This is a book about the theological content of two types of prayer book now in use in the Anglican Communion of Churches.  I shall only refer to examples of the two types in North America, but much of what I have to say applies to Great Britain and other places where Anglicans are to be found.  To introduce the theme and convey the essence of what I have to say, I shall tell a story about two types of ships.

In 1549 a fine ship was launched in England.  Its design was a modification of a well-tested and tried earlier model.  Its structure and fittings were made of the finest materials by the best craftsmen.  Named the ship of Common Prayer, it took people on voyages through the oceans of life from Egypt to Canaan, from darkness to light, and from hell to heaven.  From time to time this good ship put into harbor for refitting and modifications.  So good was its design that similar ships were made and launched in other countries so that they too could take people on voyages through the oceans of history to the promised land.  At the end of the twentieth century this small fleet of ships is still sailing and achieving what originally they were built to be and do.  They still cross the seas with grace and in safety and enter dry dock for minor refitting.

Recently, competitors to these reliable and excellent ships have been built and launched into the oceans of life.  The new ships are not constructed to

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last long, for their owners intend to replace them by even more modern ones within a decade or two.  So they are named BAS or ASB (Book of Alternative Services or Alternative Service Book) and they are made not of the finest, but of serviceable yet second-best materials.  Further, unlike the older ships which have only one major deck with glorious staterooms, the new ones have six or more decks with similar but not identical state-rooms in order to give the passengers the widest possible choice of the form of travel from darkness to light.  For a variety of reasons but chiefly because of the input of clergy, the new ships are attracting the greatest number of passengers. However, for the higher fare the older ships offer the best food, the best staterooms and the safest way to the promised land.  So, as they say, you get what you pay for.  On the older ship there is the experience of the centuries, the finest setting and the best food and comforts, while on the newer ship there is fast food, minimal comfort, and the hope that the ocean will be crossed safely.

So there is competition on the high seas of life between the two types of ship.

Such is my story.  I hope it helps to establish what I am writing about and what the issue is between the two types of prayer book.  I sometimes explain to Christian friends, who do not use prayer books or set forms of worship, that Anglican (Episcopal) Christians are participating in the culture wars of our time through the realm of liturgy.  They usually reply by asking not only why liturgy (a set form of worship) is necessary but also why liturgy should be caught up in the culture wars.  And some add, "By the way, what are the culture wars?"  So let us start right there.

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The culture wars about which much has been written recently have been well defined in First Things of March 1992 as follows:

We are two nations: one concentrated on rights and laws, the other on rights and wrongs; one radically individualistic and dedicated to the actualized self the other communal and invoking the common good; one viewing law as the instrument of the will to power and license, the other affirming an objective moral order reflected in a Constitution to which we are obliged, one given to private satisfaction, the other to familial responsibility, one typically secular, the other typically religious; one elitist, the other populist.

Of course at the center of the culture wars of the 1990s is the question of abortion, which creates debate and fury over the nature of human life, individually, in society and before God.  And it is a fierce debate in which there appears to be no middle ground.  So the culture wars are not merely a religious versus a secular mindset but sometimes are an orthodox religious versus a secularist religious mindset – as we shall see below.

In the churches the culture wars are certainly felt in terms of the new morality seeking to eclipse the old morality (e.g., in sexual relations) and new doctrines and values seeking to replace or minimize the old ones.  In churches which use liturgy (e.g., Anglican, Lutheran and Roman Catholic) culture wars also are expressed in the different types of services.  New forms of worship, written in popular language and embodying aspects both of the spirit of the age and modern world-views, attempt to oust the old forms which contain excellence in language

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and orthodoxy in doctrine.  It is, I believe, to oversimplify and to misread the situation to say that this "war" is simply a difference in language (e.g., the better or best against the inferior or banal); or only a generation problem in terms of what the old and young each prefer; or merely a matter of saying "you" and "your" instead of "thou" and "thine."  It is in essence both conflict and division on various fronts between two presentations or versions of the Christian Faith, which though they may look alike on first appearance, are in fact very different on careful, close inspection.  These two versions have been variously named – traditionalist and modernist, orthodox and liberal, classic and revisionist – but it is difficult to find one adequate way of expressing the divide.  This is because at one level it is a split between two forms of the same thing (over doctrine, ethics, and liturgy within one body) and at another is participation in larger cultural movements in America.

In the Anglican Church of Canada the difference or division is expressed through the clash of the classic BCP (last edition, 1962) and the 1985 BAS, while in the Episcopal Church of the USA it proceeds apace through the clash between the classic BCP (last edition, 1928) and the new and mis-named 1979 BCP.  I may add that there is a subdivision of this culture war within each of the new books; here it is between the "traditional" form of service (which each book preserves in modified form) and the modern ones (which far outnumber the traditional ones).  People who are unable or forbidden to use the older book cling to the "traditional" rite in the new book.  Of course, not everyone who belongs to an Episcopal parish or attends an Anglican service of worship is aware of this culture war, but it is safe to say that all committed Anglicans are cognizant of it from

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time to time, even if they do not call it "culture war" and want to pretend that it does not exist.

Some may claim that in parishes where the new book has been in use for a decade or more, where people have got used to it and where the young generation have known nothing but this Book, the divisions over liturgy are over.  A moment’s thought will reveal that this is not so; inclusive language liturgies are knocking at the door wanting to enter; and, at the deeper level of participation in the culture wars of our time, the questions of abortion and types of acceptable sexuality are not far from any congregation – and they are divisive; further, with these questions come others, such as, "What is the right way to address God?" and, "What is the relation of Christianity to other religions?" and, "Is Jesus really the only Way, Truth, and Life?"  The fact that these questions are asked in regular denominational publications shows that it is impossible to escape the culture wars of our time.

Within the churches I believe that much of what constitutes the liturgical, doctrinal, and ethical divisions has a further dimension to it.  I mean that it is not only a battle between two forms of religious teaching, aesthetics, order, and discipline; it is also in some cases (I do not want to say all cases) a battle between the kingdom of heaven with God’s righteousness and "the world, the flesh and the devil" in unrighteousness.  Further, I would argue (and shall in this book) that certain aspects of modern liturgy as expressed in the new books are neither genuinely Christian nor spiritually neutral but are positively contrary to the kingdom of God.  For example, some forms of inclusive language belong to this category.

It is in this deeper dimension of the culture wars that we can appreciate what the apostle Paul was

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telling the church in Ephesus of the spiritual and moral wars in the universe: "We are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (6:12).  Since the war is with Satan and his hosts, we are to put on the whole armor of God, especially the "shield of faith" (6:13ff.).

"If prayer books become involved in culture wars, why bother with them?" ask my friends.  Why not be like thousands of congregations and have a simple service of hymns, prayers, and readings from the Bible with a good, solid sermon?  One major criticism often levelled against written forms of worship, which are followed to the letter, is that they "quench the Holy Spirit" (1 Thess. 5:19, "Do not quench the Spirit").  Paul urged the Christians not to restrain the flow and work of the Holy Spirit in their lives and in the mission of God in which they were involved.

