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With Mother’s Day coming up, it’s always nice to write something about your own.  My relationship with mine was complicated.  But this post isn’t as much about her as about the book she cherished: the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.  Her relationship with the Episcopal Church was complicated too, as this vignette attests, but she loved the 1928 BCP, all the while not realising that it too had a complicated history.

The topic in question is the Lectionary, and this post is a response to some chatter on Anglican Twitter and specifically a post by the Young High Churchman on the Porcine Blog.  I’ll try to cut to the chase on this (and to inform my readers of various backgrounds) by making the following declarations:

• I discuss the whole concept of the lectionary here, and how it can be superior to the “system” used in “Bible” churches.
• The 1662 Book of Common Prayer‘s Lectionary is in effect “reading the Bible through in a year,” if and only if you either attend both Morning and Evening Prayer every day or read the appointed readings yourself.
• The 1928 BCP had two lectionaries, one with the original book and the other adopted in 1945, which you see in most copies of the 1928 BCP today.  The difference between the two–and in subsequent prayer books–is the topic of this discussion.
• The 1928 BCP, for all of the reverence given to it by Continuing Churches and others, was promulgated after the Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy.  It’s safe to say that most Episcopal ministers in the day (especially those of recent seminary education) fell with the latter.  Some of that can be seen with the social justice prayers, but there are other examples.  The Episcopal Church was a Main Line church in every sense of the word.

Now to the tricky part: it can be shown that the 1945 Lectionary has shorter scripture readings and dodges passages which many Episcopalians thought were in bad taste.  An interesting comparison using the Book of Genesis (might as well take it from the top) can be found here.  As you can see, the further forward in time you go (until the ACNA’s 2019 effort) the thinner the coverage of the Scriptures gets.  The 1945 Lectionary was the one I was raised on, along with thousands of others who were caught in the explosion of the 1960’s.

Let me now comment on some of the Porcine’s observations:

Bayard Hale Jones, one of the architects of the 1945, readily explains it in his book “The American Lectionary.” He claims that it was the increasing prominence of Holy Communion as the only Sunday service that did it, as the Propers are considerably shorter than the Daily Office lessons, and that the laity were “chafing under the tediousness and irrelevancy” of certain passages. What he neglects is that up until the 1940s even advanced Anglo-Catholic parishes would have Mattins every Sunday in addition to Holy Communion, so that the full breadth of Holy Scripture would be encountered.

I think that the “only Communion” movement in the Episcopal world was in its infancy in the 1940’s.  Twenty years later Bethesda had three Sunday morning services: the first was at 8:00 (always Communion,) 9:30 (Communion once a month) and 11:00 (same as 9:30.)  Latta Griswold, Anglo-Catholic though he was, thought Morning Prayer important enough to include instructions on how to do it properly and lamented Evening Prayer’s sparse attendance.  Jones’ observation may be propaganda or reflect one slice of the Episcopal Church in one part of the country.

Perhaps here is where we see the real problems begin to set in with PECUSA, as the laity loses its grasp on the Word of God within a generation, and it can’t provide the bulwark against the liberalism coming out of the seminaries that it once did. Here is also likely where Episcopalians get their reputation for not knowing their bibles.

As mentioned earlier, unless you are faithful to the Daily Office (or at least the appointed readings) you don’t get the benefit of the readings, and for most lay people that kind of fidelity is exceptional.  One argument for the three-year cycle (such as the Catholics use with the Novus Ordo Missae) is that you get a broader slice of the Scriptures through Sunday attendance (and in the case of Catholics Days of Obligation.)  What the 1945 Lectionary shuffle does indicate is the flagging interest in the Scriptures amongst the clergy, which in turn is reflected in a) their sermons (a point Griswold makes) and b) in the case of High Churches, the habit of dragging out other parts of the liturgy at the expense of longer Scripture readings.  The Episcopal clergy in the years leading up to the 1960’s were having “Gregory the Great” moments, which is why they were unprepared to effectively deal with the wolves that emerged in those turbulent times.

The craziest thing is: people are hungry for the Word of God. They always have been, and they always be. Why do you think people hopped from the Mainline to the Evangelical churches in the 60s? It wasn’t because they liked grape juice.

