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‘Learning again and again to pray’: Anglican Forms of Daily Prayer, 1979–20141

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2016

Stephen Burns
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Abstract

The 2014 publication of the Episcopal Church’s resource for daily prayer, Daily Prayer for All Seasons, invites reflection on recent developments in provision for everyday services around the Anglican Communion. Not only is the new resource considerably different from the material it complements in the Book of Common Prayer 1979, it also represents a departure from a certain commonality that has emerged in material from around the Communion since 1979. While this article does not map those developments in detail, it does chart some of the shifts occurring in various provinces and relates that survey to current discussions about ‘Anglican identity and liturgical diversity’. The article serves both as an introduction to Daily Prayer for All Seasons and as a wider reflection on Anglican forms of everyday services in the period from 1979–2014.

Keywords

daily prayerDaily Prayer for All Seasonsliturgical revisionAnglican Communiondaily officeScripturecommon prayer
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , May 2017 , pp. 9 - 36
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Copyright
© The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2016 

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Footnotes

1

See Don E. Saliers, The Soul in Paraphrase: Prayer and the Religious Affections (Akron: OSL Publications, 2nd edn, 1991), p. 75: ‘The heart of all discipleship in the world is learning again and again to pray’.

2

The Revd Dr Stephen Burns is Stewart Associate Professor in Liturgical and Practical Theology, Formation Coordinator and Associate Dean, Trinity College Theological School, Melbourne, Australia. He is a presbyter in the orders of the Church of England.

References

3. The Episcopal Church, Daily Prayer for All Seasons (New York: Church Publishing, 2014)Google Scholar.

4. The following abbreviations are used: APBA: A Prayer Book for Australia (Anglican Church of Australia); BAS: Book of Alternative Services (Anglican Church of Canada); BCP 1979: Book of Common Prayer 1979 (The Episcopal Church); CCP: Celebrating Common Prayer (European Province of Anglican Franciscans); CWDP: Common Worship: Daily Prayer (Church of England); DPFAS: Daily Prayer for All Seasons (The Episcopal Church); EOW: Enriching Our Worship 1 (The Episcopal Church); NZPB: A New Zealand Prayer Book (Anglican Church of Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia); OMS: Our Modern Services (Anglican Church of the Province of Kenya); PDD: Prayer During the Day (part of CWDP).

5. The Episcopal Church, Book of Common Prayer, 1979 (New York: Church Publishing, 1979)Google Scholar.

6. Buchanan, Colin, Anglican Eucharistic Liturgies, 1985–2010: The Authorized Rites of the Anglican Communion (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2012)Google Scholar, itself the fourth in a trajectory of such compilations, all edited by Buchanan.

7. See, for example, Earey, Mark, Beyond Common Worship: Anglican Identity and Liturgical Diversity (London: SCM Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

8. Campbell, Jean, OSH, ‘The Daily Prayer of the Church’, in Ruth A. Meyers (ed.), A Prayer Book for the Twenty-first Century (New York: Church Publishing, 1996), pp. 2–15 Google Scholar (2).

9. BCP 1979, p. 143.

10. Gibaut, John, ‘The Daily Office’, in Charles Hefling and Cynthia Shattuck (eds.), The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 451–459 Google Scholar (456).

11. Gibaut, ‘Daily Office’, p. 456.

12. E.g. BCP 1979, p. 111.

13. Anglican Church of Canada, Book of Alternative Services (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1985), p. 64 Google Scholar, drawn from Praise God in Song (see p. 925).

14. Alternative Services, p. 925.

15. BCP 1979, p. 143.

16. These categories were later conveyed to a wide international audience in Bradshaw, Paul, Two Ways of Praying (London: SPCK, 1995)Google Scholar.

17. Alternative Services, pp. 36–43.

18. Anglican Church of Canada, Eucharistic Prayers, Services of the Word, and Night Prayer, Supplementary to The Book of Alternative Services (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 2001), pp. 46–67 Google Scholar.

19. Throughout this article, I refer to what the various prayer books call the ‘Lord’s Prayer’, ‘Prayer of Jesus’, and so on, as the Prayer That Jesus Taught.

20. Night Prayer, p. 81. ‘Abba, Amma, Beloved…’ was adapted from Cotter, Jim, Prayer at Night’s Approaching (Sheffield: Cairn Publications, 1983)Google Scholar.

21. Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia, A New Zealand Prayer Book (Auckland: Collins, 1989)Google Scholar. Note the shift away from use of the definite article.

22. New Zealand, p. 30.

23. New Zealand, p. 54.

24. New Zealand, pp. 64–65. Note also the like of the striking Poi chant, pp. 154–56, and local turnings of the psalms, e.g. p. 171.

25. New Zealand, pp. 110–11.

26. New Zealand, p. 189.

27. New Zealand, pp. 157–58.

28. New Zealand, p. 181. See Cotter, Night Prayer, p. 181, and The St. Community, Hilda, Women Included: A Book of Services and Prayers (London: SPCK, 1991), p. 63 Google Scholar.

29. For more on this point, see Burns, Stephen, ‘From Women Priests to Feminist Ecclesiology?’ in Fredrica Harris Thompsett (ed.), Looking Forward, Looking Backward: Forty Years of Women’s Ordination (New York: Morehouse, 2014), pp. 99–110 Google Scholar.

30. European Province of the Society of St Francis, Celebrating Common Prayer: A Version of the Daily Office (London: Mowbray, 1992)Google Scholar.

31. Steven, James, ‘Service of the Word’, in Juliette Day and Benjamin Gordon-Taylor (eds.), The Study of Liturgy and Worship (London: SPCK, 2013), pp. 148–156 Google Scholar. See also Cocksworth, Christopher and Fletcher, Jeremy, Common Worship: Daily Prayer (Cambridge: Grove Books, 2001), p. 23 Google Scholar: ‘The canons can be fulfilled through combinations of different orders rather than just through the saying of Morning or Evening Prayer as printed’, and Fletcher, Jeremy and Myers, Gilly, Using Common Worship: Daily Prayer: A Practical Guide to the New Services (London: Church House Publishing, 2002), pp. 117–119 Google Scholar.

32. The pages with pictures are Celebrating, pp. 284–87. The images themselves are not the same, but perhaps indebted to like-kind used in New Patterns for Worship (London: Church House Publishing, 1992).

33. Celebrating, p. 281.

34. Gibaut, ‘Office’, p. 456.

35. Anglican Church of Australia, A Prayer Book for Australia (Alexandria: Broughton Books, 1995), p. 432 Google Scholar.

36. Australia, p. 384.

37. The disjunctions of Christian calendar and Southern seasons are explored in several contributions to Burns, Stephen and Monro, Anita (eds.), Christian Worship in Australia: Inculturating the Liturgical Tradition (Strathfield: St Pauls, 2009)Google Scholar.

38. The recovery of Compline as a distinct office is a significant feature of many of the ritual books mentioned, and merits further study.

39. Daily Services from A Prayer Book for Australia (Alexandria: Broughton Books, 2006).

40. ‘Daily Prayer’, https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-worship/worship/texts/daily2.aspx (accessed 2 April 2016).

41. ‘Book of Common Prayer 2004 Texts’, http://ireland.anglican.org/worship/12 (accessed 2 April 2016).

42. Earey, Mark, Producing your Own Orders of Service (London: Church House Publishing, 2000)Google Scholar is an invaluable resource in this regard.

43. Anglican Church of the Province of Kenya, Our Modern Services (Nairobi: Uzima Press, 2002), pp. 1–33 Google ScholarPubMed.

44. Modern Services, p. 28.

45. Modern Services, p. 2.

46. Modern Services, p. 18.

47. This concern is explored in Jagessar, Michael N. and Burns, Stephen, Christian Worship: Postcolonial Perspectives (Sheffield: Equinox, 2011), pp. 33–52 Google Scholar.

48. Modern Services, p. 19.

49. Modern Services, p. 3.

50. Modern Services, p. 20.

51. Modern Services, p. 19.

52. Modern Services, pp. 11–12.

53. Modern Services, pp. 14, 26.

54. Modern Services, p. 1.

55. Our Modern Services, p. 17. The inconsistent use of capitalization in the blessing follows the book.

56. Modern Services, p. 17.

57. Modern Services, p. 5.

58. Modern Services, p. 15.

59. Church of England, Common Worship: Daily Prayer (London: Church House Publishing, 2006)Google Scholar. See also Bradshaw, Paul and Jones, Simon, ‘Daily Prayer’, in Paul Bradshaw (ed.), Companion to Common Worship, Volume 2 (London: SPCK, 2006), pp. 1–29 Google Scholar.