It has often been argued (e.g., with great power by the English Puritans of the seventeenth century) that both using set forms of words and just reciting or reading Scripture without comment or sermon is not being truly open to the Holy Spirit in the present.  Such repetition can become mere slavish activity in which the heart is not engaged and in which the mind is not involved.  Further, even if there is full engagement with the liturgical text and it is truly spoken as prayer, what if the words are unsound?  In all these cases there is a quenching, restraining, and resisting of the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father in Christ’s name to help the people of the household of faith pray to their heavenly Father.

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I would maintain that a written liturgy has been, and can still be, a means used by the Holy Spirit to engage God’s covenant people in genuine spiritual and moral encounter with Him through prayer, if certain conditions are fulfilled.  First of all, its content must be faithful to the dynamic truth of Holy Scripture, and secondly, that its biblically-based content must be truly believed in "spirit and in truth."  Thus for the true glory of God in worship it is better to have no liturgy at all than to have a poor or bad one; further, even a good liturgy is of no spiritual value for a participant unless its content and flow drop from the mind (being renewed) into the heart (being purified) and through the will (being rectified) into practical expression.  In other words the liturgy is addressed to, and is to be received by, the whole person so that he may be encountered by the Lord his God in the dynamic of worship.

The great value of a sound liturgy is that the faithful can begin to memorize it so that they can not only fully participate in liturgical worship but also pray the liturgy at other times, for it is written in their hearts.  Most of us are incapable of composing prayers which are worthy of being memorized to be prayed often throughout our lives.  How moving it is to be present with a sick or dying person who is able from memory to pray with sincerity such moving Anglican prayers as the General Confession or the General Thanksgiving or one of the shorter collects of the Church Year!

Therefore I agree with Roger Beckwith who, writing of the Church of England and of the Anglican Way, said:

It does not despise freer forms, whether of the traditional Nonconformist or the recent charismatic

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kind, but it considers that informal prayer-meetings are a more appropriate setting for them.  It denies the charge sometimes levelled against liturgical prayer that it is unspiritual; rather, it considers that where liturgical prayer is deliberately biblical, well tested by time and used in a spirit of devotion, it is spiritual and edifying to the highest degree.  It is also particularly suited to permanent and universal themes, whereas free prayer is more suited to occasional and individual ones. Being of set form, liturgy can unite worshippers across time and space.  (The Church of England: What It is and What It stands for, Oxford, 1992.)

Over the centuries since the beginning of the Common Prayer Tradition with the first BCP (1549) composed primarily by Archbishop Cranmer, a consistent and common argument has been made by Anglicans concerning the Books of the Common Prayer Tradition.  This is that there is an excellency to the Liturgy, for not only does it not quench the Holy Spirit, but it is also rooted and grounded in the ethos and truths of Holy Scripture.  So where there is a genuine desire to know God and to worship, serve and love Him, the various services become means of grace used by the Spirit Himself.  In fact the content is so attuned to the content of Scripture that all who view Scripture as God’s Word written, and are willing to use one or another of the services regularly, find that it/they are truly ways into the personal knowing of God, the Father, through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit.  By the written forms of divine service biblical trinitarian theism, the Christian Faith, becomes a living religion.

To make this claim is not of course to say that the Common Prayer Tradition is perfect.  To claim that it is excellent is not to insist that it is perfect in every respect.  Each of us who have lovingly used it

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can think of improvements that could be made here and there, additions that would enhance the overall impact and usefulness of it, and perhaps corrections in the light of the teaching of the three ecumenical councils (Constantinople II [553] & III [680] and Nicea II [787]) which followed that of Chalcedon (451).  The BCP was initially composed in the sixteenth century when there was great intensity of thought, feeling and action concerning the living God and His salvation together with the right way to worship and serve Him through the Lord Jesus Christ.  Further, it arose when the English language was at a high point in its development and when those who composed the liturgy brought to English the knowledge and experience of using classical languages.  Thus it is written in memorable English and is pervaded by genuine Christian insight and doctrine.  Having been tried and tested in the billows of life over the centuries and having been adjusted here and there (through periods in dry dock), it has become a part of the gifts of God to His people; and it is too wonderful a gift to lose or allow to be unused.

This is essentially what the Bishops of the Anglican Communion said in their Encyclical Letter after the Lambeth Conference of 1948.  They wrote:

It is our duty to make the life and witness of our own Communion strong and effective for its own work.  To that end we are bound to preserve our unity in the tradition which we have received.  Owing to the number and variety of the national Churches, provinces and missionary dioceses within our fellowship, and the great distances which separate them from one another, problems arise which call for the application of a wise and sympathetic strategy.  Our organized life will rightly be influenced by local color and national culture, and will, in consequence, develop varied characteristics.  But within this

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diversity it is essential to maintain a unity of faith and order as will preserve its unity of purpose and spirit.  We find the authoritative expression of that faith and order in the Book of Common Prayer, together with the Ordinal.  This book is the heritage of the whole Communion, and, while revisions of it are made to suit the needs of different Churches, it provides our accepted pattern of liturgical order, worship, and doctrine which is to be everywhere maintained. (Report, p. 23)

I wholeheartedly agree with these sentiments.

Those who advocate the use of new liturgies often make a comment such as this:

The Book of Common Prayer has hardly been used as its original authors intended. Ceremonial subtleties have constantly reinterpreted the liturgical tradition, as indicated by Anglican controversies relating to the location of the holy table, where the priest may stand, the vesture of clergy, the use of liturgical colors, the use of flowers and candles, as well as various physical acts of reverence.  The text itself has been reformed in various ways in the prayer books of the different provinces of the Anglican Communion. (BAS, p. 9.)

Certainly the vessel has been in dry dock for refitting on various occasions; certainly Anglicans have had their family quarrels (often bitter ones); and certainly there have been differences in ceremonial and ritual within parishes of the one diocese.  Yet until recently virtually all used as the basis for their worship one or another adaptation of the Common Prayer Tradition.  Of course there were extremists who insisted either on using the Roman Catholic

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liturgy or on using no liturgy at all; but they were a minority.

In terms of the history of western culture and the development of the English language, the new prayer books in the U.S.A. and Canada do not inspire confidence!  The liturgists have constantly claimed that their work is "modern literary English," by which they seem to mean that they have eliminated archaic words and phrases.  However, what they do not seem to have seen with any clarity is that it is sentences and not words which are the essence of speech, just as it is equations and functions, and not bare numbers, which make mathematics.  So what they have given us is a very non-liturgical kind of language which appears to be a modern language of prayer, but is not so.  There is nothing memorable about it at all.  Apparently the liturgical commissions made little or no use of experts in semantics and language when they constructed their new rites.  They did not pay heed to the advice of St. Paul: "Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 1:13).

This situation has been exacerbated by the decision to use texts of Creeds and Canticles provided by the Roman Catholic dominated "international" commissions – the ICEL (RC. only), ICET (ecumenical) and ELLC (ecumenical) – which have tried to cater to some twenty linguistic contexts from Fiji to Tipperary!  It has been well said that we need a new prayer in the old Litany – "from international commissions concerned with modern liturgies and all their malignant inventions, good Lord deliver us."  Classic liturgy with its unique form of English is like a precious painting; it should only be touched for the purpose of improvement by experts motivated by both knowledge and love.

