Masterpiece Prayers
The Pentecostal Christian movement in which I was raised seemed to place a premium on spontaneity in worship and in prayer, as opposed to set prayers and forms—more like contemporary jazz, less like a Baroque oratorio. Our God was in the moment, present, praying with us now just as he did in the early Church. So why did I find myself praying a prepared text from 1662 in January 2021?
Maybe because the Anglican Book of Common Prayer of that year has a prayer with the heading, For Restoring Publick Peace at Home. The words were strangely appropriate here in America, following the violence of January 6 and after months of political rancor and violent protests nationwide, in which many lost property, livelihoods, and even their lives. As I write in this winter of our raucous discontent, I take comfort in that 1662 prayer, which reads, in part, like this:
O Eternal God, our heavenly Father, who alone makest men to be of one mind in a house, and stillest the outrage of a violent and unruly people: We bless thy holy Name, that it hath pleased thee to appease the seditious tumults which have been lately raised up amongst us. . . .
Timely, for a text of 1662. But then, so is the prayer on the next page, part of the same section, on Thanksgivings: For Deliverance from the Plague, or other common Sickness. No doubt this prayer of centuries ago was still apt when Anglicans throughout the world prayed it after the influenza pandemic of 1918. Now again, in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, I wait for the chance to pray it, for my household and my country:
[S]eeing it hath pleased thee, of thy tender mercy, upon our weak and unworthy humiliation, to asswage the contagious sickness wherewith we lately have been sore afflicted, and to restore the voice of joy and health into our dwellings: We offer unto thy Divine Majesty the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, lauding and magnifying thy glorious Name for such thy preservation and providence over us. . . .
It's as though England, with a much longer, bumpier history than ours, had already encountered more of the things that still threaten nations by the time its church leaders assembled The Book of Common Prayer, initially in 1549.
Memorable Prose
I value more about the Anglican tradition than just the Prayer Book. I love the hymns, which sound to my ear like Vaughan Williams at the keyboard rehearsing yet another tune for possible inclusion in The English Hymnal. I love the stories of C. S. Lewis and the poems of R. S. Thomas. I love it that these people welcome me, a Pentecostal, for communion when I visit; and I love the way they receive it, like animals in a stall, leaning on a railing at the head of the church to be fed with the Bread and Wine. But above all, I love the language.
It would be hard for an English speaker who cares about this maddening and beautiful tongue to overstate the worth and beauty of the two great gems of the English church—the Authorized Version of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was this same King James Version of the Bible that I read growing up, and pastors in our Pentecostal churches all used it in those days. It was our Bible, too.
So why didn't we know about the Book of Common Prayer?
I don't know the answer to that. I only know that I learned in high school that Neville Chamberlain, famously misled at his meeting with Adolf Hitler, was noted for saying: "I do believe it is peace in our time." I recognized that quote for years as his; but I never knew until at least twenty years later that he was quoting the Book of Common Prayer. How could an enthusiast know it? I didn't grow up with the text ringing in my ears.
Lance Nixon is a freelance writer based in Pierre, South Dakota, where he attends virtual services of New Life Assembly of God Church and also visits Trinity Episcopal Church virtually. He is also a fiction writer, and his latest stories about the Great Plains appeared in the November 2020 and November 2019 issues of Gray's Sporting Journal.
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