Book of Common Prayer (1928, England)
The 1928 Book of Common Prayer, sometimes known as the Deposited Book, is a liturgical book which was proposed as a revised version of the Church of England's 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Opposing what they saw as an Anglo-Catholic revision that would align the Church of England with the Catholic Church—particularly through expanding the practice of the reserved sacrament—Protestant evangelicals and nonconformists in Parliament put up significant resistance, driving what became known as the Prayer Book Crisis.
A text resultant from the Anglo-Catholics and the reaction against them, the proposed revised prayer book failed twice in the House of Commons, first in December 1927 and then in June 1928. With the failures in Parliament, the Church of England's spiritual authority suffered a significant blow. Though Parliament never approved it, the proposed prayer book's use would become widespread during the mid-20th century and see internal approval by the Church of England. The proposed prayer book and its failed adoption has influenced both the contents and revision procedures for Anglican liturgical books both in England and elsewhere.
Background
Early Oxford Movement Tractarians of the Church of England had interpreted the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as a catholic liturgy with rubrics that should be closely followed. This view was challenged by "second-generation" Tractarians and members of the Cambridge Movement, who found the 1662 prayer book too liturgically Protestant. Instead, this latter faction advocated the adoption of ceremonial and some liturgical practices from the Catholic Church, such as celebrating Communion facing eastward, placing candles and a cross on the altar, and vestments. These "usages" were justified by ritualists pointing to the prayer book's Ornaments Rubric, contending that it mandated such practices. It was these Anglo-Catholic and similar movements that would ultimately spur the prayer book revision movement in England.Among some clergy, adoption of medieval Sarum and modern Catholic Latin liturgies was contemporaneous with the proliferation of Anglo-Catholic devotional literature in the 1870s and 1880s. The Tractarian John Henry Newman's conversion to the Catholic Church elicited praise but also raised concerns regarding his peers' degree of conformity to the Church of England. The Protestant-leaning evangelical party of Anglicans advocated for measures that removed "ambiguity" regarding the prayer book's Protestant qualities. The resulting Royal Commission on Ritual—formed in 1867—and its four reports resulted in the 1872 Act of Uniformity Amendment Act and 1874 Public Worship Regulation Act, the latter of which established a secular court to which bishops could send insubordinate ritualist priests. After several priests were imprisoned, public opinion grew hostile towards these courts and ultimately bishops would refrain from bringing priests before them.
Opposition to ritualist practice led in the 1890s by John Kensit and his Protestant Truth Society further challenged Anglo-Catholics, who were represented by the English Church Union and Viscount Halifax. While Archbishop of Canterbury Frederick Temple had officially approved several Anglo-Catholic practices, politician William Harcourt met with the church's archbishops in 1900 to promote the prosecution of ritualists. This meeting resulted in a statement that prohibited the reserved sacrament and use of incense in worship.
Despite this, ritualists continued researching further into the past in search of patristic continuity. The Alcuin Club, founded in 1897 to research the history and use of the prayer book, often pulled from medieval pre-Reformation period and sometimes the first centuries of Christian history. Liturgical scholars would soon lean on this research in their criticisms of the 1662 prayer book, preferring a "primitive" liturgy. Prayer book historian Brian Cummings credited their research with doing more to "unearth the original manuscripts of the liturgical traditions", though critiqued their ardent defense of the Victorian era "Anglo-Catholic myth" that the 1549 prayer book was very close to the medieval Sarum Use.
The 19th century saw several Anglican liturgical revision efforts outside England: the United States Episcopal Church made a series of minor changes between 1808 and 1868 before approving a comprehensive but conservative prayer book revision in 1892, Church of Ireland evangelicals guided the creation of an 1877 prayer book, and Canadian Anglicans were considering their own revisions from an Anglo-Catholic direction. In England, Anglo-Catholics scholarship and the 1662 prayer book's increasingly dated language both challenged prior idealization of the 1662 liturgies. The linguistic issues within the prayer book, many of which were derived from Thomas Cranmer's translation of Latin, left pastors many "trip-wires" with theological and ministerial implications that could not be easily explained. With no way to stop the mechanisms behind this and other complications, Church of England clergy increasingly supported revision.