60. Other non-official books had by this time also been published, also shaped by CCP, and including two by David Stancliffe, the Bishop of Salisbury, who served as the chairperson of the Liturgical Commission during the time of the introduction of Common Worship. He produced both Celebrating Daily Prayer: A Version of Common Worship Daily Prayer (London: Continuum, 2005) and The Pilgrim Prayerbook (London: Continuum, 2003). These both provided good models of how CCP/CWDP materials might be adapted, and because of Stancliffe’s own role as both bishop and commission-chair, set authoritative precedents for such adaptation.

61. Common Worship, pp. 730–31. Both refrain and psalm-prayer in italics, as in the book itself.

62. Common Worship, pp. 304–305.

63. Common Worship, pp. 306–307.

64. Common Worship, pp. 308–11.

65. Common Worship, pp. 312–14.

66. Common Worship, pp. 315–16.

67. Common Worship, pp. 317–18.

68. Common Worship, pp. 319–24.

69. Common Worship, pp. 325–30.

70. Common Worship, p. 304.

71. Common Worship, p. 111.

72. Common Worship, p. 318.

73. Church of England, Patterns for Worship in the Church of England (London: Church House Publishing, 1989)Google Scholar, republished several times, subsequently, in variant forms, as New Patterns for Worship. See also, Burns, Stephen, Worship in Context: Liturgical Theology, Children and the City (Peterborough: Epworth, 2006), pp. 25–53 Google Scholar.

74. Common Worship, p. xiii.

75. Common Worship, p. xiii.

76. Common Worship, p. 21.

77. Common Worship, p. 20.

78. Common Worship, pp. 20–21. As noted above at n. 16, these categories of desert and urban/city styles of everyday prayer had been used in the introduction to the divine office in the BAS, and in-between its publication and the arrival of CWDP, Bradshaw’s important study, Two Ways of Praying had been published in which the constructs of city/desert prayer became much more widely known.

79. Common Worship, p. 25.

80. Common Worship, p. 33.

81. This ‘pillar’ lectionary provision (as it came to be known) can be used across CWDP and recognizes that the office may not be engaged every day, and was crafted with visitors to English cathedrals especially in mind: the Scripture portions needed to be intelligible standing alone for occasional or irregular participants.

82. E.g. Common Worship, p. 27.

83. Common Worship, pp. 362–65.

84. Common Worship, p. 21.

85. Common Worship, p. 20.

86. Common Worship, p. ix.

87. Common Worship, p. xv.

88. The Episcopal Church, Enriching Our Worship 1 (New York: Church Publishing, 1998), p. 8 Google Scholar.

89. Enriching, pp. 9, 14.

90. Ramshaw, Gail, ‘A Look at New Anglican Eucharistic Prayers’, Worship 86 (2012): pp. 161–167 Google Scholar, laments the lack of inclusive language in Anglican eucharistic liturgies and much of her critique is apt also to many Anglican everyday services.

91. Enriching, p. 17. Italics as original.

92. Enriching, p. 16.

93. Enriching, p. 20.

94. Enriching, p. 25.

95. Enriching, pp. 39–41.

96. All Seasons, p. vii.

97. All Seasons, p. vii.

98. All Seasons, p. viii.

99. All Seasons, p. viii.

100. All Seasons, p. viii.

101. All Seasons, p. viii.

102. BCP 1979, p. 142.

103. All Seasons, p. viii.

104. All Seasons, p. ix.

105. All Seasons, p. ix.

106. The use of Taizé material had been commended by Campbell in her contribution to A Prayer Book for the Twenty-first Century.

107. All Seasons, p. 19.

108. E.g. All Seasons, pp. 9, 22.

109. All Seasons, p. 13.

110. All Seasons, p. 6.

111. All Seasons, p. 152.

112. Wonder, Love and Praise: A Supplement to The Hymnal 1982 (New York: Church Publishing, 1997).

113. All Seasons, pp. 103 (citing Ephesians), 110 (using 1 Peter).

114. All Seasons, pp. 46, 160. The Church of Ireland, Book of Common Prayer (Dublin: Columba Press, 2004)Google Scholar is acknowledged on p. 160.

