What is the Book of Common Prayer?

- The Rev. Jeffery Lee

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The Book of Common Prayer is not really a book. It is a family of books descending from the first English Prayer Book of 1549.  In that first Prayer Book, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer simplified the complex liturgical patterns of the medieval church, translated ancient prayer texts into English, and composed new material incorporating theological currents of the Reformation. That first book established a pattern for subsequent revisions of the Prayer Book in the Church of England and for the Prayer Books which necessarily would be developed over time for churches of the Anglican Communion in other countries.

During the last century in particular, liturgical scholarship has led to the recovery of fundamental insights about the nature of worship from the earliest days of the church.  Those combined with changes in the world impacting the church’s mission, have resulted in substantial alterations to many aspects of Cranmer’s original Prayer Book pattern.  Today The Book of Common Prayer exists in many different languages and cultural idioms.

In the United States there have been five versions of the Prayer Book.  The current Book of Common Prayer 1979 is expanding to include authorized supplemental materials which are increasingly available in electronic format.  The Prayer Book tradition is alive and well.  It is growing into an increasingly diverse communion of worshiping communities with a common ancestry.  The family resemblance is undeniable.