Shortly after assuming the archiepiscopate at Canterbury in 1903, Randall Davidson told parliament that he would rein in the ritualists. In March the next year, Davidson and Prime Minister Arthur Balfour authorized a review of the state of church discipline to address the debate between Anglo-Catholics and their opponents. The Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline—chaired by Michael Hicks Beach—interviewed 164 witnesses to produce a four-volume report in 1906. This report asserted "the law of public worship is too narrow for the religious life of the present generation", particularly with regard to the desire for ceremony and historic continuity as violations of policies including the Ornaments Rubric were widespread. The commission also reported the means of enforcing teaching and practice in the church were ineffective. The report included ten recommendations primarily compiled by Davidson. Among the recommendations was to begin revising the vestiture rubrics, formally initiating the process for a new prayer book authorized by an Act of Uniformity.
Revision process
The initial period of revision, between 1906 and 1914, primarily focused on the 1662 prayer book's Ornaments Rubric and its role in justifying Anglo-Catholic ceremonial practice. John Wordsworth chaired a group of five bishops who issued a report on the rubric in 1908 with the assistance of leading moderate Anglo-Catholic liturgist Walter Frere. The report's assertion that chasubles were legal elicited protest; the upper house of the Convocations of Canterbury and York passed a resolution that was less supportive of this view. In his 1911 Some Principles of Liturgical Reform, Frere requested for a committee to examine liturgical affairs; Davidson established such a body in May that year. Attempting to create a balanced committee, the evangelical bishop Thomas Drury was appointed alongside Arthur James Mason, Frere, Frank Edward Brightman, and, from 1912 onward, Percy Dearmer and Percival Jackson.Many Anglican scholars in this period published extensive histories on liturgical practice, largely in association with the Alcuin Club. Among them were E. G. Cuthbert F. Atchley's History of the Use of Incense in Divine Worship, F. E. Warren's The Sarum Missal in English, Brightman's The English Rite, and Frere's research on medieval pontificals and early sacramentaries. Another influential work came in the anonymously written A Prayer-Book Revised prefaced by Charles Gore. It was understood that these scholars were to "safeguard" the "both catholic and reformed" Anglican identity in a manner akin to the earlier Non-jurors.
In February 1914, the convocation's upper house report was published and committees established to oversee the work. Davidson revealed his disinterest in revision in private correspondence, considering it a distraction from church administration. Soon, World War I hampered the work and saw discussion of approval delayed until after the war so that the laity could engage. Gregory Dix characterized the general attitude among the revisers pre-war with a quote from Bishop George Forrest Browne, who said "that there should be a minimum of change" and "that there should be no change that in any sort of way could honestly be said to touch doctrine at all" ; Dix compared this with what he found to be a similar attitude in the 1662 prayer book's revision process. This moderate stance towards revision emphasized making a prayer book more easily enforced by law. During the war, Convocation continued reviewing potential changes. Among these was a proposal emulate the 1549 English and 1637 Scottish prayer books' Holy Communion offices and move the Prayer of Oblation to after the Consecration. Viscount Halifax went further, requesting that the 1549 Communion service be approved.
The war proved a proximate cause in the more significant revision which followed. Reservation of the sacrament became more popular during the war, as the convenience convinced chaplains who may have avoided this "Romish" practice in peacetime. From 1911, a convocational drafted rubric that had been intended to prevent "extra-liturgical devotions" by authorizing reservation exclusively for communing the sick served as the standard for diocesan permissions. Though generally popular, the increased permissions for reservation during the war were met with strong evangelical disapproval and suspicion. Linguistically, the 16th-century diction were not comforting to the many illiterate and barely literate soldiers most in ministerial need. The 1662 prayer book's monotony similarly came under scrutiny during the war, with its repetitiveness felt "mindless" by those attending its liturgies. Alec Vidler described the "conventional worship of the Church of England" as "too dull and cold and reserved" for those living on the social margins. It was among the slums that Tractarians and ritualists had entrenched their ministries, with great success. These factors meant that the moderate rubrical adjustments advocated in the 1906 report were felt insufficient by the war's end.