Gavin Dunbar

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer—Pew Format

Preaching & Worship

“The Prayer Book—in the classic edition of 1662—has been attacked, denigrated, dismissed, damned with faint praise, patronized, patted on the head, and torn in shreds. It's too Protestant, it's too Catholic, it's a typical Anglican muddle, it doesnot express the new insight of the modern age, it's not open to the Spirit, it's not relevant. Yet all these cantankerous and often sophistical cavillations fall away when you pray according to the rule of prayer it sets forth with an open heart andan open mind. What then meets you in these pages is a pure scriptural teaching, deeply embedded in the catholic tradition, turned into the language of prayer, and in the corporate action of liturgy, with a craftmanship that is quietly breathtaking. Its prose is not Tudor but timeless, not purple but plain in its elegance (simplex munditiis); and in its clarity, dignity, and quiet beauty it carries the weight of conviction as almost nothing else does. That is why it survived the Marianreaction, the Puritan interregnum, and the diktats of modern liturgists; that's why it will encourage and embolden the faithful in the new dark ages of skepticism and hostility to religion. Though this prayer book came out of the Church of England, it belongs not to the English, nor even to Anglicans, much less to Anglophiles (fruity accents and whatnot)—as this edition makes clear, it is a prayer book for English-speaking Christians throughout the world.”