Common Prayer and Anglican Unity
Common Prayer and Anglican Unity describes the way the 1928 Book of Common Prayer forms a congregation by giving it a shared scriptural confession, intercession, praise, and sacramental worship. In this sense, “common” does not mean merely familiar or uniform: the Prayer Book asks God to make a people one in truth, charity, and holy living.
Prayer Book Texts
In the daily office the Church prays not only for its own members, but for the whole Church and the world:
O GOD, the Creator and Preserver of all mankind, we humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of men; that thou wouldest be pleased to make thy ways known unto them, thy saving health unto all nations. More especially we pray for thy holy Church universal; that it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life.
The conclusion of the office names the action as shared petition, not an aggregation of private devotions:
ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplications unto thee; and dost promise that when two or three are gathered together in thy Name thou wilt grant their requests; Fulfil now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants, as may be most expedient for them; granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting. Amen.
At Holy Communion, the intercession for the Church makes the content of that unity explicit:
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: And grant that all those who do confess thy holy Name may agree in the truth of thy holy Word, and live in unity and godly love.
The catechetical material supplies an ecclesiology for those petitions:
The Church is the Body of which Jesus Christ is the Head, and all baptized people are the members. … The Church is described in the Creeds as One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. … One; because it is one Body under one Head.
Common Prayer is ordered toward the unity Christ gives rather than toward a lowest-common-denominator agreement. Saint Paul urges Christians to preserve “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” grounding that exhortation in the confession of one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, and one baptism (Ephesians 4:3–6). The 1928 office answers that apostolic pattern by putting the Church’s common confession and its common intercessions on the lips of minister and people.
The Prayer Book also makes participation audible. The priest’s prayers, the people’s responses, the Psalter, the Creeds, and the Amen make worship a corporate act. The General Thanksgiving even directs that it “may be said by the Congregation with the Minister.”
ALMIGHTY God, Father of all mercies, we, thine unworthy servants, do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all men; … [give us] that we show forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up our selves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days.
This guards against treating liturgical unity as a merely verbal achievement. The common voice asks for a common life: truth, peace, righteousness, and service.
Historical Anglican judgment
The 1662 English Preface provides a useful historical account of why a received liturgy may serve unity without making every ceremony unchangeable. Its argument distinguishes the Church’s enduring worship from rites that may be altered for grave reasons.
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. … the particular Forms of Divine worship, and the Rites and Ceremonies appointed to be used therein, [are] in their own nature indifferent, and alterable.
The same Preface states its public end with unusual clarity:
Our general aim therefore in this undertaking was, not to gratify this or that party in any their unreasonable demands; but to do that, which to our best understandings we conceived might most tend to the preservation of Peace and Unity in the Church; the procuring of Reverence, and exciting of Piety and Devotion in the Publick Worship of God.
That historical judgment is not a claim that any one national book exhausts the Church’s catholic unity. It does, however, illuminate the 1928 book’s disciplined pattern: a Church can pray recognizably together while its authorized forms are revised by lawful ecclesial authority.
Thomas Ken gave the pastoral side of the same conviction. In his 1688 Lenten pastoral letter, he urged devotion to the offices and Litany because public prayer joins Christians in intercession rather than leaving prayer only to private choice.
be sure then to offer up to God every day the Morning and Evening Prayer; offer it up in your Family at least, or rather as far as your circumstances may possibly permit, offer it up in the Church, especially if you live in a great Town, and say over the Litany every Morning during the whole Lent.
Use in parish life
For a parish, Common Prayer and Anglican Unity are practiced by preparing the appointed lessons, making the responses deliberately, joining the Church’s intercessions, and receiving the Sacraments in faith. Clergy should not use the phrase as a slogan for superficial harmony: the 1928 text asks the Church to agree in the truth of God’s Word and to live in godly love. Lay worshippers can test that unity in ordinary habits—praying for the whole Church, bearing one another’s needs in the intercessions, and allowing the shared words to form shared obedience.
See Also
- Book of Common Prayer (1928)
- Morning Prayer (1928 BCP)
- Holy Communion (1928 BCP)
- Theology of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer
- Thirty-nine Articles
References
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), “A Prayer for all Conditions of Men,” Morning Prayer; The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: Morning Prayer.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), “A Prayer of St. Chrysostom,” Morning Prayer; The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: Morning Prayer.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), “Prayer for the whole state of Christ’s Church,” Holy Communion; The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: Holy Communion.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), “An Office of Instruction,” instruction concerning the Church; The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: Instruction and Confirmation.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), “A General Thanksgiving” and its rubric, Morning Prayer; The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: Morning Prayer.
- ↑ The Church of England, The Book of Common Prayer (1662), “The Preface,” official Church of England text; The Preface.
- ↑ The Church of England, The Book of Common Prayer (1662), “The Preface,” paragraph beginning “Our general aim,” official Church of England text; The Preface.
- ↑ Thomas Ken, A Pastoral Letter from the Bishop of Bath and Wells (1688), pp. 2–3, transcription by Project Canterbury; A Pastoral Letter from the Bishop of Bath and Wells.