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Practically speaking, the International Consultation on English Texts (ICET) supplied the following modern translations for the new American and Canadian Books – The Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, Kyrie, Gloria in exclesis, Sursum corda, Sanctus and Benedictus, Agnus Dei, Gloria Patri, Te Deum, Benedictus, and Magnificat.  The texts from the ICET may be read in its publication, Prayers we have in common (1975).  The work of the ICET has been taken over by the English Language Liturgical Commission (ELLC), from which the texts for liturgies since 1980 have been taken.

In terms of theology the situation was and is no brighter.  Not a few Anglican theologians in the 1960s and 1970s were under the influence of German philosophers and theologians (e.g. Martin Heidegger, Paul Tillich, Rudolph Bultmann and Karl Rahner) whose concerns were not necessarily immediately appropriate or applicable to revising basic, traditional, written forms of Christian prayer.  Then, also, in North America specific local influences both contributed to and yet reacted against an exaggerated individualism, pragmatism and empiricism (coming from the general American culture and its own philosophers – Alfred N. Whitehead, William James, and John Dewey).  This ethos and mindset hardly prepared theologians and liturgical scholars to perform the delicate task of revising written liturgy, which had its origins in a very different theological and cultural setting.

In England the new theology found a popularizer during the 1960s in John Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich, in his best-selling book, Honest to God, which was widely read in North America.  Though it was by no means a great book in style or content, its

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rejection of orthodox doctrine and its attempt to make popular a revised form of doctrine derived from the teaching of Bultmann, Tillich, and Bonhoeffer.  It harmonized with the "let’s change everything" spirit of the 1960s in both Britain and America.  Thereby it helped to enforce the desire among North American theologians to get rid of the archaic God (the Tudor deity!) of the Common Prayer Tradition and to form a concept of God and way of approaching Him based on modern consciousness and mid-twentieth-century theology.  A God, that is, who is "Being" (so John MacQuarrie) or "the Ground of Being" (so Paul Tillich) and is accessible to all – not the (supposed) God of majesty above the bright blue skies who sternly rebukes sinners on earth, but the accessible, omnipresent, immanent deity who (to use MacQuarrie’s terms) is Primordial Being, Expressive Being, and Unitive Being!  (Of course this was a false choice, but such was the way the problem was often stated in the 1960s and on into the 1970s.)

But it was not only theology that was going through dramatic paradigm shifts.  The liturgical movement was also entering a new phase through the euphoria caused by the Constitution on the Liturgy from the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).  The original aim of the liturgical movement had been modest, a kind of ecclesiastical response to social changes of the late nineteenth-century – the growth of mass democracy, the rise of universal suffrage, universal education, with some of the cultural and aesthetic interests of post-Romanticism.  The center of interest was not reforming the liturgy but renewal, making liturgy "the work of the people" as they became more involved in worship.  Yet from the early 1960s the reforming zeal to renew the

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liturgy took on much more wide-ranging aims and objectives.

Looking back to the Council, Adolf Adam wrote:

It was an event of epochal importance not only in the history of liturgy but in the life of the entire Church when on December 4, 1963 ... the Constitution was accepted as the first conciliar document (2147 ayes and 4 nays).  The document makes important statements about the nature and meaning of the liturgy and sets the course for radical reforms. (Foundations of Liturgy, 1992, p.44)

Adam lists the following as the general aims of the document: to foster a new esteem for liturgy; to promote active participation by the faithful; to promote liturgical science and liturgical formation; and to effect a general renewal of the changeable parts of the liturgy.

So it was that not only in Roman Catholicism but also in other Churches traditional rites and offices were subjected to intense criticism and new rites and offices, supposedly based on models found in the worship of the early Church, were created.  In particular, the Common Prayer Tradition of the Anglican Way was criticized by those who had been influenced by Gregory Dix.  They claimed that it was excessively penitential and did not give sufficient emphasis to the themes of Creation, Incarnation, and Eschatology.  Then, also, it did not allow congregational participation and was not sufficiently flexible for modern use.

If one had to choose a single book by an Anglican which influenced Anglican liturgists in turning away from the Common Prayer Tradition in the l960s, it must be The Shape of the Liturgy (1945) by Dom Gregory Dix.  He had no time for or patience with Cranmer and the family of books based upon

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Cranmer's BCP of 1549 and 1552.  He had no interest in the Reformation of the sixteenth century and regarded Anglican liturgy as parenthetical in the history of liturgy.  He set forth a theoretical view for understanding the shape of the Eucharist largely based on The Apostolic Tradition, a third-century work generally attributed to Hippolytus of Rome.  That shape, especially of the Eucharistic Prayer, is in essence what modern Anglican liturgies for the Eucharist have followed (see further chapter 8 below).

Of his book, the late Bishop Stephen Neill (one of the most widely-read men I have known), had this to say:

This is in many ways an attractive book.  Dix has read widely; his style is clear, and at times rises to considerable heights of eloquence.  But he lacks the temper of the scholar.  When he told me that he had read law at Oxford, I instantly understood the problem.  Dix is always the advocate, witty and impassioned, highly skilled in making the worse appear the better reason.  The learned William Telfer wrote the epitaph of the book, when meeting a colleague in the street in Cambridge, shortly after The Shape of the Liturgy appeared, he put the question, ‘Would you say that it is a very good book?’

Such was the dry humor of Telfer.  And Neill, commenting on the way forward for Anglican liturgy, insisted that first of all "we must place Dix on a very high shelf, and forget all about him" ("Liturgical Continuity" in No Alternative, ed. David Martin, 1982, p.10).

Further, the liturgical commission of the Church of England officially acknowledged the influence of Dix upon the new generation of rites as it

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introduced the English Alternative Service Book (1980):

Until Dix’s time, whatever may have been happening unofficially, official thinking does not seem to have gone far beyond shuffling the order of Cranmer’s rite... Dix’s Shape... both set this sort of program aside (as not only too modest but actually worse than original Cranmer) and set the agenda and gave motivation for a far more radical approach.  Thus post-war liturgical revision is a wholly different story from, say, that of the events culminating in 1927–28 [in England].  (ASB, 1980; A Commentary, p.57)

Therefore, in Britain as well as in North America, the task of liturgical commissions to create new liturgies was set in a context where the only conceivable result would be a totally different form of liturgy from that of the Common Prayer Tradition initiated by Cranmer.  The earlier liturgical revisions in England of the period, 1927–28, though rejected by Parliament, were solidly within the Common Prayer Tradition.

The theological context was such that, caught between traditional orthodoxy and the new empirical or existentialist theology from Germany and within America, the liturgical experts were probably rather fuzzy or confused as to their theological aims.  Thus they set this partially digested new theology alongside traditional theology within the old forms they revised or the new forms they created with the help of Dix and his successors.  They knew that they did not want the theology of the Common Prayer Tradition, but they were not always clear of mind exactly what ought to replace it!

