How to Use the Book of Common Prayer: A Review

An excellent brief introduction to the history, theology, and practical use of the BCP

Samuel L. Bray and Drew Nathaniel Keane, How to Use the Book of Common Prayer: A Guide to the Anglican Liturgy (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2024).

[NB: in the interest of full disclosure, I was a reviewer of this book for IVP prior to publication and am friends and colleagues with the authors]

It is not difficult to find guides for using the Book of Common Prayer, histories of Anglican liturgy, or theological explications of liturgical Christian worship. All three of these genres seem to proliferate like kudzu wherever Anglicans are found. However, it is very rare indeed to find all three of these elements combined in a single text, never mind a text that is manageable in size, historically accurate, and theologically compelling. But this is exactly what Samuel Bray and Drew Keane have accomplished in How to Use the Book of Common Prayer: A Guide to the Anglican Liturgy. They have distilled the fruits of a great deal of theological and historical reflection and day-to-day use of the Book of Common Prayer into an erudite but approachable little volume of less than two hundred pages. It is written specifically as a companion volume to their excellent International Edition of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (a light adaptation of that prayer book which adjusts the prayers for the monarch so that they can be used regardless of polity and makes a few other minor updates, also published by IVP). But even for those who do not use that particular prayer book, it is an excellent theological, historical, and practical guide to Anglican worship which could enrich the worship of any liturgical Christian – and perhaps encourage those Christians who look askance at set prayers to give formal liturgy a try.

The book begins with as brief defense of the use of a formal, set liturgy in Christian worship, aimed particularly at low church Protestants who might be concerned that such worship is empty formalism or impedes Christian freedom. It then turns to a tour de force twelve-page primer on the history of Anglican liturgy from the 1530s to 1662. The authors do a particularly good job distilling Cranmer’s liturgical principles, which they describe as “the gospel, thoroughly catholic and thoroughly reformed doctrine, simplicity, and beauty,” and showing how these guiding principles were instantiated in the various Books of Common Prayer, first in the 1549 and then in a clarified way in the 1552 and following (20). This does not pretend to be a neutral account of the history; the authors are unashamedly for the prayer book and indeed the English Reformation. But it is a historically responsible one, in accord with the consensus in English Reformation scholarship.

The bulk of the book is then a combined theological exposition and how-to guide of the central parts of the prayer book: morning and evening prayer, baptism, holy communion, the lectionaries, the church year, and the holy days. All of this is excellent stuff; the authors do a very good job expositing the prayer book with help from the Bible, the other formularies (the Articles, the Homilies), patristic and Reformation divines, and modern commentators. The use of John Jewel’s eucharistic writings to unpack the communion service is particularly strong. They provide a rich, broadly Reformed treatment of the Supper – small surprise: this is what the prayer book and the rest of the formularies teach – which might help even a suspicious Anglo-Catholic reader to see the coherence and spiritual depth of the Reformed view. Whatever one makes of it, the ascent to the heavenly Holy of Holies to feed upon Christ’s body and blood is hardly a bare memorial view of the sacrament!

I especially appreciate the attention the authors give to two under-treated aspects of the prayer book: the daily office and the lectionaries. These are often treated as afterthoughts by commentaries that focus on the eucharist, but here daily prayer and the place of Scripture in prayer book spirituality are given appropriate space. Bray and Keane stress quite rightly that morning and evening prayer comprise “the heart of the Book of Common Prayer,” designed to be the most-used service in the book. Their elaboration of the daily offices in terms of preparing, praising, hearing, and praying is intuitive and helpful. As far as the lectionaries go, then, they point out the different functions of the three different lectionaries in the prayer book (the daily lectionary, the Sunday and holy day communion readings, the Sunday and holy day first lessons) and show how they work together to provide both broad exposure to the Bible and detailed focus on the core doctrines of the Christian faith, all undergirded by a commitment that Scripture read and Scripture preached are means of grace by which God communicates the Gospel to us.

But I don’t want to make it sound like this is a book of abstruse theology and history, accessible only for those steeped in sixteenth and seventeenth century theology and liturgy! It is very much pitched at an everyday readership; the theological points are made succinctly and clearly and fit nicely with very practical how-to material. The authors follow the prayer book itself by emphasizing usability. Thus, for example, they treat the basic shape of the daily office in one chapter and then modifications to the typical rite (the Athanasian Creed, the additional prayers and thanksgivings) in the next one and encourage the reader to first get accustomed to the basics of daily prayer before reading the chapter on modifications. It is clearly a book designed to lead to use of the prayer book for anyone who picks it up, even while it treats the liturgy with enough sophistication and care that experienced Anglicans will find new and helpful insights in it. I certainly did.

The book as a whole is clearly written from a perspective of what we might call ‘classical’ or ‘reformational’ Anglicanism. While the authors do not engage in party polemic, their Anglicanism (like mine) is one grounded in the Reformation commitment to justification by faith alone and articulated through the formularies, particularly as understood by English divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Now, it is not a narrow construal of that perspective, and it is one which - as the authors note - has a rather better claim on the historical Anglican mainstream than the patterns of theology and worship common in many Anglican settings today. But all the same, if one wants a look at (say) eighteenth century Non-Juror or nineteenth/ twentieth century Anglo-Catholic use and interpretation of the prayer book, never mind the perspectives of late twentieth century Liturgical Movement scholars, this is not the book for that. This means that for those who have been steeped in the post-Liturgical Movement liberal catholic consensus, the picture of Anglican liturgy and theology given here might seem in some respects surprising, even foreign. But this very potential foreignness is, to my mind, a strength of the book.

Let me explain: for too long, serious concern with liturgy in Anglican circles has been seen as the preserve of Anglo-Catholics (with, to be sure, honorable exceptions). Many evangelical Anglicans, then, have abandoned engagement with the Anglican liturgical tradition in favor of services that are nearly indistinguishable from those of non-denominational evangelicals. What Bray and Keane deftly show is that concern for justification by faith and concern for liturgy need not be at odds with each other – quite the opposite! Rather, the very point of the Book of Common Prayer was to provide a liturgical enactment of the Gospel of the free gift of grace in Christ Jesus, that it might be instantiated not only on the lips but in the lives of the English people. They make a compelling argument that the Book of Common Prayer can still be a means by which God leads us from guilt spurred by a realization of our sinfulness to the Gospel of grace to a life of grateful self-offering in response to what God has already done for us.