Nothing is more distinctive to Anglicanism than the Book of Common Prayer. It contains the forms of our public worship and abundant resources for our private prayers. It shapes our imagination. If one wants to know what Anglicans are about, the best thing to do is to join us in worship. But it is also possible to discover what we believe by reading through the Book of Common Prayer (traditionally, many Anglican theologians have suggested paying particular attention to the Baptismal rite, the Eucharistic prayers, and the ordination rites). The emphasis in Anglicanism is on our communion with one another and with God. Common prayer is how we live that out.
“Almighty
and everliving God, whose servant Thomas Cranmer, with others, restored the
language of the people in the prayers of your Church: Make us always thankful for this heritage;
and help us so to pray in the Spirit and with the understanding, that we may
worthily magnify your holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and
reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
–
Lesser Feasts and Fasts, Collect for commemorating the First Book of
Common Prayer, 1549
“To
know what was generally believed in all Ages, the way is to consult the
Liturgies, not any private Man's writing. As if you would know how the Church
of England serves God, go to the Common-Prayer Book, consult not this nor that
Man”
–
John Selden (1584-1654), The Table Talk of John Selden
“What
better method can be adopted to disseminate the truths of the Bible than by
dispersing a book which, exhibiting these truths in the affecting language of
devotion, impresses them on the heart as well as on the understanding?”
–
John Henry Hobart (1775-1830), Address Before the New York Bible and Prayer
Book Society
“Christian
prayer always involves a corporate element, with liturgical prayer—common
prayer—as its foundation and fulcrum.”
–
Martin Thornton (1915-1986), English Spirituality
“There
was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established,
which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted: as, among other things,
it may plainly appear by the common prayers in the Church, commonly called
Divine Service: the first original and ground whereof, if a man would search
out by the ancient fathers, he shall find, that the same was not ordained, but
of a good purpose, and for a great advancement of godliness: For they so
ordered the matter, that all the whole Bible (or the greatest part thereof)
should be read over once in the year, intending thereby, that the Clergy, and
especially such as were Ministers of the congregation, should (by often
reading, and meditation of God’s word) be stirred up to godliness themselves,
and be more able to exhort others by wholesome doctrine, and to confute them
that were adversaries to the truth. And further, that the people (by daily
hearing of holy Scripture read in the Church) should continually profit more
and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love of his
true religion.”
–
Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), Preface to the First Book of Common Prayer
(1549)
“The Poor Liturgy [the Book of Common Prayer] suffers from two extreams, one sort says, it is old superstitious Roman Dotage. The other, it is Schismatically New. This Book endeavours to shew particularly, what Bishop JEWEL (Apol. p. 117.) says in general, 1. That it is agreeable to PRIMITIVE USAGE, and so, not Novel. 2. THAT IT IS A REASONABLE SERVICE, and so, not Superstitious. As for those that love it, and suffer for the love of it, this will shew them Reasons, why they should suffer on, and love it still more and more. To end, if the Reader will cast his Eye upon the sad Confusions in point of prayer, (wherein are such contradictions made as God Almighty cannot grant) and lay them as Rubbish under these Fundamental Considerations; First, How many Set Forms (of Petition, Blessing, and Praise) be recorded in the Old and New Testament, used both in the Church Militant and Triumphant; Secondly, How much of the Liturgy is very Scripture; Thirdly, How admirable a Thing Unity, Unity in Time, Form, &c. is; Fourthly, How many Millions of poor souls are in the world; ignorant, infirm by nature, age, accidents, (as blindness, deafness, loss of speech, &c.) which respectively may receive help by Set Forms, but cannot so well (or not at all) by extemporary voluntary effusions, and then upon all these will build what he reads in this Book; he will, if not be convinced to joyn in Communion with, yet perhaps be so sweetned, as more readily to pardon those, who still abiding in their former judgments, and being more confirmed hereby, do use THE ANCIENT FORM.”
– Anthony Sparrow (1612-1685) A Rationale Upon the Book of Common Prayer
“Cranmer
lived in the middle of controversies where striking for a kill was the aim of
most debaters. Now of course we must beware of misunderstanding or modernising.
He was not by any stretch of the imagination a man who had no care for the
truth, a man who thought that any and every expression of Christian doctrine
was equally valid; he could be fierce and lucidly uncompromising when up
against an opponent like Bishop Gardiner. Yet even as a controversialist he
shows signs of this penitent scrupulosity in language: yes, this is the truth,
this is what obedience to the Word demands – but , when we have clarified what
we must on no account say, we still have to come with patience and painstaking
slowness to crafting what we do say. Our task is not to lay down some
overwhelmingly simple formula but to suggest and guide, to build up the
structure that will lead us from this angle and that towards the one luminous
reality. ‘Full, perfect and sufficient’ – each word to the superficial ear
capable of being replaced by either of the others, yet each with its own
resonance, its own direction into the mystery, and, as we gradually realise,
not one of them in fact dispensable.”