115. With collects, for e.g. All Seasons, pp. 36, 58–59.

116. Here I allude to a characteristic of emergent worship: see Gay, Doug, Remixing the Church: Towards an Emerging Ecclesiology (London: SCM Press, 2011)Google Scholar. Other marks of DPFAS, discussed below, perhaps betray the same influence.

117. Revised Common Lectionary Prayers (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002).

118. All Seasons, p. 9.

119. All Seasons, p. 66.

120. All Seasons, p. 68, quoting Wisdom 6.12.

121. All Seasons, p. 4.

122. Prime, Epiphany: All Seasons, p. 44. See ‘A New Creed was adopted by the United Church in 1968’, http://www.united-church.ca/community-faith/welcome-united-church-canada/new-creed (accessed 2 April 2016).

123. All Seasons, p. 158, notes that the introductions are based largely on the published work of Vicki Black.

124. All Seasons, pp. 20, 23.

125. See Gray-Reeves, Mary and Perham, Michael, The Hospitality of God: Emergent Worship for a Missional Church (London: SPCK, 2010), pp. 64–65 Google Scholar, 95.

126. All Seasons, p. 2.

127. All Seasons, p. 18.

128. All Seasons, p. 49.

129. All Seasons, p. 57.

130. All Seasons, p. 44.

131. All Seasons, p. 78.

132. All Seasons cites the author Kafir, the anthology from which the quotation is drawn speaks of Kabir.

133. All Seasons, p. 93, citing Daniel Landinsky (trans.), Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West; See All Seasons, p. 161.

134. All Seasons, p. 106.

135. All Seasons, p. 120.

136. All Seasons, p. 31.

137. All Seasons, p. 53.

138. Hearn, George, ‘The Daily Services’, in Gillian Varcoe (ed.), A Prayer Book for Australia: A Practical Commentary (Alexandria: Broughton Books, 1997), pp. 85–91 Google Scholar (87).

139. Some use of art might also have helped. Note discussion above about CCP, and also that art was used to very good effect in NZPB as well as in more recent North American resources such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 2006). On a more basic textual level, use of bold-type in text for call-and-response goes wrong several times, for, e.g., All Seasons, pp. 69/71, 72/73, 96.

140. Notes go haywire between Christmas and Epiphany: All Seasons, notes 37/38; p. 159. See Earey, Producing your Own Orders for ideas as to how presentation might have been improved.

141. All Seasons, p. vii.

142. E.g. Common Worship, p. 20.

143. Common Worship, p. 21.

144. Bradshaw, Paul, ‘The Daily Offices in the Prayer Book Tradition’, Anglican Theological Review 95 (2013), pp. 447–460 Google Scholar (458).

145. On the wider context of liturgical renewal in the Episcopal Church, see Cones, Bryan and Burns, Stephen, ‘A Prayer Book for the Twenty-first Century?’ Anglican Theological Review 96 (2014), pp. 639–660 Google Scholar.

146. It is perhaps presumed in talk of adaptability and so on, but never stated, that DPFAS is intended as a resource from which users will select one or some hours but not them all.

147. Gibaut, ‘Office’, p. 458.

148. Patterns for Worship (London: Church House Publishing, 1989), p. 6, etc. On Patterns for Worship, see Burns, Worship in Context, pp. 25–53. For a somewhat comparable list from the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation, see ‘Liturgy and Anglican Identity: A Statement and Study Guide by the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation, Prague 2005’, http://ialc2015.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Liturgy-and-Anglican-Identity.pdf (accessed 2 April 2016).

149. As well as web-link in the previous note, see ‘A record of a meeting of members of the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation at Ripon College, Cuddesdon 3–9 August 2003’, http://www.anglicancommunion.org/media/121023/2003ialc.pdf (accessed 2 April 2016). See further Meyers, Ruth and Gibson, Paul (eds.), Worship-shaped Life: Liturgical Formation and the People of God (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

150. On Evangelical Lutheran Worship’s daily prayer provisions, see Ramshaw, Gail and Teig, Mons, Keeping Time: The Church’s Year. Using Evangelical Lutheran Worship Volume 3 (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 2009), pp. 143–194 Google Scholar. For brief notes across an ecumenical spectrum outside North America, including some surprising turns to use of liturgical forms and lectionary patterns in traditions that have not previously provided such for daily prayer, see Burns, Stephen, Embracing the Day: Exploring Daily Prayer (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

151. Gibaut, ‘Office’, p. 459.