Instead of accepting these realities, the Standing Liturgical Commission of the Episcopal Church, caught up in its exciting task and watching similar

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tasks in other lands and churches, set about the task in the 1960s of writing a completely new liturgy.  Previously the Episcopal Church had intended only a gentle and minimal revision of the 1928 BCP in line with previous minimal revisions in 1789, 1871, and 1892, and in line with what had actually happened in Canada as late as 1959–1962.  However, it was not merely minimal; it was also within the same ethos and principles.  When this wise course was set aside and the new dangerous course embarked upon, the liturgical commission turned to the "experts" in theology and Bible to see what they were teaching about God, the world, salvation, and sin; they also turned to see what Roman Catholic liturgical experts were saying and doing in revising the Roman liturgy.  Roman Catholic scholars, set free by the liberating winds blowing from the Second Vatican Council to do what hitherto they could not do, were proposing a variety of novel ways of updating and modernizing liturgy.  Some were good and others bad, some useful and others pretentious.  And in many of these revisions, Catholic scholars were being followed by the liturgical experts in a variety of denominations.  Change was in the air!  It all seemed inevitable. Anyone who reviews the career and writings of the late Massey H. Shepherd Jr., who was at the center of the revision in the Episcopal Church, can see how the winds of change blew upon him and caused him to change direction to become an advocate for the newer-is-better program.

In a short essay published in 1984, Shepherd clearly explained that the structure of the 1979 book owed much to the scholarly reconstruction of the form of the liturgy, and especially of the Easter liturgy, in the "ancient Church" of the second, third, and fourth centuries.  He wrote: "The unifying principle of most of the restoration or renewals of liturgy

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in the 1979 book from the ancient Church is the Paschal Mystery."  And he proceeded to explain that in the third and fourth centuries the whole Paschal Mystery was relived by the faithful once a year on the anniversary of the Lord’s own Passover.  This Pascha was a unitary festival that recalled the suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord and the gift to His Church of the Holy Spirit.  Though centered on the first Saturday and Sunday (Easter), with the most important rite being that of Easter Eve, it actually lasted for fifty days until Pentecost.  The 1979 book was the first Anglican book, says Shepherd, to include not only the "ancient rites" of Easter Eve but also ceremonies and devotions of Holy Week from fourth-century practice in Jerusalem.  (See Shepherd, "The Patristic Heritage," in The Historical Magazine, Vol.53. 1984, pp.221ff.)

Liturgists like Shepherd insisted that the developments of the liturgy and the liturgical year after the fourth century were to be judged in the light of their reconstruction of the worship of the "ancient" Church up to the fourth century (i.e., what they call the pre-Nicene period).  Therefore, while they have included in the 1979 and 1985 books the Feast of the Ascension (which apparently only developed as a separate festival in the late fourth century), the general effect of their theory is to discount the importance of this festival.  For to celebrate the Ascension meaningfully not only requires the break-up of the fifty days into forty plus ten, but also has the effect of challenging their whole theory concerning the Paschal Mystery.  Further, to adopt their theory is usually also to claim that "initiation" is complete in baptism, that standing in worship is the norm, and that no confession of sins is permissible in the liturgy of the unitary festival for the whole of the

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fifty days (see further Chapters three and eight together with Appendix 2).

Thus in the context of American culture the Standing Liturgical Commission created a new liturgy in poor, modernistic English which incorporated "insights" and proposals from the experts in theology and liturgy, while at the same time keeping certain aspects of traditional language and content (thus the existence of Rite I and Rite II in parallel in the 1979 BCP).  Under the circumstances, the result of their work could only be a form of liturgy very different from that of the Common Prayer Tradition, even though the revisers had begun from that tradition.  Of course it was used experimentally for several years in parishes on a trial basis (in a kind of democratic egalitarianism) before being adopted by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, U.S.A. in 1979.  It is a matter of debate, however, to what extent these trial uses were genuine trials.

People in the pews in the Episcopal Church were misled when their bishops and liturgists told them that there were no changes in basic doctrine, but only changes in language and structure to make liturgy more relevant, especially to the younger generations.  So many faithful souls, fed up with changes and experiments throughout the 1970s, were reasonably happy to be told that experiments were over and they now had a permanent book!  Others, who had carefully compared the new with the old, knew that they were being misled and badly informed, and so they protested.  Regrettably, they were heard but not listened to. The leadership had decided that the 1979 BCP was to come in, and come in it must.  Much the same can now be told of the way that the BAS is being used in Canada, even though it is by definition

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supposed to be subordinate to and an alternative to the Canadian 1962 BCP.

To present what became the 1979 Book to the General Convention the Standing Liturgical Commission chose a liberal evangelical, Charles P. Price.  His booklet, Introducing the Proposed Book (1976), provides a gentle, reasonable explanation and commendation of the new liturgy.  While he does not tell the whole story about the theological orientation of the new rites, he does indicate that doctrinal change has occurred.  Apparently the SLC saw itself as being guided by four criteria or norms for judgment which were (1) the Common Prayer Tradition, especially as found in the BCP; (2) adequacy to the worshipping needs of modern Episcopalian congregations; (3) pre-Reformation liturgical traditions such as the Great Vigil of Easter, and (4) the content of holy Scripture.  Of the last he writes, "In its best judgment the SLC believes that the Proposed BCP is in conformity with this Scriptural norm – in what it adopts from previous Prayer Books, in what it has devised for the world it confronts and in what it has taken over from earlier liturgical traditions" (p.19).  And, we may add, many accepted the Book because of this claim which they took as true.  Yet all the evidence points to the fact that the liturgists were much more committed to the "newer is better" program, justified by reference to the practice of the "ancient" Church before the period of the Ecumenical Councils, than they were either to the content of the New Testament or the practice of the Church from A.D. 325 to 787 (from the first to the seventh ecumenical councils)!

Only after the 1979 book was adopted in the U.S.A. and the dust settled (for the scene had been thrown into confusion with the illegal ordination of women in 1976) did a growing number of laity and

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clergy began to realize that it was a very different book from the previous one, the 1928 BCP.  Though it was called "The Book of Common Prayer" it was not by any stretch of the imagination a book of common prayer.  The faithful missed familiar phrases ("there is no health in us," "the precious blood," "Blessed is the man"), and even when they heard reasonably familiar words, they were put off by new ritual (e.g., the walk-about and embracing called "the Peace").  They began to sense that the new liturgy orientated people more towards "community" than to "Mystery" and more to human need than to the living God.  They found that their priest faced them rather than facing the same direction as they did when he or she prayed the Eucharistic Prayer.  They were face to face in a community rather than all facing the Lord Jesus Christ in communion with Him.

Of course some people are enthusiastic about the new liturgies, and others have admitted that there are good things about them.  Those who think that the Eucharist ought to be the central service each Lord’s Day are pleased, for it is made to be so; those who want to have the Gloria at the beginning of the Eucharist rather than at the end are happy with this change; those who, for their daily Mass, want a comprehensive list of martyrs and saints are delighted to have The Proper for Lesser Feasts; those who want choice of traditional or modern language and their choice of six or more eucharistic rites are content, for they do have such a selection; and those who want to have inclusive language in Canticles and Psalms are very happy, for this they have.

