1928 BCP and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer

1928 BCP and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer describes the historical and liturgical relation between the English Book of Common Prayer of 1662 and the American Book of Common Prayer of 1928. The 1662 book was the inherited English Prayer Book of the colonial Church, and its order of Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, Litany, Holy Communion, pastoral offices, Psalter, and Articles remained the principal Anglican pattern from which American revision worked. The 1928 BCP is therefore deeply continuous with 1662, but not a simple reprint: it adapts English formularies to an American church and receives Scottish and earlier English eucharistic material in ways that especially affect Holy Communion.

Revision and Continuity

The 1662 Preface gives a classic Anglican account of liturgical revision. It defends continuity in the "main Body and Essentials" of common prayer while allowing alteration for weighty reasons. That principle is directly relevant to reading the 1928 American book: the American Church did not treat liturgy as private invention, but neither did it regard every inherited English political or ceremonial form as immutable.

It hath been the wisdom of the Church of England, ever since the first compiling of her Publick Liturgy, to keep the mean between the two extremes, of too much stiffness in refusing, and of too much easiness in admitting any variation from it... Yet so, as that the main Body and Essentials of it (as well in the chiefest Materials, as in the frame and order thereof) have still continued the same unto this day.

E. Clowes Chorley, writing after the 1928 American revision, describes the 1662 settlement as the Fifth English Prayer Book and notes that it retained major features to which Presbyterian critics had objected. His account is useful because it identifies 1662 not as a neutral text but as a Restoration settlement, shaped by the Savoy Conference, Convocation, Parliament, and the Act of Uniformity.

The next step was taken by Convocation and on December 20, 1661, the revised Book was approved by the Convocations of Canterbury and York. It was then submitted to Parliament and the new Act of Uniformity received the royal assent on May 19, 1662. So the Fifth English Book of Common Prayer was issued by the joint authority of Church and State.

English Inheritance in America

Before the American Revolution, colonial Anglicans were Church of England members who used the English Prayer Book, with the Bishop of London functioning as their distant diocesan authority. Procter and Frere summarize the colonial situation in terms that explain why 1662 remained the baseline for the first American Prayer Book and later revisions.

Churchmen in all the thirteen Colonies considered themselves members of the Church of England, acknowledged the somewhat shadowy authority of the Bishop of London as their Diocesan, and used the Prayer Book of the English Church. In fact, the use of the Prayer Book was one of the distinguishing marks of Churchmen, then as now.

The American Revolution forced revision at precisely the points where the English book assumed monarchy, establishment, and royal supremacy. The 1928 book inherits the American solution: prayers for the President and civil authority replace English royal prayers, while the basic structure of common prayer remains recognizably Anglican. The fundamental American principle, recorded by Procter and Frere from the early organizing period, was adherence to the Church of England's liturgy so far as American circumstances allowed.

That the said Church shall maintain the Doctrines of the Gospel as now held by the Church of England, and shall adhere to the Liturgy of the said Church as far as shall be consistent with the American Revolution and the Constitutions of the respective States.

Daily Office Continuity

Morning Prayer in the 1662 book begins with Scripture sentences, the exhortation to confession, the General Confession, priestly Absolution, the Lord's Prayer, versicles, Venite, psalmody, lessons, canticles, Creed, and collects. The 1928 Morning Prayer keeps that order but adds American and pastoral flexibility: on ordinary days the minister may pass from the sentences directly to the Lord's Prayer, and when confession and absolution are omitted the office may move to the opening versicles.

At the beginning of Morning Prayer the Minister shall read with a loud voice one or more of these Sentences of the Scriptures that follow. And then he shall say that which is written after the said Sentences.

On any day, save a Day of Fasting or Abstinence, or on any day when the Litany or Holy Communion is immediately to follow, the Minister may, at his discretion, pass at once from the Sentences to the Lord's Prayer, first pronouncing, The Lord be with you. Answer. And with thy spirit. Minister. Let us pray.

This comparison shows the 1928 book's conservative character. It does not abandon the 1662 office; it shortens or permits omission in specified circumstances, especially when the Litany or Holy Communion follows. The theological order remains the same: Scripture summons the congregation, confession and absolution prepare it, psalmody and lessons teach it, and the collects gather its prayer.

Holy Communion: Shared Order and American Revision

The Communion office shows both continuity and divergence. The 1662 order begins with the Lord's Prayer, Collect for Purity, Decalogue, collects for the King, Collect of the Day, Epistle, Gospel, Creed, notices, sermon, offertory sentences, alms, the Prayer for the Church Militant, exhortations, confession, absolution, Comfortable Words, Sursum Corda, Sanctus, Prayer of Humble Access, Prayer of Consecration, Communion, Lord's Prayer, post-Communion prayers, Gloria in excelsis, and blessing. The 1928 order keeps much of this architecture, but revises the civil material, enriches the offertory and intercession, and prints a fuller consecration prayer with oblation and invocation.

