The Book of Common Prayer has shaped English spirituality for nearly 450 years. What are its enduring qualities? Readers of “The Guardian” have been entertained, educated and provoked to think by a series of articles by AN Wilson over the past three Mondays.
Part 1: The Book of Common Prayer, An English ragbag.
Wilson commented, “The BCP was a bold attempt, on a national level, to bring together a whole community around what was then a new concept of uniformity. This powerful notion was enacted for the Latin church 21 years later when the Council of Trent delivered the Missal of Pius V. The BCP allowed for celebrations in Latin (indeed there is one termly in Oxford to this day), but required that worship should normally be conducted "in a language understanded of the people". Vernacular liturgy was a reform for which Roman Catholics had to wait another 400 years.
“The BCP's English is not, in fact timeless, although some will disagree. Call it a fortunate historical accident or a blessing from the Lord, but the book is very much a product of its age, pulled together as modern English was being minted. This gives it a vibrancy and resonance like you find in Shakespeare, Marlowe or Webster.
“The BCP's vocabulary is characteristically simple and direct, the flow channelled and layered carefully according the principles of classical rhetoric. What of the content? If the world's greatest dramatists have scarcely an original plot between them, much the same is true of western Christian worship books. There was no uniform liturgy before the 16th century. Everything was a variation on a theme.”
Part 2: Wetting baby's head
Wilson states, “Christian life begins with baptism. The Book of Common Prayer (BCP) baptism liturgy used to fill Sunday afternoons up and down the land, and it's still worth trying to understand what Cranmer thought he was doing and the view of humanity that underlies his book.
“Cranmer required that baptism be administered freely, or to use a weasel word popularised in the 1960's, "indiscriminately," to babies.
Thus BCP Vicars were forbidden to discriminate about whom they would baptise – when all's said and done, the Vicar was only the Vicar, not God. The BCP required parents to give overnight notice that they wanted their baby baptised, but if they couldn't manage that, turning up on the morning would do. Baptism is administered in faith, "nothing doubting but that [God] favorably alloweth this charitable work of ours, in bringing these children to his holy baptism."
Part 3: Marriage - “An excellent mystery of coupling”.
Wilson states that,“With the Book of Common Prayer, marriage takes its place at the heart of domestic and civil society.”
He continues, “The solemnisation of matrimony, best loved and known of the Book of Common Prayer's occasional offices, looks backward and forward. The rite recapitulates, in terms reminiscent of Chaucer's Parson's Tale, medieval traditions of ring, joined hands and vows. Looking forward, it brings these into church from the porch, where couples had gathered to get married, but only in the comparatively recent past.
“Early Christians had no particular coupling liturgy, but were simply married and given in marriage like everybody else. They often held exalted views of fidelity and saw marriage as a mirror of mystical theology, but their marriage ceremonies were not distinctive.
“BCP's preface gathers the dearly beloved in the sight of God and in the face of this congregation.”
The series has provoked a quite outstanding response from readers.
The series of articles is well worth a vist -
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/06/book-common-prayer
No comments:
Post a Comment