episcopalians and the wounding of a substantial number of others.”[14]

            In this country there are only a handful of Anglo-Catholic parishes that aspire to preserve a distinctly Anglican liturgical tradition. We cannot afford to be passive. Others have embraced the spirit of post-Vatican II liturgical renewal, and in doing so have effected a significant convergence within the Anglican church. This is not in itself a bad thing, if it allows them to exert a Catholic presence in the larger church. However, if it is not what we want to do, then we must seek out potential allies and propose collective alternatives. If we are to change, let it be in a thoughtful manner consistent with our specific witness. How would we survive, and what justification could there possibly be for us to become a liturgical clone of neighbouring congregations when instead of continuing to be a unique points of access to the rich heritage of our church. Far from dwindling away, we can expand our contribution to the whole Church and larger community through study, education, publications, and especially through our prayer and worship. By no means should we overextend ourselves, but if we will survive and grow, we must resist a natural tendency to introversion. We have leadership responsibilities within the larger church, and must build alliances both here and abroad. Instead of passively acquiescing to a lectionary, or a prayer book, or a hymnal which defies our identity, let us use these struggles to clarify who we are and what we are meant to be. The utterly remarkable history of our growth and survival in far more difficult times demonstrates that our communities have the creativity, patience and wisdom to meet present challenges. Despite the persistent caricature of Anglo-catholic traditionalists as misguided assemblages of aesthetes devoted to liturgical obscurantism, anyone who takes the time to know us quickly realizes that our worship sustains remarkable communities of committed Christians who bring the witness of their faith to their respective lives and work. Standing by our tradition allow us to fulfil and extend our particular witness as a unique and important voice in the community of the Church.

Bruce Russell