Integrity

Many people that I come into contact with around town and beyond seem mildly and perhaps scandalously amused at our slavish devotion to the old Prayer Book and its sidekick, the Authorized Version of the scriptures. Their use is often viewed as horribly antiquated and an obstacle to growth, and maybe it is. Nonetheless, we continue to proudly and intentionally use them almost down to the very rubric. Why? Well not only because our canons require it, and because it is biblical and Catholic, and because we like it (I could go on), but also because the our very identity as a branch of Christ's One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church depends on it. History shows that if one strays from the Prayer Book, strange doctrine and even schism inevitably follow. The Methodists are a perfect example of this. Even though John Wesley was a loyal high churchman, and regularly took the sacrament up until he died, he laid the groundwork in his movement for eventual schism from the Church of England by tinkering with the liturgy - specifically with the introduction and toleration of extempore prayer and creating additional liturgies to be used alongside the Prayer Book. Eventually he "ordained" his own successors to keep the movement going. His own selective use of the Prayer Book which he so highly valued bore bad fruit. For shortly after his death the movement stopped using the Prayer Book altogether and became its own tradition.

I wonder if the neo-Anglican jurisdictions that have recently broken from TEC will not go down the same path. The folk from those churches, while usually well-meaning and devoted to God, seem to treat the BCP as something that is negotiable... and that to be an Anglican doesn't mean you have to use the Prayer Book. Even now, when I visit such churches and meet their clergy, they seem like they re not quite Anglican... more "non-denominational" with (in most cases anyway) episcopal ordination and a quickie eucharist tacked on to the end of the service. Inevitably when engaging such folk in conversion I find that they do not use the Prayer Book in their parishes... maybe bits of it here and there, with some other stuff thrown in for good measure. Will these churches be the new-new dissent 25-50 years down the road? Will they be the Methodists of the 21st century? To be Anglican means in large part to use the Prayer Book in the public liturgy of the Church as well as in your private devotions. Cranmer did not start a new church. He did not write a confession of faith, or a systematic theology. What he did was reform the liturgy for the English Church. How someone can claim to be part of that trajectory and not use her liturgy is utterly beyond me.