–
Rowan Williams (1950 - ), The Word of God Is Not Bound, The Prayer Book Society of
Canada website
“There
is no such sharp break between the Book of Common Prayer (1549) and earlier
liturgical prose as there is between Tyndale and the medieval translators of
scripture. It is an anonymous and corporate work in which Cranmer bore the
chief part, and it is almost wholly traditional in matter though some of the
excellences of its style are new. It has two main sources. One of these is that
form of the Latin service used during the Middle Ages in the diocese of
Salisbury and known as the Use of Sarum. The other is the long series of
books of devotion called hours or primers which had sometimes
appeared in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in English as well as in
Latin and which after a long interval are again found in English from 1534
onwards — reflecting, of course, many doctrinal changes. . . Sometimes, but
very sparingly, the compilers borrowed from the recent liturgical experiments
of the continental Reformers Some prayers they translated from the Greek, and
some they added of their own, but these were closely modelled on scripture They
wished their book to be praised not for original genius but for catholicity and
antiquity, and it is in fact the ripe fruit of centuries of worship.”
–
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), English Literature in the Sixteenth Century
Excluding Drama
“The
one corporate vernacular devotion of Catholic times of which we have certain
knowledge—the Bidding of the Sunday Bedes [prayers prayed before the Eucharist]
—shows already this homely, practical, incarnational temper of English piety,
its close and determined association of religion with all the events and
anxieties of daily life. This devotion is really a detailed family intercession
for the necessities of that daily life, and for all who have a claim on their
fellow Christians’ prayer; for ‘true tythers’ and ‘true tyllers’, for all the
‘grains and fruits sowed, set, or done on the earth’ for merchants, seamen, and
travellers, for all who have given to the Church for God’s service ‘any
behests’—'book, bell, chalice or vestment, surplice, altar-cloth or towel’ and
for the donor of that day’s ‘holy bread’—for the sick, all ‘women in Our Lady’s
bands,’ and for all departed Christian souls. After each bidding, the people
said the Lord’s Prayer in silence. The Reformers, ruthlessly expelling the
sacrificial element from the Mass, reducing with a heavy hand the symbolic
setting of expressive worship, and in general stripping the mediaeval colour
from English religious life, yet left in such devotions as these the deepest
roots of that religious life, the homely and filial dependence on the
Providence of God, almost untouched.”
–
Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Worship
“The
great outlines and chief values of the traditional Christian cultus were
faithfully conserved in [the Book of Common Prayer]; and it developed under the
religious leaders of the Caroline Church—Lancelot Andrewes, Laud, Jeremy
Taylor, and their associates—that sober but Catholic English tradition, based
on the Divine Office and the Eucharist, and faithful to the ancient disciplines
of ordered prayer, fasting, and communion, which survived the disasters of the
Puritan dominance and subsequent periods of reaction and of indifference, and
is now again recognized as the classic norm of Anglican worship.”
–
Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Worship
“The
Book itself is the product of a phase of violent struggle within the Church
between Catholic tradition and Protestant reform. It bears marks of the
struggle everywhere - even in the vague and careless rubrics, where the parson
is sometimes called ‘the priest’ and sometimes ‘the minister’ – as though the
reform had been hastily made by people who were not very good proof-readers.
Yet the outline of the original structure still persists, though a good deal
pruned, cut up, and dislocated. There was never any break with tradition so
violent as to destroy altogether the liturgical framework which preserved
continuity of form between the pre-Reformation and the post-Reformation worship
of the Church.”
–
Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957), Worship in the Anglican Church
“Mr.
Duncon found him [George Herbert] weak, and at that time lying on his bed, or
on a pallet; but at his seeing Mr. Duncon he raised himself vigorously, saluted
him, and with some earnestness enquired the health of his brother Farrer; of
which Mr. Duncon satisfied him, and after some discourse of Mr. Farrer’s holy
life, and the manner of his constant serving God, he said to Mr. Duncon,—'Sir,
I see by your habit that you are a Priest, and I desire you to pray with me:’
which being granted, Mr. Duncon asked him, ‘What prayers?’ To which Mr.
Herbert’s answer was, ‘O, Sir! the prayers of my Mother, the Church of England;
no other prayers are equal to them! But at this time, I beg of you to pray only
the Litany, for I am weak and faint:’ and Mr. Duncon did so.”
–
Izaak Walton (1593-1683), The Life of Mr. George Herbert
“I
believe there is no liturgy in the World, either in ancient or modern language,
which breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational Piety, than the Common
Prayer of the Church of England. And though the main of it was compiled
considerably more than two hundred years ago, yet is the language of it, not
only pure, but strong and elegant in the highest degree.”