I do not doubt that there are good things in the new liturgies, but overall I believe (as stated above) that within what may be good frameworks or structures and useful additions found in the new books

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there are traces of teaching which are not faithful to the Holy Scriptures or the classical tradition of the Church, especially that of the early, formative (patristic) centuries, with its ecumenical councils and creeds.  In fact I think that, in varying degrees of intensity, the new liturgies suffer from very serious internal faults (or spiritual diseases) – inclusivism, relativism, modalism, Nestorianism, and Pelagianism, to name some of the major ones (which we shall look at more closely in later chapters).  Thus I cannot see that in the long term the new liturgies can truly and fully serve any Church which wishes to be faithful to her Lord and to engage wholeheartedly in His mission in the world.  They cause the Church to stand upon sand, whereas before she stood on rock – rock which has effectively been blown up in the new liturgies.  Finally, I cannot avoid the conclusion that there was within the Standing Liturgical Commission a general agreement or reluctance not to tell the General Convention or the faithful in the pews the extent of the doctrinal innovations.

The whole job has to be done again!  The way forward is to return to the Common Prayer Tradition and start from there and stay within that Tradition, with its faithfulness to Scripture, classical orthodoxy, and dynamic Christ-centered faith and faithfulness.  Not until we make this our goal shall we see the wonderful possibilities in this route of genuine liturgical reform and renewal.  The modern route has been shown to be a dead end which gradually leads us away from the living God towards pantheism and secularism.  The way forward is catholic reform according to the Scriptures, Creeds, and the Ecumenical Councils, guided by ancient liturgies and the few remaining holy centers of common prayer left in North America.

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Some of my evangelical and charismatic friends who share my commitment to the authority of Scripture will be surprised that I say that the modern liturgy is a dead end for them.  They are happy to use it because it seems to them to be open, flexible, relevant, and modern.  Thus they think that it is more easily adapted to evangelism of modern people within the American cultural scene.  My word to them is that within what they see as relevance and flexibility is the weakening or the denial of basic biblical insights and doctrines (as I shall show in later chapters).  Further, the Common Prayer Tradition can be put into modern English and it can be used minimally at first (maybe combined with ex tempore services) until people learn to enjoy its depth and riches.  So it can become a fine tool for evangelism and nurturing young Christians if we learn to value it and use it aright.  And, importantly, Christians raised on it will have a much richer understanding and appreciation of the Christian Faith than those raised on the new liturgies.

To make most sense of what I present, may I suggest that my reader will find that it is useful to have by his side a copy of either the BCP (U.S.A., 1928) or the BCP (Canada, 1962) along with the 1979 BCP and, if possible, the 1985 BAS.  Certainly the American 1979 BCP will be referred to often.

Since I have said little up to this point about the Canadian BAS I perhaps need to explain that it is similar to the American 1979 book but different in various ways.  The story of revising the liturgy in Canada from 1971 to 1985 is told in its Introduction.  In fact what distinguishes the BAS from other modern Prayer Books is its need for self-justification and

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explanation.  Not only is there an Introduction to the whole but there are short prefatory essays before most of the services.  Regrettably, the standard of some of these – and I hate to say this – is that of a seminarian writing a term paper!  Further, apart from being pseudo-intellectual, the essays have a tendency to misrepresent the Common Prayer Tradition in order to justify the innovations and doctrinal changes of the new rites.  Then there are specific differences within the services which we shall note as we go along. It seems that this book will be used in Canada for a few more years before it is brought back for final revision.  By then there will a generation of Canadians who have never known worship according to the traditional BCP – even though the Canadian BCP was revised for use in the second half of the twentieth century as late as 1959–1962!

It is my conviction that the Anglican Way in North America ought to commit itself once more to the Common Prayer Tradition and to do such refitting and restyling and make such additions as are necessary for the worship of the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit in the twenty-first century.

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My voyage as a Christian is from the harbor of sin to the harbor of righteousness.  As I walk on the one and only fine deck of the good ship Common Prayer, where all passengers go first-class, and where there are excellent state-rooms open to all passengers to use and to enjoy, I look across the billowing waves towards the horizon.  There I see two modern ships, one, the 1979 BCP (USA), the other, the 1985 BAS (Canada).  I am told that for each of them it is claimed that "newer is better."  With my binoculars I shall take a closer look at each of them in order to survey their general design and structure.

First of all, I see a ship flying the American flag and painted in the colors of that flag – red, white and blue.  It seems to be named "Common Prayer," but that must be a mistake for I am already on Common Prayer!  The ship is rather bulky because it has no fewer than three tiers, each with several decks, and each deck with a stateroom called "The Holy Eucharist."

Here is my description of them:

1. The tier named "Rite One."  This is a double deck with two staterooms, for it has the longer "Eucharistic Prayer 1" and the shorter "Eucharistic Prayer 2."  It also has rooms named "Morning Prayer I" and "Evening Prayer I," as well as "Burial of the Dead I."  In certain ways the design of this deck is

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based on that of the good ship Common Prayer, last refitted in 1928, but it is not identical.  The designers have changed it to make it look like the other tiers and decks on 1979 BCP, but it has far fewer rooms and attractions to offer the passengers than the much larger second tier. Further, there are signs near this tier telling people that there is much more room in the tier called "Rite Two," and this appears to cause people not to enter "Rite One" but to move straight to "Rite Two."

2. The tier named "Rite Two" has no fewer than four decks (A, B, C, D), all of which are different from the two on Tier One and also slightly different from each other.  They appear to be furnished in a rather cheap way with inferior materials which soon crack, rust or look worn.  Of special interest is the fourth deck, D deck, which is in a modernized Greek style having been inspired by the design of St Basil: however, as I examine it carefully, it appears to lack genuine authenticity.  Then there are rooms with such names as "Morning Prayer II," "Evening Prayer II," "Compline," "Holy Baptism," "Confirmation," "Ordination of a Deacon, a Priest, and a Bishop," and "An Outline of the Faith," all of which are found in this tier.  Because it has so much more to offer, this tier is apparently the most popular one on board.

3. The tier named "An Order for Celebrating the Holy Eucharist."  This appears to be a large space containing building materials for people to make their own temporary quarters as they sail on this ship.  There is a notice which states, "This rite requires careful preparation by the priest and other participants." (see 1979 BCP, pp. 400ff.)  Only a few appear to be trying to make their own facilities, and wherever they are, they seem to be imitating the design of "Rite Two."

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As I consider this ship, I remember that a smaller and modernized version of it has been put to sea for trials.  It has been named Prayer Book Studies 30, and a few of the more bold and adventurous passengers who want to cross the ocean are traveling on it.  The captain hid the skull and crossbones until the passengers had already boarded.  Even then, they thought he was just being modern!  In fact its captain and crew belong to the new type of sailors who want to experiment not only with new design, structure and provisions, but also with modern methods of navigation.  As far as I recall, PBS. 30, which has already been refitted several times, is innovative primarily in terms of the provision of new forms and content in the rooms entitled "The Holy Eucharist."  I suspect that this experimental ship is the type which will soon replace the 1979 book – which is modern without being truly modern.

In the second place, training my binoculars in a different direction, I see a similar ship that was launched in Toronto in 1985 and that has the red maple leaf painted on its bow.  Again it looks topheavy, possessing two tiers, one very large and one much smaller.  It does not appear to ride the heavy waves very well.