The 1662 offertory rubric and Church Militant prayer already include features that the 1928 book receives and reshapes:

When these Sentences are in reading, the Deacons, Church-wardens, or other fit persons appointed for that purpose, shall receive the Alms for the Poor, and other devotions of the people, in a decent Bason to be provided by the Parish for that purpose; and reverently bring it to the Priest, who shall humbly present and place it upon the holy Table. And when there is a Communion, the Priest shall then place upon the Table so much Bread and Wine as he shall think sufficient. After which done, the Priest shall say, Let us pray for the whole state of Christ's Church militant here in earth.

The 1928 book retains the presentation of alms and bread and wine, but its prayer no longer says "militant here in earth" and its language for rulers is Americanized. It prays for "all Christian Rulers" and asks that they may "truly and impartially administer justice," rather than naming the English monarch.

Let us pray for the whole state of Christ's Church. Almighty and everliving God, who by thy holy Apostle hast taught us to make prayers, and supplications, and to give thanks for all men; We humbly beseech thee most mercifully to accept our [alms and] oblations, and to receive these our prayers, which we offer unto thy Divine Majesty; beseeching thee to inspire continually the Universal Church with the spirit of truth, unity, and concord.

The Consecration Prayer

The most theologically visible difference between 1662 and 1928 lies in the Prayer of Consecration. The 1662 prayer gives the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, asks that communicants receiving the bread and wine according to Christ's institution may be partakers of his Body and Blood, and then proceeds to the Words of Institution and Communion.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death on the Cross for our redemption; who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; and did institute, and in his holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that his precious death, until his coming again: Hear us, O merciful Father, we most humbly beseech thee; and grant that we receiving these thy creatures of bread and wine, according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ's holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed body and blood.

The 1928 Prayer of Consecration begins with similar language but continues beyond 1662's shorter form. It includes a distinct memorial-oblation paragraph and an invocation upon the gifts:

WHEREFORE O Lord and heavenly Father, according to the institution of thy dearly beloved Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, we, thy humble servants, do celebrate and make here before thy Divine Majesty, with these thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto thee, the memorial thy Son hath commanded us to make; having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension; rendering unto thee most hearty thanks for the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same.

AND we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us; and, of thy almighty goodness, vouchsafe to bless and sanctify, with thy Word and Holy Spirit, these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine; that we, receiving them according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ's holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood.

Procter and Frere identify this as the most important American departure from the English book. The source of that departure was not a rejection of Anglican tradition but the Scottish Communion Office, mediated through Bishop Samuel Seabury and the early American Church.

And, most important of all the changes made in the whole book, the Scottish form of the Prayer of Consecration was adopted, with a single modification, itself in the direction of primitive usage... The adoption of the Scottish form of the Prayer of Consecration, derived from primitive Eastern liturgies through the Service-book of the English Nonjurors, was due to Bishop Seabury.

Theological Meaning

The 1928 BCP should therefore be read as an American Prayer Book within the 1662 family, not as an isolated national rite. Its Daily Office, psalmody, lectionary logic, catechetical assumptions, absolution language, and Communion order remain recognizably English Prayer Book structures. Its alterations are nevertheless real. Politically, prayers for monarch and royal family give way to prayers for the President and civil authority. Pastorally, the offices include more discretionary rubrics. Eucharistically, the 1928 book receives the Scottish-American form of consecration with explicit memorial, oblation, and invocation.

For classical Anglican theology, the comparison guards against two errors. First, the 1928 BCP is not a free-standing Anglo-Catholic replacement for 1662; its penitential order, Scripture saturation, Articles, and once-for-all sacrificial language remain deeply Reformation Anglican. Second, it is not merely a conservative American edition of the English book; its Communion office deliberately restores and develops elements that 1662 did not print in the same form.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• History of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer
• Holy Communion (1928 BCP)
• Prayer of Consecration (1928 BCP)
• Prayer for the Whole State of Christ's Church (1928 BCP)
• Daily Office (1928 BCP)
• 1928 BCP and the 1549 Book of Common Prayer

External Links

• The 1928 U.S. Book of Common Prayer
• The 1662 Book of Common Prayer: Society of Archbishop Justus index
• The 1662 Book of Common Prayer as printed by John Baskerville
• E. Clowes Chorley, The New American Prayer Book
• Procter and Frere, "The American Prayer Book"