Worship in the Episcopal Church
LITURGY
The unity of the members of the church in Christ is expressed most fully through public worship (or liturgy). Liturgy expresses the Church’s identity and mission, including the church’s calling to invite others and to serve with concern for the needs of the world.
The Book of Common Prayer
Unique to Anglicanism is the Book of Common Prayer, the collection of worship services that all worshipers in an Anglican tradition follow. It’s called “common prayer” because we all pray it together, around the world. The first Book of Common Prayer was compiled in English by Thomas Cranmer in the 16th Century, and since then has undergone many revisions for different times and places. But its original purpose has remained the same: To provide in one place the core of the instructions and rites for Anglican Christians to worship together.
The present prayer book in The Episcopal Church was published in 1979. Many other worship resources and prayers exist to enrich our worship, but the Book of Common Prayer is the authority that governs our worship. The prayer book explains Christianity, describes the main beliefs of the Church, outlines the requirements for the sacraments, and in general serves as the main guidelines of the Episcopal life. It includes worship that individuals and families can use at home for Morning and Evening Prayer, collects (prayers for certain days of the church year), Eucharistic services (Holy Communion), marriage, thanksgiving for a child, a service of reconciliation (confession), ministration to the sick and at time of death, burial and ordination services.
The Psalms are reprinted followed by prayers and thanksgivings which can be used for many different occasions. An outline of the Episcopal faith and historical documents of the Church precede the table of Scripture readings for the three year cycle.
LECTIONARY
A Lectionary is a table of readings from Scripture appointed to be read at public worship. The association of particular texts with specific days began in the 4th century. The Lectionary [1969, revised 1981], developed by the Roman Catholic Church after Vatican II, provided for a three-year cycle of Sunday readings. This lectionary provided the basis for lectionary in The Book of Common Prayer 1979 as well as those developed by many other denominations.
The Common Lectionary, published in 1983, was an ecumenical project of several American and Canadian denominations, developed out of a concern for the unity of the Church and a desire for a common experience of Scripture. This means that denominations that use the Common Lectionary ( including The Episcopal Church) are reading the same scripture in their weekly worship services. It was intended as a harmonization of the many different denominational approaches to the three-year lectionary.
The lectionary readings for this liturgical year can be found here.
Worship in one’s first language
Episcopalians believe that Christians should be able to worship God and read the Bible in their first language, which for most Episcopalians, is English, rather than Latin or Greek, the two earlier, “official” languages of Christianity. Yet the Book of Common Prayer has been translated into many languages, so that those Episcopalians who do not speak English can still worship God in their native tongue.
Scripture, Tradition and Reason
The Anglican approach to reading and interpreting the Bible was first articulated by Richard Hooker, also in the 16th Century. While Christians universally acknowledge the Bible (or the Holy Scriptures) as the Word of God and completely sufficient to our reconciliation to God, what the Bible says must always speak to us in our own time and place.
The Church, as a worshiping body of faithful people, has for two thousand years amassed experience of God and of loving Jesus, and what they have said to us through the centuries about the Bible is critical to our understanding it in our own context. The traditions of the Church in interpreting Scripture connect all generations of believers together and give us a starting point for our own understanding.
Episcopalians believe that every Christian must build an understanding and relationship with God’s Word in the Bible, and to do that, God has given us intelligence and our own experience, which we refer to as “Reason.” Based on the text of the Bible itself, and what Christians have taught us about it through the ages, we then must sort out our own understanding of it as it relates to our own lives.