–
John Wesley (1703-1791), Preface to The Sunday Service of the
Methodists; With Other Occasional Services, 1788
“The
English Book of Common Prayer is not merely a permissive liturgy, like the
Prayer Books of the Lutheran and Calvinist Churches. It forms, with the Bible
or Lectionary, the authorized Missal and Breviary of the English branch of the
Catholic Church. Its use is obligatory, and its contents declare in
unmistakable terms the adherence of that Church to the great Catholic tradition
of Christendom and the general conformity of its worship to the primitive
ritual type.”
–
Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Worship
“The
liturgical services for Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage, Churching of Women,
the Visiting of the Sick and Burial of the Dead, witness to the continuing
desire of the Church to sanctify and weave into her worship every circumstance
of human life. The Prayer Book is therefore in itself a Catholic document;
though a Catholic document which has been subdued to the penetrating influence
of the Reform, and bears many marks of the vicissitudes through which it has
passed.”
–
Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Worship
“Early
in June, 1940, I went to St. Deniol’s Library to meet Mr. Vidler, and at the
very first Matins at the little chapel I knew that I had come home. I had not
attended an Anglican service before. I was fifty years old. I was not a raw
youth to be impressed. I came with a lifetime of suffering, and found that ‘I
was in the spirit’, deep called to deep. Late that first night I sat up
reading, for the first time in my life, The Book of Common Prayer. ‘How is it’,
I asked myself, ‘that I have never read this before?’ I found the Prayer Book
to be more exciting at that first reading than any novel. I experienced a sense
of ecstasy, I knew that I had found my spiritual place of abiding, that my
buffered, storm-tossed barque had reached its haven.”
–
David Richard Davies (1889-1958), In Search of Myself [wikiquote.org, Book of
Common Prayer]
“In the Daily Office we are lifted beyond the contemporary . . . praying with the church across the ages and with the communion of God’s saints.”
– Michael Ramsey (1904-1988), The Christian Priest Today
“One
of my earliest loves was the Book of Common Prayer. I was seduced by it, by its
beautiful words and the sense of history.”
–
P. D. James (1920-2014), P. D. James, interview with Victoria McKee, The
Times Magazine, 22 May 1993
“My
love for the Prayer Book began in very early childhood, before I could read –
when I could only listen to it. Of course, it was the only book used then. . .
There
is so much history, romance, and great beauty in it. And the prayers like the
General Thanksgiving and the prayers after Communion are so superb that they
meet my need in praying much better than my own words do, and I still use them
in private prayer.”
–
P. D. James (1920-2014), quoted in Remembering P.D. James, The Prayer
Book Society of Canada website
“One
could argue that Cranmer’s chief reason for implementing standard liturgies was
to provide a venue in which the Bible could be more widely and thoroughly
known.”
–
Alan Jacobs (1958 - ), The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography
“But
if roteness is a danger, it is also the way liturgy works. When you don't have
to think all the time about what words you are going to say next, you are free
to fully enter into the act of praying; you are free to participate in the life
of God.”
–
Lauren Winner (1976 - ), Mudhouse Sabbath
“Sam
McDaniel, a 27-year-old assistant organist and choirmaster in the Diocese of
West Tennessee, said he appreciates how Episcopal liturgy is less
individualistic than his Baptist upbringing. He names the prayer book as a
central aspect of why he became an Episcopalian in his early 20s.
‘Where
else would I go that’s going to have the same respect for tradition and that
sort of thing while still also being open to listening to how God is speaking
today to us?’ McDaniel said.”
–
Logan Crews, Book of Common Prayer draws Gen Z to the Anglican, Episcopal
Tradition, Episcopal News Service, posted April 28, 2026
“Anglican
Christians often speak about the Book of Common Prayer as ‘the Bible arranged
for worship’. . . if
the BCP is the defining document of our theological tradition, then it turns
out that we do have a distinctive and significant theology to lay claim to,
because to arrange Scripture as the BCP does — to place parts of it alongside
other parts and thus invite reflection on their relationship, their resonance
one to another — is itself inescapably, and wonderfully, theological. And it is
theological in a particularly potent and important way.”
–
Wesley Hill, The Trinitarian Theology of Morning Prayer, Covenant, TLC’s
Online Journal, November 20, 2018
“If
you ask an Anglican what it means to belong to the church, the answer might well
be, ‘Come and worship with us.’ Being an Anglican means doing what the church
does ― and what the church does, first and foremost, is worship the living God.
It is out of our common worship that out understanding of God proceed and our
ethical and moral decision-making take shape.”
–
Jeffery Lee (1957 - ), Opening the Prayer Book
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