1. The smallest tier, which follows the general design of the one deck on Common Prayer (refitted Toronto, 1962), has two decks known as "A" and "B," but they have only one room each, the Eucharist room.  There are no other rooms, and so the provision is less than in the American ship’s "Rite One."  However, as a whole this tier looks like, even though it is not identical with, the first tier on the 1979 ship. (See 1985 BAS, pp. 230ff).

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2. The largest tier has no fewer than six decks, each with a central stateroom called "The Holy Eucharist."  Three of these are virtually identical with decks "B, C, D" in the 1979 ship.  Of the other three, two are like decks on other modern ships launched recently by Methodists and Roman Catholics, while one seems to be uniquely of Canadian design with piped music (deck 5).  Then there are other sets of rooms with names such as "The Divine Office," "Baptism and Reconciliation," "Pastoral Offices" and "Episcopal Offices."  I observe that people get tired as they examine these six decks to see on which they want to spend their time on the voyage.  I feel especially sorry for the elderly, who appear to get confused with all the choice and the walking.

As I think about this ship, I realize that the Canadians are planning on bringing it into harbor soon to make further adjustments and changes.  Passengers and groups of professionals have been asked for their comments, and I hope that the designers of this ship will take this input into account when the ship is in dry dock.  I suspect, however, that the designers are more likely to listen to what their fellow designers are saying in other parts of the Anglican Communion, where (as in New Zealand) advanced designs are in place.

Further, as an Englishman, I cannot help but think of the Church of England in which I was ordained in 1973.  Its prayer book is the one we call BCP (1662): this is a masterpiece of its kind, rich in biblical and edifying content.  As an alternative to it, we have the 1980 ASB, which was authorized on what many now see was a false assumption – i.e., the claim that it is faithful to the teaching of Scripture and to the older formularies of the Church (the Thirty-Nine Articles and the BCP of 1662).

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Roger Beckwith has written that "in two respects the ASB manifests an anti-liturgical tendency, that is, a tendency away from worship in a set form."  He goes on to explain that:

One is that it is revolutionary rather than evolutionary in its starting point, not revising the existing liturgy but substituting a selection of ancient sources, which it imitates in a modern idiom of English.  The other is that, while introducing greater variety and flexibility, suitable to an age of universal literacy like the present, it carries this to an excess which makes congregational worship difficult.  The anti-liturgical tendency has been made more obvious in the Liturgical Commission’s later productions, which have shown as great a readiness to depart from the ASB as the ASB did to depart from the BCP (1662); and their report Patterns for Worship (1989) even invites each congregation to make up its own services for each occasion, which in practice could hardly lead to anything but an abandonment of liturgy altogether.  (The Church of England: What it is and What it stand for, [Oxford, 1992], p.12.)

Like Beckwith I believe that these strange policies will lead to a return in England to the Common Prayer Tradition of the 1662 BCP and to a call for genuine and gentle revision of this treasured Book.

I must now stop thinking about the design of ships and turn my attention to the social and cultural context in which liturgy is written and used.

North American life certainly has variety.  At the side of the highway there are so many opportunities to buy and eat different types of fast food.  Within the supermarkets there is a bewildering variety of

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brands and types of salad dressing, breakfast cereals, frozen pizzas, and cans/bottles of soda.  Much the same may be said of clothing, cars, magazines, and entertainment.  Further, the variety is always changing, as manufacturers and retailers seek to produce and make available new types and forms of products.

Some say that what’s good for ordinary life is good for liturgy!  Why should modern people living in an advanced country and breathing the air of a sophisticated culture be restricted to one type and form of liturgy?  Why should there not be variety offered to suit local and personal taste?  As the Canadian BAS explains: "Six eucharistic prayers have been provided. Parishes will naturally wish to choose those which meet the particular needs of their own community" (p. 178).  The key words here are "naturally" and "particular needs."  Does the first word point to "natural rights" or to human nature in its raw state before it begins to be sanctified or deified by the Holy Spirit?  Does the second phrase imply that there are not sufficient needs in common between congregations in one general culture for all to use one basic form of public prayer?

Much is made today of pluralism and multiculturalism, with the result that many of us think in terms of making provision for each and every different group and type that come to our notice.  We do not think out the implications of making such provision; we simply get on with the job of providing it.  We are caught up in the winds of change, and we are not sure where they will blow us.

Liturgists are made of flesh and blood like the rest of us, and they too get blown by contemporary winds.  One near gale-force wind which they seem to be much moved by is that which blows from indi-

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vidualism into community (for more about this see chapter six below).  They are also blown and formed by this wind of variety and pluralism and of relativism and multiculturalism.  Therefore, not only do they provide an increasingly confusing variety of forms of worship, but they also engage in one of their favorite activities: digging as if they were archaeologists, in order to justify the variety.  That is, they examine the remains of the liturgies from the second, third, and fourth centuries and claim that there was no fixed form; rather, there was interesting variety, with one area differing from another.  Thus, since variety is primitive, and since to be primitive is good, we must move away from the uniformity of the Common Prayer Tradition into the variety which the liturgists (out of their expertise) provide for us.  So we learn that the next step in liturgical renewal is the provision of loose-leaf books or resource-books (which the BAS already is), so that "according to local needs" congregations can have great variety in their services.  The worship committee will meet each week to choose the menu, to cut and paste it, and then to make copies on the photocopying machine.  As was indicated above, this is already happening in the conservative Church of England, amongst those who have moved on from the 1980 ASB.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the more traditional elements in the Churches would like to see the disappearance of liturgical commissions – if not permanently, at least for a season!  In part, this is because they detect in the movement and instability of modern liturgy a political agenda belonging more to the left than to the right.

Liturgists, and the priests whom they have taught, do not seem any longer to offer parishes the old-fashioned but classic option of "Common

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Prayer."  In fact, it is often the case that many of them, schooled in the new ways, so despise it (or, more correctly, the distorted picture of it which they have in their minds), that they get uneasy or bitter when it is mentioned in their presence as a viable option.  In the U.S.A. the expression "Common Prayer" has lost its original and authentic meaning for thousands because of its use (or misuse!) in the title of what is in reality a book of alternative services – the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

It would perhaps be useful at this stage in our reflections to recall what is meant by "Common Prayer," since the word "common" in popular usage is often an unsavory word pointing to that which is found everywhere and is of low quality and so not really worth having or possessing.

As an adjective used in the sixteenth century, "common" pointed to that in which all may share, that which is available to and for all, and that which belongs equally to all.  Thus "common land" was a place where anyone could tether his horse or graze his cattle.  And "the commonwealth" is the state viewed as a body in which all have an interest and/or voice.  In this general sense, "common prayer" is that form of divine service in which all unite and which all use.

"Common Prayer" was used by Archbishop Cranmer in the titles of the official prayer books of 1549 and 1552 to point to the forms of service in which all people attending the cathedrals or parish churches joined, not only on Sundays and Holy Days but also each day.  So "Common Prayer" referred primarily to the daily services of Morning and Evening Prayer together with the less frequent Admini-

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stration of the Lord’s Supper.  Cranmer planned these services on the assumption that not only priests but also laity would be present.  Thus they represented common prayer, divine worship in which all could equally share, whether they were young or old, rich or poor, male or female.  The full title of the 1549 book was, The Book of the Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church after the use of the Church of England.

