The Loss of “Common” Prayer

From The Cafe-

In its proposed report to General Convention, the SCLM has suggested four approaches to revising the Prayer Book, each of which has some merits and disadvantages. But they all include the assumption that we should continue to have a Book of Common Prayer. I would like to raise a question before the question: what is common prayer, and is a Book of Common Prayer right for our future, or should something else be our “unifying myth”? To make this question a little less heretical, note that some other Anglican churches no longer use the title—A New Zealand Prayer Book, for example—or explicitly use a number of other sources—the Church of England’s Common Worship series, or the Anglican Church of Canada’s Book of Alternative Services.

Full disclosure: I am a layperson who has been active in church life for some sixty years, sometimes professionally. My young adulthood was spent with the 1928 BCP, I eagerly participated in the Green Book and the Zebra Book, and I welcomed the 1979 BCP. I did not and do not want to return to the hierarchical and privileging theology, language, and piety of the 1928 BCP. But precisely because of my experience of the 1928 BCP, I have come to think, over the years of the 1979 BCP’s use, that it has had some unintended consequences—namely, that despite its greater theoretical theological inclusiveness as expressed in its baptismal liturgy, in actual Sunday-morning practice the 1979 BCP has ironically decreased “common” prayer and increased the liturgical gap between clergy and laity.

More here-

https://www.episcopalcafe.com/the-loss-of-common-prayer/