Normally when I lead a Formation session, I try to lay out the topic point by point. However, in discussing the Anglican Service Book, I feel a different approach is needed. Not many people know what the Anglican Service Book[1] actually is, including many at St. Luke's and possibly those viewing this session later online. I will confess that I was not at all familiar with the Anglican Service Book before I came to St. Luke’s. I say that as someone with a Master of Divinity, which includes training in liturgy, that is in worship. My point is, I don’t want anyone to feel bad for not understanding what the Anglican Service Book is. My plan then is to walk you through my journey to hopefully help you come to terms with an understanding of this book.
The first time I recall hearing anything about the Anglican Service Book was in my interview with St. Luke’s here in Newtown, PA. I had been told by the Transitional Officer for this Diocese that St. Luke’s was a Rite I Anglo-Catholic parish. Rite I was familiar to me from my time at my very first parish, so I knew I could be comfortable worshiping in that style. When we started the interview process, I was given a list of questions. One of these questions was "We use the Anglican Service Book, what is your preferred Rite of liturgy?"
When it comes to the liturgy of The Episcopal Church, our main, primary, and authorized book has always been The Book of Common Prayer in the various forms it has taken since our founding in 1789. As such, I was very confused about what was meant by the Anglican Service Book[2]. At first I wrote the question off, but later I decided that I needed to know more.
After a Google search, I learned that the Anglican Service Book was its own thing. I even found a digital copy of it on a website. I did a quick skim through and understood from the prologue that it was meant to turn everything in The Book of Common Prayer into traditional language. Now The Book of Common Prayer has a rubric, or instruction, allowing any service in contemporary language to be “conformed to traditional language.”[3] Rite I Prayer I, the Eucharistic Prayer that has been in our Prayer Books in the United States since the start of The Episcopal Church, already is a prayer in traditional language. I wasn’t sure why, as far as the Eucharist was concerned, you would need such a resource when you have Rite I Prayer I, but as long as it was okay by The Book of Common Prayer standards it was good enough for me. When I got to St. Luke’s and took a closer look at the Anglican Service Book, I discovered it wasn’t just a traditional language version of The Book of Common Prayer. Instead, I found many additions and omissions. Some of the key ones I found were:
- the inclusion of resources from previous Prayer Books no longer authorized in The Episcopal Church, such as the 1928 Prayer Book’s Psalter,
- the use of a completely different calendar for minor feasts of the church,
- preparatory and post-service options for the Eucharist that have never been used in authorized Episcopal liturgies, and have even been reworked[4] or suppressed[5] in Modern Roman Catholic Rites[6],
- the absences of Eucharistic Prayer C[7] and The Ordination of a Bishop service,
- the replacement of the Solemn Collects for Good Friday with a completely different and problematic set of collects[8],
- the lack of The Book of Common Prayer’s teaching in “An Outline of the Faith”, which instead has been replaced with various teachings before services. These teachings fail on a number of levels, including:
- stating that “Baptism is first of all the washing away of sin”[9] when it is actually the “full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body the Church”,which includes our repentance and forgiveness,
- possible, but not fully agreed upon, historical understandings, such as with the Collects[10],
- Interpretations, such as with Eucharist and Marriage, that come off as either sentimental or neglect the notion of via media or the “middle way” between Catholicism and Protestantism that has been key to the Anglican Identity throughout Anglican history[11].
This is not to mention the inconsistencies in how traditional language is employed and the various typos[12] present in the book. Noting these differences, I began to understand that the Anglican Service Book was no mere “traditional language adaptation” of the Prayer Book. I decided to reach out to others to get at the bottom of what it was really.
As I consulted some colleagues about it, I learned from a close friend that the Anglican Service Book is typically used in churches with a foot outside The Episcopal Church. After more research, I discovered the history of this book in the Diocese of Pennsylvania. There was a group of churches in the 1990s known as “the 7 sister churches”, of which St. Luke’s was a member. They were very upset with the direction The Episcopal Church was taking at the time. This led to the use of so-called “flying bishops”, more traditionally minded bishops coming in to perform confirmations, visitations, and the like. One of the churches in this group, Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, published the Anglican Service Book in 1991. The book has been out of print now since 2018, and on later meeting their current rector, I learned that Good Shepherd has now completely moved back to The Book of Common Prayer from the Anglican Service Book.
Knowing the issues surrounding the Anglican Service Book helped me read between the lines in it, particularly concerning bishops. The Anglican Service Book utilizes the term “chief bishop” throughout. This avoids using the title Presiding Bishop, the name for the bishop who serves as the chair of the House of Bishops for General Convention which is the main governing body of The Episcopal Church. The Anglican Service Book here attempts to deemphasize and thwart our leadership in The Episcopal Church while also paving the way for relying on leadership outside The Episcopal Church.[13] The Anglican Service Book additionally includes a service not present in The Book of Common Prayer for welcoming bishops, yet it neglects providing a service of ordination for a bishop. With their concern over the state of The Episcopal Church, places like the 7 sister churches wanted to see less leaders not more.[14]
Every clergy in the church, when we are ordained[15], is asked to “be loyal to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of Christ as this Church has received them” and to do so “in accordance with the canons of this Church” while also agreeing to “obey [our] bishop and other ministers who may have authority over” us and our work. Our response ends with a declaration that we will “solemnly engage to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Episcopal Church.” This is a vow that I and many of my colleagues take very seriously. We pledge our loyalty to our chief pastor, our bishop. We may not always agree with our bishop, but we do so only behind closed doors. Personally, I have found every bishop I have served under helpful to me when I needed help in my ministry. The worship we say we conform to is The Book of Common Prayer in its current form and those other liturgies authorized by The Episcopal Church and used with the permission of our bishops. The Anglican Service Book has never been one of those books and it never will be because it not only doesn’t take our oath of ordination seriously, it also actively works to oppose it. That is why I cannot, in good conscience, ever use this book again.
