What is Common Prayer?

Americans have a fascination with things that are “one of a kind.” Perhaps that is why “common” is often taken to mean “ordinary,” “unrefined,” “plain,” “overly familiar,” or even “second rate.” When we refer to “Common Prayer,” we enter a different realm altogether. In this sense “common” refers to the property and interests of an entire community which is greater than the sum of its parts. The desire to worship God in the highest form possible is quite the opposite of “ordinary.” Another definition of “common” refers to the interests of an entire community is that it is the opposite of “private.” Whether “private” means “out of sight” or “that which is the sole property of an individual” it is outside the realm of “Common Prayer.”

Since the basic meaning of “common” in the vocabulary of religious English is “that which the people possess together in relation to God and in which they unite as his people,” “Common Prayer” is the public worship of God, in which the people of God unite in the public place of worship, the consecrated building, using an approved form of service, under the godly governance of a legitimate ecclesiastical authority, within the universal Church of Jesus Christ. This does not preclude godly devotions of a local nature. The Church or jurisdiction finds its shared identity as a coherent people of God. Thus “Common Prayer” must always come first, and then local devotions when the common work of prayer is done. The loss of true Common Prayer can also diminish the value of other sorts of prayer, local or private, because there is no longer a common model, thought, knowledge, faith, or standard by which to evaluate and improve them.

Prior to the reformation, the term “common prayer” in England referred to the Latin Daily Offices said by the clergy and some of the laity in the chancel of each and every parish church. This was not intended as private prayers of the clergy but as the public gathering of the people of the parish to make the worship of Almighty God a part of their everyday lives.

“The Book of the Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other rites and ceremonies of the Church: after the use of the Church of England” is an imposing title. The phrase “after the use of the Church of England” implies there is a form of prayer “common” to the entire Christian Church throughout the world and throughout history, in whatever language the public, regular prayers of the Church are said. What Archbishop Cranmer offered in English was meant to be a conservative document – the presentation of the “common” (understood as “universal”) prayer of the Christian Church, after the use of the Church of England.

Common Prayer has been accused of being a replacement for the thoughts and prayers of our hearts. It is rather a way of cultivating those thoughts and prayers by a corporate life of worship that forms them and directs them in a trustworthy way that gives certain glory to God. Richard Hooker argued that the preaching services of the Puritans and Presbyterians are not “common prayer.” He admits the Christian people that attend such preaching services can genuinely hear the Word of God and give assent to prayer offered to heaven by a godly preacher. Nevertheless, such services, because they are “common” to one congregation alone, and not common to the whole Church, offer little protection against un-godly preachers, and provide no guarantee that the lives of the people will be molded according to the pattern of the whole life of the Church of Jesus Christ.

One of the basic characteristics of the traditional English (and Anglican) understanding and form of Common Prayer has been that there is, in an Anglican formulary, only one rite provided for each of the public services of the Church and that there is no provision for extemporaneous prayer by the minister in those regular, public service, apart from the prudential use of Holy Scripture and the occasional prayers provided within the Prayer Book itself. There is no optional rite for Holy Communion or Baptism (apart for provisions allowing the abbreviation of the regular forms of service at the sickbed and in times of imminent death) or for the Daily Services of Morning and Evening Prayer. This expectation of uniformity is no more remarkable or restraining than the expectation that all of the Old Israel, the prototype of a national church, should use the same Psalter in its worship or ask the same ritual questions every year at the Passover. “Common Prayer” in the Anglican Way is to speak of the public worship of the assembled Christian congregations within all the churches and cathedrals of a specific nation, using common rites, texts and services. It is, therefore, a straightforward factual error to call any other kind of collection of services for worship, especially those with multiple forms, a “Book of Common Prayer.” Common Prayer does not refer to just any kind of worship that takes place in public, but only to such worship as is conducted according to the unifying common rites provided by an authentic edition of The Book of Common Prayer, according to its authority as the formulary of a unified national church. An edition of The Book of Common Prayer is authentic when it does not depart from the doctrine, discipline, and worship found in the 1662 edition of the English Prayer Book. Exceptions are made for each nation’s government and culture as long as they do not conflict with the Holy Scriptures and the Christian Faith.

The Book of Common Prayer is more than a translation, adaption, or renewal of the medieval services of prayer and worship. With its weekly Lord’s Day, by its Feasts and fasts, through the discipline and rhythms of the Church Year, 265 days a year, every year, The Book of Common Prayer is more than a formulary for worship. It is a formulary for life – for the spiritual formation of the lives of the saints on earth. The Book of Common Prayer became the Anglican Way of relating to God. It was not developed from scratch. The medieval daily offices of Mattins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline were gracefully compressed into two daily services of worship, Mattins and Evensong (or Morning and Evening Prayer). These had been conducted in Latin by clergymen, monks, and nuns but were now available for all the members of the Church in English.

Common Prayer encompasses the entire life of a Christian, beginning with the “Churching of Women” and its provisions for thanking God for the entry of a child into the world. That child then enters into the life of the Church of God by receiving Holy Baptism and Confirmation. When grown, that child and some other child of God, by the calling of divine grace, enter with one another into the holy state of Matrimony, to live as man and wife until their life’s end. And in the sorrows of life, and at the end of this mortal life, the Common Prayer offers the Visitation of the Sick and the Burial of the Dead as the consolations of divine mercy.

From the Reformation, The Book of Common Prayer has been the central formulary, the objective document, of what we now call “the Anglican Way.” It expresses the doctrinal commitment of the Anglican Communions to the Holy Scriptures and to the worship and glorification of God the Father almighty, through his only-begotten and Eternal Son, and by God the Holy Ghost. ‘Lex orandi, lex credendi” translates to “the law of praying is the law of believing.” Thus The Book of Common Prayer contains both our prayers and our beliefs.

No edition of The Book of Common Prayer is perfect or untouchable. But, to abandon the whole tradition of this Prayer Book, along with all its particular editions is to declare that the history of the Church in England is over, dead, obsolete, null and void. Revision or improvements in a national church’s Prayer Book can only be accomplished legitimately within the context of the Common Prayer tradition and according to the principle of Common Prayer itself. An “each to his own” approach to worship and order has nothing to do with “Common Prayer,” and in the next lesson we will attempt to describe the origin and content of alternative forms of prayer that have been produced since the 1960s by and for Anglicans. Alternative forms of service may have a place in the life of the Church, but the two things they are not is “Common Prayer” or a formulary to guide the life of a national church.

For more details, read “Neither Orthodoxy Nor A Formulary” by The Rev. Dr. Peter Toon, M.A., D.Phil.

and The Rev. Louis Tarsitano

(Preservation Press of the Prayer Book Society of the USA 2004