These daily services of common prayer contained a definite, fixed structure but within this was provision for different Bible Readings, Psalms and Collects.  Likewise the Lord’s Supper had a fixed structure but with changing readings from the Bible.  Over the centuries the Common Prayer Tradition has kept to these basic principles even though it has made the structure for the daily offices less fixed than in its first expression in 1549.

In fact (to use the illustration of the ship), visits to dry dock for refitting have carefully followed certain principles.  These were set out in the Preface to the 1789 BCP (Philadelphia) in these words:

Her [the Church’s] general aim hath been to do that which, according to her best understanding, might most tend to the preservation of peace and unity in the Church; the procuring of reverence, and the exciting of piety and devotion in the worship of God, and, finally, the cutting off occasion, from them that seek occasion, of cavil or quarrel against her Liturgy.

All these principles are within a greater one – that "there be not anything in it [the Liturgy] contrary to the Word of God or to sound doctrine..."

It was necessary to make changes in America, for example, to recognize the results of the Revolution and freedom from the British Crown; but these

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were done without changing the essential content or aim of the common prayer as a comparison of the English 1662 BCP and the American 1789 and 1928 BCP prayer books will show.

In contrast, as used in the 1979 BCP of the Episcopal Church, the adjective "common" carries a meaning different from that in the 1789 and 1928 prayer books.  It points to choice between alternatives (in my illustration, the different tiers and decks of the new ship).  Therefore, while all congregations may be using the same prayer book, they are unlikely to be all praying the same prayers.  Some may be in Rite I and others in Rite II and within both Rites some will be using one option and others another.  So it is something like all using the same supermarkets but buying differing products or all going to the same restaurants but choosing different types of food.  There is an excessive flexibility in choices and options for it to merit being "common prayer."

The "common" in classic "Common Prayer" also presupposes a common human nature which all of us share despite our differences in height, weight, sex, personality and age.  It is a nature which is certainly diseased by sin but which is made by God to find its fulfillment in the worship and love of God both here and in eternity.  What we have in common (as sinful but redeemed human beings, made in the image and after the likeness of God) is greater than that which separates us (age, sex, and race).  Thus, there are very good reasons for having a common form of prayer in each language which is excellent in its structure and content, faithful to Scripture, and sound in doctrine, which we can all use with profit and to our salvation.  Only the best is to be the means of our approach to the Lord our God in worship.  We are to offer to Him, on the basis of what He

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has revealed to us, that worship which is most faithful to His Word and lifts us from where we are in this fallen world into a sense of His transcendent Majesty and His gracious nearness.

There are very few people at the local level who have the necessary biblical, theological, and liturgical understanding to create set forms of worship which are truly worthy of being compared with the Common Prayer Tradition.  For those who long for variety there is plenty of scope for local variety in mid-week and after-church meetings for praise and prayer, for Bible study and ex tempore intercessory prayer.  The Anglican Way without Common Prayer will quickly cease to be genuinely Anglican but will become merely an association of parishes doing their own thing, visited from time to time by a bishop who will be doing his or her own thing.  Laity see this possibility on the horizon now and are beginning to call for a return to the Common Prayer Tradition, based on Holy Scripture and sound doctrine.

Laity and clergy are beginning to feel the effects of what is technically called relativism (knowledge is only of relations between different views).  With so much variety offered in forms of services and eucharistic prayers, and with so little authoritative teaching to tell them the difference, they are beginning to wonder – What is the truth of the Faith? Is there any Truth at all?  Are all opinions equal? Is Christ no longer the Way, the Truth, and the Life?  Is He still the One Mediator between God and mankind?

It does not seem to have occurred to many Anglicans in North America that by introducing new prayer books on new principles, the Episcopal

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Church of the USA and the Anglican Church of Canada have effectively said that they no longer accept the Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1888, whose origins were within the American Episcopal Church.  This important statement was agreed upon by the bishops of the Anglican Communion of Churches as "a basis on which approach may be by God’s blessing made towards Home Reunion."  In other words, they stated the minimum basis on which Anglican Churches anywhere in the world could join with or reunite with other Christian bodies.  Since then, such reunion has occurred in India and Pakistan to form united Episcopal Churches there.

The four principles, which were first adopted by the American House of Bishops in Chicago in 1886 before being passed at Lambeth, are as follows:

(a) The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as "containing all things necessary to salvation" and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith.

(b) The Apostles’ Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol, and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.

(c) The two Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself – Baptism and the Supper of the Lord – ministered with unfailing use of Christ’s words of Institution, and of the elements ordained by Him.

(d) The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church.

It is interesting to observe that the Book of Common Prayer is not included in this list.  The reason is simple – the Common Prayer Tradition is a distinctive of the Anglican Way and is not what

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Anglicans look for in other traditions of Christendom.

Let us look at each of these four statements and notice how every one has been effectively set aside within the new liturgy.

In the late nineteenth century the prayer books in use throughout the Anglican Communion printed the Epistle and Gospel for each Sunday and for Holy Days and also had lectionaries which did not omit any Scripture from the public reading of the Bible for ideological reasons.  Nearly all Scripture was read at least once every year (and the New Testament was read more often).  What was omitted was on grounds that it better applied to personal meditation (e.g., the Song of Songs) or that it was difficult to understand (e.g., parts of the Apocalypse).  With the advent of the new lectionaries within the new prayer books parts of Scripture were deleted simply because of what they positively teach.  For example, where a section of a book of the Bible seems to uphold the doctrine of patriarchy (see I Cor. 11:3ff.) or teach that the wrath of God is turned towards homosexuality (e.g. Rom.1:17ff.), then that section is removed.  A careful study needs to be done of the doctrines contained in the omitted passages of the modern lectionaries.  Thus we may say that this excision of what are deemed to be unacceptable parts of Scripture means that the Holy Scripture is not effectively and in reality "the rule and ultimate standard of faith" for churches which use the new books.  And this situation is intensified by the use of inclusive language in biblical translation of certain Canticles and the Psalter – as we shall note below.

Let us now turn to the Creeds. We find that while the new books do actually contain the two Creeds, they offer us two translations of them. First

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of all, there is the translation which millions have memorized over the centuries and which may justly claim to be accurate; secondly, there is a modern translation which I judge to be dishonest.  It is dishonest, I believe, in the phrases which are added (e.g., "by the power of" with reference to the conception of Jesus in both Creeds), the words which are omitted (e.g., "Almighty" after "Father" near the end of the Apostles’ Creed), and the words and phrases mistranslated (e.g., "He descended to the dead" instead of "He descended into hell" in the Apostles’ Creed and "seen and unseen" instead of "visible and invisible" in the Nicene Creed).  Surely, dishonest translations cannot be for the Church of God "the sufficient statement of the Christian faith."  Further, the presence of two different translations contributes to the relativism referred to above.  The general concept seems to be that there is no final truth but only our partial insights into it.  Reciting two different translations of the one Creed helps to convey this underlying attitude.

