True Anglicanism

“One canon, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries and the series of the Fathers in that period determine the boundaries of our faith.”

Lancelot Andrewes
(1555-1626)

The only fresh expression that is needed, as far as I am concerned, is mine and your changed heart. Ancient liturgy and worship is only boring because I am bored. Open my eyes, ears, mind, and heart to what you are saying in worship and life, O LORD. I want to see Jesus. LORD have mercy, Brian+

Anglicanism: A Spiritual System

Why I love the Book of Common Prayer more than ever. Forgive me for misplacing the author of this wonderful quote. I believe it was Robert Darwin Crouse (1930 - 2011)

The Book of Common Prayer is not conceived (as are its current alternatives) as a kind of resource-book for worship, from which one may choose elements according to one’s tastes or inclinations, or have them chosen for one by the clergy or by some “worship and spirituality” committee, more or less ad hoc. The Prayer Book is, rather, a spiritual system, biblical, traditional, and logical, which includes, but at the same time transcends and corrects the subjective inclinations of the worshipper or the spirituality committee. It is the common prayer of priest and congregation, and corporate in a way in which the self-conscious “gathering of the community” can never be.

Liturgical resource books will not do. The prayer of the Church becomes the common prayer of the people only when its variants are few enough that they can become thoroughly familiar and habitual, and thus can be genuinely prayed. William Beveridge, several centuries ago, put the matter cogently:

… If I hear another pray, and know not beforehand what he will say, I must first listen to what he will say next; then I am to consider whether what he saith be agreeable to sound doctrine, and whether it be proper and lawful for me to join with him in the petitions he puts up to Almighty God; and if I think it is so, then I am to do it. But before I can well do that, he is got to another thing; by which means it is very difficult, if not morally impossible, to join with him in everything so regularly as I ought to do. But by a set form of prayer all this trouble is prevented; for having the form continually in my mind, being thoroughly acquainted with it, fully approving of everything in it, and always knowing beforehand what will come next, I have nothing else to do, whilst the words are sounding in my ears, but to move my heart and affections suitably to them, to raise up my desires to those good things which are prayed for, to fix my mind wholly upon God, whilst I am praising of him, and so to employ, quicken, and lift up my soul in performing my devotions to Him.

Anglican spirituality is basically a liturgical piety, nurtured by the Book of Common Prayer.