While I mostly dislike "what if" questions, sometimes they can be fun and insightful if they are not taken too seriously. Therefore, I am posing a question that I hope many will ponder and then answer in a comment to this post.
The question is: If you could choose which Book of Common Prayer ECUSA would use starting on Advent 2007, would you:
A: Keep the 1979 BCP
B: Use the Anglican Service Book
C: Reinstate the 1928 BCP
D: Adopt the 1662 BCP
E: Go back to basics with the 1549 BCP
F: Write a completely new BCP
G: Let each diocese choose which one to use
Please give a brief reason for your selection.
Consider this a conversation starter.
YBIC,
Michael
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3 comments:
hmm . . . I'm tempted to say the ASB. The Church ultimately needs a new prayerbook--one that restores some of the currently "watered down" theology and keeps beauty of language, while at the same time accommodating slightly to a more contemporary English and perhaps streamlining the thought flow of the liturgies, particularly in the Eucharistic canon which, even in Rite I of the '79, is pretty much different things just shoved together. However, I'd want more than just a year to go into the preparation of a new prayerbook, and while it doesn't look forward in the same way that a new BCP might, it at least restores some of what has been lost, without going back to the "weird stuff" of earlier prayerbooks--Gloria at the end of Mass and all that.
While I have affinities for the early prayer books, I say keep the '79. We have all the controversy we need these days without dragging the BCP into it.
I would like a combination of the 1979 BCP and writing my own. Specifically, I like the theology behind our Rite I service, but do not believe that the Elizabethan language does an adequate job of communicating to the next generation of Christians.
I would love to take our Rite I and rewrite it in contemporary language.
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