Obedience in the 1928 BCP Catechism

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Obedience in the 1928 BCP Catechism is the Prayer Book's account of the Christian life as the grateful keeping of the baptismal promise: to "keep God's holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of my life." It is not an alternative way of earning God's favour. The Catechism places duty after baptism and the Creed, derives it from the Ten Commandments and Christ's summary of the law, and immediately directs the learner to ask for grace in the Lord's Prayer.

The Catechism's account of duty

After rehearsing the Decalogue, the Catechism does not leave the commandments as a list. It asks what is chiefly learned from them and gives a twofold answer:

I learn two things; my duty towards God, and my duty towards my Neighbour.

[1]

The first duty is worshipful and trusting love, deliberately echoing the great commandment (Matthew 22:37):

My duty towards God is To believe in him, to fear him, And to love him with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength: To worship him, to give him thanks: To put my whole trust in him, to call upon him: To honour his holy Name and his Word: And to serve him truly all the days of my life.

[2]

Faith, fear, love, worship, thanksgiving, trust, prayer, honouring God's name and word, and service are therefore one pattern of obedience. “Fear” here belongs with love and trust, not with servile dread: the learner acknowledges God as God and receives his word as authoritative. The sequence also prevents devotion from becoming merely inward. To believe and trust issue in worship, thanksgiving, prayer, and a life of service.

Love of neighbour

The second duty interprets the latter commandments through the golden rule (Matthew 7:12) and carries obedience into family, public, ecclesial, economic, and bodily life:

My duty towards my Neighbour is To love him as myself, and to do to all men as I would they should do unto me: To love, honour, and succour my father and mother: To honour and obey the civil authority: To submit myself to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters: To order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters: To hurt nobody by word or deed: To be true and just in all my dealings: To bear no malice nor hatred in my heart: To keep my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue from evil speaking, lying, and slandering: To keep my body in temperance, soberness, and chastity: Not to covet nor desire other men's goods; But to learn and labour truly to get mine own living, And to do my duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to call me.

[3]

This passage must be read as a whole. It begins with love of neighbour and the golden rule, so its instructions concerning parents, civil authority, pastors, teachers, and social station cannot be separated from the preceding prohibition on harming another by word or deed, nor from the duties of truth, justice, mercy, chastity, honest labour, and contentment. The Catechism forms habits rather than offering a single political theory of obedience. Where human authority commands what contradicts God's command, the apostles' answer remains normative: “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29, Authorized Version).

John Henry Hobart, Bishop of New York, made the same connection between baptismal profession and practical discipleship when preparing candidates for Confirmation:

Thus, living a life of faith in the Son of God; humble and fervent in prayer and devotion, in secret, in his family, and in the house of God; walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless; and evermore studying, through God's grace, to keep a conscience void of offense towards God and towards man; the Christian will continually advance in piety and virtue.

[4]

Grace, prayer, and baptismal promise

The Catechism explicitly rejects self-reliance. Its moral teaching ends by returning the learner to grace and prayer:

My good Child, know this; that thou art not able to do these things of thyself, nor to walk in the Commandments of God, and to serve him, without his special grace; which thou must learn at all times to call for by diligent prayer.

[5]

Thus the Catechism's next move is the Lord's Prayer. Obedience is neither autonomous achievement nor bare assent; it is the baptized person's response to grace, continually sustained by asking the Father for what he commands. Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, gave a close Anglican reading of this line in an exposition written for his diocese:

The Catechism truly teaches all Christians, that they are not able of themselves to do those things they have vow'd in their Baptism to do, namely, To walk in the Commandments of God, and to serve him, without his special Grace, or favorable Assistance, and this they are to learn at all times to call upon God for, by diligent Prayer.

[6]

The 1928 Prayer Book connects this catechesis to the Church's pastoral practice. Its rubric requires parish clergy to instruct or examine children in the Catechism and directs that those able to say the Creed, Lord's Prayer, Ten Commandments, and answers be brought to the bishop for Confirmation. Obedience is therefore taught within the worshipping and accountable life of the Church, not as private moralism.[7]

Place in the 1928 Prayer Book

The sequence of the Catechism is itself theological: Christian Covenant, Faith, Duty, Prayer, and Sacraments. Edward W. Averill's 1929 explanation of the newly revised American Prayer Book observes:

Turning now to the content of the Catechism, it divides itself into five parts which explain respectively the Christian Covenant, the Faith, Duty, Prayer, and Sacraments. With the additional matter in the Office of Instruction, it contains in epitome what a Christian ought to know to his soul's health.

[8]

For teaching, this order matters. Baptism (1928 BCP) names the promise; the Creed sets the promise within the faith confessed; the Commandments give its shape in love of God and neighbour; the Lord's Prayer asks for the grace required; and the Holy Communion (1928 BCP) nourishes those called to continue in that life. The Catechism therefore holds together evangelical grace and concrete duty, formation in the home and parish, and preparation for Confirmation (1928 BCP).

See Also

External Links

References

  1. ↑ The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, According to the Use of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (New York: Church Pension Fund, 1928), A Catechism, p. 579, 1928 BCP: A Catechism (accessed 16 October 2026).
  2. ↑ The Book of Common Prayer (1928), A Catechism, p. 579, 1928 BCP: A Catechism.
  3. ↑ The Book of Common Prayer (1928), A Catechism, pp. 579–580, 1928 BCP: A Catechism.
  4. ↑ John Henry Hobart, A Catechism for Confirmation, Proper to be Learned by Those Who Are Preparing for That Holy Ordinance (New York: Protestant Episcopal Tract Society; T. & J. Swords, 1819), pp. 25–26, Project Canterbury transcription. Hobart's exposition is a historical Anglican interpretation of the relation of faith, grace, prayer, and moral duty.
  5. ↑ The Book of Common Prayer (1928), A Catechism, p. 580, 1928 BCP: A Catechism.
  6. ↑ Thomas Ken, An Exposition on the Church-Catechism, or, The Practice of Divine Love, Composed for the Diocese of Bath & Wells (London: Charles Brome and William Clarke, 1685), opening address, Project Canterbury transcription. Ken identifies the Catechism's theological logic: baptismal obligation depends upon divine grace sought in prayer.
  7. ↑ The Book of Common Prayer (1928), A Catechism, pp. 581–582, 1928 BCP: rubric following the Catechism.
  8. ↑ Edward W. Averill, Talks on the Prayer Book (Fond du Lac, WI: The Parish Press, 1929), p. 50, Project Canterbury transcription. This near-contemporary Anglican commentary interprets the Catechism's ordered place in the 1928 Prayer Book.
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