Before we get to the issue of why people went for the grape juice in the 1960’s, it’s worth asking why so many people (like my mother) abandoned the grape juice in the years after World War II.  It was because the Episcopal Church offered a more refined, more acceptable and more socioeconomically successful religion than the one they came out of.  My mother in particular wanted to leave the dogmatism of her family’s Southern/Missionary Baptist heritage.

The lesson for today is simple: the ACNA likewise has experienced an influx of people who have abandoned the grape juice for a more refined, liturgical and–dare I say it–socioeconomically well placed religion than they came from.  Much of the recent push to the left has come from these people, not the combat veterans of the wars with TEC.  If they succeed then the whole point of the ACNA–and the whole Biblical basis of Anglicanism–is up in smoke in this country.  It’s that simple.

It’s true that a more Scriptural lectionary would help the laity to internalize the Word, which is always a good thing.  I know the lectionary affected me.  But it’s just one piece in the puzzle.  The Word needs to be in the liturgy, but ultimately it does not need to be confined therein.

At least in one case:

After a lengthy process of prayerful discernment, respectful conversation, and engagement with the Presiding Bishop’s Office and the Standing Committee, the leadership of the Diocese of Washington, working together with the leadership of Christ Church Accokeek, has decided to sell the property of Christ Church Accokeek to a new corporate entity that is not in union with the Diocese. We have reached this decision in a spirit of friendship

In the recent past the Episcopal Church has pursued a “take no prisoners” policy on keeping its property, and especially keeping its property out of the hands of other Anglican entities.  But this is the same diocese that looted the Soper Trust; the call of financial necessity has given cooler heads the upper hand, up to and including the Presiding Bishop’s Office, once the most intransigent link in the chain.

But it could have been different all along.  The Church of God, which also owns the property centrally (and has a more consistent history of doing so) has a different view.  I asked the aide to a state Administrative Bishop what he would do if a church wanted to leave and purchase its property.  His response? He would tell them where to send the check.

Evidently the Episcopal Church is starting to see the wisdom of following the example of those “insufferable Holy Rollers across the tracks.”

An eventful Episcopal life ends:

The Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, former bishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles, died suddenly of natural causes at his home in La Quinta, California, on April 23.

Although anyone who was involved in the Episcopal property wars is well aware of his “take no prisoners” approach to this problem, the first notice this blog took of him was in 2014. In 1985, long before those conflicts, he succeeded Ian Mitchell of American Folk Mass fame as Rector of St. Athanasius Episcopal Church in Los Angeles.  At the time the Los Angeles Times noted the following, quoted in this piece:

The Rev. J. Jon Bruno, a former policeman and professional football player, is a large man. Now, the 6-foot, 5-inch, 300-pound Episcopal priest has a job to match his size–a job that may require the spirituality of a clergyman, the street smarts of a cop and the rough-and-tumble doggedness of a defensive tackle…

“You know the old saying about ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread?’ Well, I’m no angel. So of course I have some fear and trembling about entering this situation. But I do it prayerfully. I feel compelled to respond to the need.”

No angel indeed, as evidenced by this and this. His litigiousness evidently transcended the world of church property, as evidenced by this comment in 2016:

I’m not going to say anything on this blog about Bishop Bruno that might open either of us to being sued by him. It’s hard to imagine that suing one’s flock is conducive to a pastoral mindset or inspires trust. And the defensiveness of litigation is totally at odds with the cross.

He was dismissed from office, a rare event for a champion of their new idea, which he was.

I’m sure his encounter with God was interesting.

A very nice, a capella, solo rendition of the Venite, done in Anglican Chant (1940 Hymnal #609) is here:

I discuss the difference between the “American” and “English” version here.  The 1928 Book of Common Prayer (where the Venite can be found on p. 9) is here.

After attending yet another funeral in the morning yesterday, I came home and hunched over my kitchen counter, absorbed in leftover scalloped potatoes, to be transported by the soaring music, the elegant hats, and the heartbreaking social distancing of a very different kind of burial, that of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. A handful of…

Two Funerals and an Amazing Grace