We can take the Sacraments and the Historic Episcopate together.  Contrary to the teaching of Scripture and to the tradition of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, the Episcopal Church has consecrated women both as bishops and priests.  The 1979 BCP provides in its Ordinal for both female and male candidates to be ordained priest and consecrated bishop.  The 1985 BAS certainly provides for women to be ordained priest but does not seem specifically to provide for women to be consecrated bishop (although the Canadian bishops have stated that they see no obstacles to such happening).  So at least in the U.S.A., the Historic Episcopate has been set aside and a new form of Episcopate has been created, composed of both women and men.  Now since the administration of Holy Communion is to

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be by those duly consecrated and ordained, the validity and efficacy of the "sacraments" of the novel order of bishops and priests is in question.  Are they genuine dominical sacraments?  Many doubt that they are either valid or efficacious.  Thus it would seem that both the third and fourth principles of the Lambeth Quadrilateral are violated by the new prayer books.

So returning to our ships, it becomes clearer perhaps that the new type of ship, be it launched in New York or Toronto, has serious design and structural faults and weaknesses and is hardly the vessel on which we ought to put to sea, especially when the voyage is one of life or death.

More design faults in the new ships become apparent if we recall the historic claim of the Anglican Way that it is based upon God’s self-revelation written in Holy Scripture and as this Scripture is interpreted with the aid of tradition and reason. This claim was given classic expression by Richard Hooker in the Elizabethan period in his justly famous book, Ecclesiastical Polity.  The purpose of "tradition and reason" is not to add two further authorities to that of God’s Word written, the Bible, but to indicate how we are to approach the divine revelation recorded in human literature.  We are not to approach Holy Scripture in an individualistic manner as though the Bible existed for me and me only, and that I, in my autonomous individuality, have the key to interpreting its contents.  The Bible is the collection of holy books which God has given to the Church to read in order to know who He is and what is His will.  From within the one, holy, catholic Church we read Scripture within a tradition

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of doctrinal understanding into which God in His gracious providence led the early Church.

This understanding is expressed in the doctrinal formulations of the ecumenical councils, from which we obtain such important doctrines as (a) the classic teaching and understanding as to the identity of the LORD (Yahweh) as a Trinity of Persons – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and (b) the classic teaching and understanding of Jesus as the One Person, the Son begotten of the Father before all ages, who took to Himself in the womb of Mary ever-virgin, our complete human nature so that He is truly very God of very God and very man of very man.

The reason or rationality to be used in reading Scripture is, again, not that of the autonomous individual who is doing his own thing.  Rather, it is the (being) sanctified reason of those who, in submission to Jesus as their Lord and as members of His Body, aim only to find out what God, the Father, has said to His people and what His will for them is, so that, with the guidance and strength of the Holy Spirit, they may do that will.

From tradition, which we may take as the ongoing result of the Church’s being guided by God in his providence, we receive much more than sound teaching.  We could spend time, for example, thinking about (a) the Lord’s Day (Sunday), the first day of the week, the day of Resurrection as the day of Christian worship and fellowship; (b) the centrality of the Holy Eucharist on the Lord’s Day when the Lord’s people gathered to meet their Lord at the Lord’s Table; and (c) the emergence of the Historic Episcopate and the threefold Ministry.  However, for our purposes here, I want to emphasize the importance of the emergence of dogma – the careful state-

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ment of the central truths of Holy Scripture – as part of holy tradition.

Until the 1960s those who wrote the books of the Common Prayer Tradition and those who helped to revise them (that is to refit them when they were in dry dock) proceeded on the assumption that the Anglican Way (or the design of the good ship Common Prayer) is based on Scripture, tradition and reason.  This was the three-legged stool on which they sat to do their design and make their plans.

However, those who designed the two modern ships of 1979 and 1985 and the PBS.30 did not sit on a three-legged stool.  They chose to sit either on a four-legged stool or a one-legged stool.  The four-legged is "Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience" and the one-legged is "experience" alone.  However, "experience" as used here is not the dynamic and true experience of God the Father, through God the Son by God the Holy Spirit in Christian prayer and worship.  If it were, I would have no complaint.  No, it is experience within and of the modern world with all its scientific and technological achievements and with all its claims to understand the inner and outer life of human beings.

In other words a new, modern source of divine revelation is located within the insights, assumptions and knowledge of modern sociology, psychology, biology, anthropology, and philosophy.  And where this modern "revelation" is opposed to the teaching of the Bible and historic Church, then the modern is preferred to the old.  In fact, the contents of the Bible and the achievements of the early Church are seen merely as the record of the flawed experiences of people in ancient cultures – flawed because their experience of God was from within

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patriarchy.  Thus, contemporary church scholars assert that the Bible contains the false assumptions of that "evil" ordering of society where women were subjugated to the will of men.  Today, free from that supposed evil, modern theologians, it is claimed, are more able to learn from contemporary experience what God is actually saying to them.  So they sit on their four-legged or one-legged stools to do their theology and write their liturgies.  Further, since this kind of thinking is so widespread in American culture (I mean the emphasis upon Experience), many churchpeople cannot immediately see that it is there, let alone that it represents a major change in direction and design.

For example, it has crept into modern Collects.  In the Proper for the Lesser Feasts and Fasts, which accompanies the 1979 book, the Collect for Clement of Rome is:

Almighty God, you chose your servant Clement of Rome to recall the Church in Corinth to obedience and stability: Grant that your Church may be grounded and settled in your truth by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; reveal to it what is not yet known; fill up what is lacking; confirm what has already been revealed; and keep it blameless in your service...

Here the plain meaning is that there is truth to be revealed now and in the future (which of course is different from the truth already revealed and recorded in sacred Scripture being illumined by the Spirit).

This looking to Experience as necessary for truth in modern liturgy is clearly admitted in the prefaces to the Canadian 1985 BAS and to the American PBS.30 of 1989.  First of all, we read in the Canadian preface these words:

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Liturgy is not the gospel but it is the principal process by which the Church and the gospel are brought together for the sake of the life of the world.  It is consequently vital that its form wear the idiom, the cadence, the world-view, the imagery of the people who are engaged in that process in every generation.

I thought that the world-view of Christians was to be formed by the Gospel of God concerning Jesus Christ, not adopted from dialogue or engagement with the world.  In the second place, the American preface claims that the new liturgical texts "engage the Church in the privilege and responsibility which every generation has to search for and speak of the evolving human experience in its relationship to the permanent truths of God."  This certainly points in the direction of Experience as a source of revelation.  Finally, the recommendation of PBS 30 to change the inherited and classical ways of addressing God and to use names which resonate with modern experience also clearly reveals this point.

Further evidence from the ECUSA is now available in its new Catechetical Guide, Called to Teach and Learn (1992), from the Education, Evangelism and Ministry Development Unity.  Part 1 is Catechetics and based on a modern approach to the Bible as the repository of religious experiences; and, significantly, Part 2 is called Catechesis and contains confirmatory and extending insights [Revelation?] from Psychology, Sociology, Cultural Anthropology, and Pedagogy. Part 3 is on Catechetical Practice.

There is surely no future for the Church looking for succor in this direction. Certainly, to experience the living God and to know the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in vital communion is paramount; but this experiential knowing the LORD cannot be

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gained by worldly means. Such knowing only comes through the means of grace, from the ministry of the Word and Sacrament, and from fellowship and in prayer, for it is the gift of God, not the achievement of man.