Missioner Fall 2019

THE BOOK OF
common
PRAYER
HISTORY, DOCTRINE,
REVISION, MATERIAL HISTORY
THE REV. MATTHEW S.C. OLVER, PhD
Asst. Professor of Liturgics & Pastoral Theology
HISTORY
The Christians that emerged out of the sixteenth century
gathered around various foci. For Lutherans it was
Martin Luther and his writings; for others in Europe, it
was the emphasis on the action of reformation (such as
the Dutch Reformed Church). But those in the Church of
England, the reform meant that it identified itself by its
physical location... which turns out to be quite a catholic
impulse.
Just as close to this tradition’s heart was a book. We
often forget how much of this is due to a few strange
accidents of history. The movable-type printing press
was only 100 years old, for one, when the first Book
of Common Prayer was published in 1549, so the
possibility of books such as this was still relatively
new. Second, Henry’s decision to break from Rome to
secure his divorce occurred at a time when a whole
constellation of impulses for reform, both inside and
outside England, had begun to gather force. And the
separation made possible a great deal more reform than
Henry himself had desired.
What is maybe most shocking to us is that the
possibility of liturgical uniformity in any meaningful
sense – of “common prayer” through a common text
– really only became possible in the sixteenth century.
It was uniquely possible in England because it was an
island (and a relatively small one, at that) where the
Crown had a firm political grip. And where it did not, it
brought in mercenaries from Europe to help impose the
new Prayer Book wherever it met resistance.
Maybe just as surprising is that liturgical uniformity
came much more quickly in England than in Catholic
Europe. The Council of Trent, called as a response to
the sixteenth-century reformations, directed that a new
missal for the Mass be promulgated, precisely for the
same reason the prayer book was produced: uniformity
in the wake of much liturgical diversity. But the English
king was better able to implement his goal than the
Pope: it took nearly 150 years for the new Roman
Missal to become normative. In contrast, after the
upheavals of 1549-59, the BCP was basically normative
everywhere in England until the execution of Charles
I in 1649, and then returns in 1660. This couldn’t have
occurred prior to the sixteenth century.
DOCTRINE
We sometimes talk as if Anglicans have a purchase on
the adage, lex orandi, lex credendi (even though is not
exactly what Proper of Aquitaine said!), but we must
remember that no other Christian tradition that had a
written liturgy thinks that the doctrine expressed in its
liturgy is something they can toss out. Nonetheless,
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THE MISSIONER