If the Anglican Service Book were just an easy means to hold a traditional language liturgy for those services only in the “contemporary idiom”, as the Prayer Book states, that would be one thing. Yet we really only need that for services like Baptism, Confirmation, Ordination, and the special services starting at Ash Wednesday and ending with the Great Vigil of Easter. The problem is the Anglican Service Book doesn’t just do that. It doesn’t hold to the integrity of The Book of Common Prayer when it adds elements from previous Prayer Books or from other denominations not currently in full communion with our own. As a book, it even tries to subvert the leadership of The Episcopal Church. This is why the Anglican Service Book is not an authorized liturgy of The Episcopal Church. It doesn’t fall within the rubrics of The Book of Common Prayer, as the Anglican Service Book would like to claim it does in its preface. This is also why Bishop Gutiérrez has instructed St. Luke’s to transition back to The Book of Common Prayer.
I hope my journey has given you some clarity about what the Anglican Service Book actually is and why it is problematic. I hope you do not feel guilty if you did not realize that it was neither The Book of Common Prayer itself nor an authorized liturgy of The Episcopal Church. The Anglican Service Book itself, as well as its supporters, have done their best to make that unclear.
There is certainly more that can be said, though this is what I hope you take away:
- The Anglican Service Book is not an authorized liturgy of The Episcopal Church.
- The Anglican Service Book is not simply a Rite I version of The Book of Common Prayer. It is something else entirely.
- The Anglican Service Book was written to oppose the authority of diocesan bishops, which goes against the vows clergy make in ordination.
For those who love traditional language, there is good news. We still have a traditional language service in The Book of Common Prayer with Rite I. That will not change any time soon.
Click here to compare differences between The Book of Common Prayer and the Anglican Service Book
[1] Some employ the abbreviation "ASB" to discuss the Anglican Service Book. ASB in liturgical circles refers to the Church of England 1980s liturgical resource the Alternative Service Book. I will continue to refer to the Anglican Service Book by its full title to avoid confusion.
[2] The term "Anglican" does not denote a broader use of the Anglican Service Book beyond the United States. Other Anglican Churches within the Anglican Communion typically use The Book of Common Prayer as the title of their primary authorized liturgical book. The use of the word "Anglican" is often employed by groups at odds with The Episcopal Church to try to derive some sense of legitimacy.
[4] The Confiteor, a form of confession before the service. The form in the Anglican Service Book has been reworked in modern Roman Catholic services for the times when it is used.
[5] “The Last Gospel”, a reading of the beginning of John at the end of the service. This was only ever used by certain groups in the Roman Catholic Church, and has been suppressed with Vatican II.
[6] It should be noted that both of these sections started as elements that certain priests would say by themselves before/after the service. Later they were added to the service itself.
[7] This is both understandable and ironic. It is understandable as Prayer C is the most “contemporary” service in The Book of Common Prayer. It is also, however, the only Eucharistic Prayer in the BCP employing the Roman-Alexandrian form used by the Roman Catholic Church and prefered by those of similar theology.
[8] I am referring specifically to the prayer on page 186 that states “Let us pray likewise for God’s chosen people: that the Lord our God may look graciously upon them and that they may come to acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord as redeemer of all mankind.”
[9] Anglican Service Book, 216.
[10] The Anglican Service Book claims the word collect means to “‘collect’ our thoughts on a matter” (94). Marion Hatchett in his Commentary on the American Prayer Book notes that the word collect “may signify the summing up of the prayers of the individuals who have been called to pray” or that “it may designate the prayer said at the collecting of the people at the start of the Mass” (163).
[11] The intro for Mass in the Anglican Service Book leans so far in favor of transubstantiation/real presence that there is no allowance for those who lean towards a receptionist view of Eucharist (like Thomas Cranmer) or even towards memorialism (236-237). The start of the Holy Matrimony section claims that Marriage is a “Sacrament” (310), while The Book of Common Prayer states it is one of the “other sacramental rites” (861). This might seem like a minor distinction, yet it leaves out those who believe that the only Sacraments are those given directly by Christ Jesus: Holy Baptism and Holy Eucharist (BCP, 857-858).
[12] These typos were problematic on a personal level when trying to use the NKJV readings given in the Anglican Service Book for a Stations of the Cross service during Holy Week 2022.
[13] The Anglican Service Book also avoids referring to diocesan leadership, except when it has to in the ordination services, a further sign of the discord the writers for the book had with their own Diocese. There is a reference to Diocesan Bishops in the “Celebration of a New Ministry” service (439). Interestingly this is an addition not present in the BCP’s version of the service. Because it emphasizes the authority given to a new rector for a church, this addition seems to be trying to give an added legitimacy to a newly appointed rector that they would otherwise not have by having a foot outside The Episcopal Church.
[14] While the Anglican Service Book does include services of ordination for priests and deacons, as well as the “Celebration of a New Ministry”, these services require a bishop to hold them. Leadership, as The Episcopal Church and the various churches within the Anglican Communion understand it, cannot continue to grow without the existence of bishops.