Bidding Prayer in Anglican Worship
A bidding prayer in Anglican worship is a formal invitation to pray for specified persons, needs, and conditions of the Church and the world. The word bidding means a calling or directing of the congregation to prayer rather than a request for money. In Anglican usage it is most often associated with prayers before a sermon, with services of lessons and carols, and with older forms of public intercession that stand behind the Book of Common Prayer tradition. It is related to, but distinct from, a litany, a collect, and the later “Prayers of the People.”
Historical background
The bidding prayer developed from medieval English patterns in which the preacher or officiant named the intentions for which the people were to pray. Such prayers commonly included the Church, rulers, clergy, the local community, the needy, the sick, benefactors, and the departed. Because these intentions were often connected with the sermon, the bidding prayer functioned as a bridge between proclamation and intercession.
After the English Reformation, Anglican worship retained structured public prayer while reshaping it in vernacular, reformed, and parish-oriented forms. Canon 55 of the Church of England directed preachers to move the people to prayer before sermons, preserving the older pattern of naming objects of intercession even as the regular offices of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer gave Anglican congregations a fuller framework of common prayer.[1]
The Book of Common Prayer did not make the bidding prayer a separate daily office. Instead, it incorporated public intercession into ordered services such as the Great Litany, the Prayer for the Church Militant, and the prayers of the Daily Office. In the 1662 Communion office, the sermon is followed by offertory material and the prayer “for the whole state of Christ’s Church militant here in earth,” placing intercession within the eucharistic action rather than leaving it solely to the preacher’s discretion.[2]
Liturgical use
In practice, a bidding prayer may take several forms. In a preaching service, the minister may invite the congregation to pray for the universal Church, civil authorities, pastors and teachers, the afflicted, and all who seek God’s mercy. In a service of lessons and carols, the bidding prayer usually introduces the readings by setting the congregation’s attention on the saving work of God and then directing prayer for the Church and the world. The familiar Advent and Christmas forms used in Anglican settings are examples of this use.[3]
The bidding prayer is not simply a list of announcements. Its liturgical purpose is to gather the assembly into a single act of intercession. It normally uses a solemn and corporate voice, avoiding highly personal or partisan language. The officiant “bids” the people to pray; the congregation may then pray silently, respond aloud, or join in a concluding collect or the Lord’s Prayer.
Modern Anglican provinces use varied terminology. Some rites speak of intercessions, prayers of the people, or biddings. The older term remains especially useful where the prayer is explicitly invitatory: it names the matters for prayer and allows the congregation to participate by attention, silence, response, or common conclusion.
Theological significance
The bidding prayer reflects the Anglican conviction that worship is common prayer. The minister does not pray as a private individual on behalf of passive hearers, but gives ordered voice to the Church’s duty to intercede. This pattern joins pastoral breadth with liturgical discipline: the Church prays for its own life, for public authority, for human need, for the spread of the gospel, and for the communion of saints.
It also illustrates the continuity and reform characteristic of Anglican liturgy. Older English customs of public intercession were not simply discarded, but were adapted within prayer book worship. The result is a form that can be recognizably catholic in scope, reformed in its scriptural and vernacular clarity, and pastoral in its concern for the whole community.
References
- ↑ William James Miller, The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1901), s.v. “Bidding Prayer.”
- ↑ The Book of Common Prayer (1662), “The Order for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion.”
- ↑ The Episcopal Church, The Book of Occasional Services (2022), “Advent Festival of Lessons and Carols” and “Christmas Festival of Lessons and Carols.”