Via Media Podcast, Episode 14 The 2019 Book of Common Prayer Ben Jefferies June 20, 2019 https://www.beesondivinity.com/the-institute-of-anglican-studies/podcast/2019/the-2019-book-of-common-prayer Announcer: The Institute of Anglican Studies at Beeson Divinity School welcomes you to Via Media, a podcast exploring the religious and theological worlds from an Anglican perspective. Here is your host Gerald McDermott. McDermott: Our guest today is Father Ben Jefferies, who grew up in England, moved to the United States in 1999, graduated from Wheaton College with a degree in Communication and Theater and a minor in Theology; spent some time as a Chaplain; graduated from Nashotah House Theological Seminary; and was a priest for a time in Springfield, Missouri, and now he is the Rector at Church of the Good Shepherd in Opelika, Alabama. But importantly, for our broadcast today, he has served on the liturgy task force for ACNA (Anglican Church in North America) that is coming out with a new prayer book in June of 2019. He is here to talk to us about this new prayer book. Welcome, Father Ben. Jefferies: Thanks for having me. McDermott: Let me ask first, Ben, why has the ACNA felt, for some time ... I understand this task force has been working on the prayer book for eight years ... Why has the ACNA felt that we need a new prayer book? Jefferies: Good question. Well, the prayer book has undergone, as any student of the prayer book knows, revision at different periods, often pivotal periods in the Anglican Church’s history. So, after the break from Rome we get the English liturgy and the first Book of Common Prayer and after the Cromwell’s Commonwealth, and the sort of new via media of 17th century Anglicanism we get the 1662 Prayer Book, and similarly these times of upheaval, breaking away from the Episcopal Church, there was a sense of a need for a new Prayer Book. Not only because of wanting clearly distinguishing a sort of ecclesial break away, but there had been long and lingering discontents with the prior ... the most previous revision, the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. The 1979 prayer book did a lot of things very well, but it also did a handful of things not very well, and even a few things quite badly. So, ever since that prayer book came out there’s been a sort of ... that feeling among a lot of Anglicans, especially conservative Anglicans, some of the language that was sort of either within or connected to the baptismal liturgy and sort of the idea that God ... This is hyperbolizing a little, but “God sort of loves everybody and everybody is kind of fine, and we don’t really know who is saved,” and kind of softening some of these things of true biblical catholic teaching, as well as some few unfortunate 1970’s isms that kind of snuck their way in, famously Prayer C in the Eucharist, and one of the phrases that we sort of would bat around as the Liturgy Task Force when we reviewed sections of the 1979 Prayer Book, as part of our collecting work, was we would say, “You know? That phrase really has bell bottoms on it,” especially in the (laughs) occasional prayers and thanksgivings, these sort of well-meaning, but very 70’s sort of generalized prayers for the good of society. As Christians, of course, we’re supposed to pray for the good of society, but one of the things we noticed is that so many of the prayers had this tone of “God do this work over there.” There actually wasn’t self implication, especially in a penitential tone that was so characteristic of earlier petitions in earlier prayer books. So, kind of a handful of sort of lingering faults of the ’79 Prayer Book, coupled with a sense of the political, kind of ecclesial moment of the day, of breaking away from the Episcopal Church, and both some of the different stages, but then gathering as the Anglican Church in North America, with this very exciting moment. Arch Bishop Duncan really felt strongly that this new ecclesia, this new province, needed to have its own prayer book. So, those things combined prompted its creation. McDermott: Now you mentioned the 1662, which many of our listeners will know, is still today the only official prayer book for the Church of England and has been something of a model for the prayer books in other provinces across the Anglican communion. So, I think the first question that many of us will ask of this new prayer book is whether it follows, or to what extent it follows the model of the 1662? Jefferies: Hmm. Yeah, so right at the outset of the forming of the liturgy task force there were a handful of guidelines and sort of guiding vision kind of touchstones for this revision. And along the way those got further modified by Archbishop Duncan as chair, further clarified I should say. But at the very beating heart, the north start, for the whole revision process was the 1662 prayer book. If we couldn’t sort of justify it in conversation with the 1662 prayer book it was pretty close to just being off the table, out of the gate. So, while there are some substantial differences from the 1662 prayer book, the conviction and the hope is that upon study and use that the 2019 prayer book will be seen to be in the same spirit, and sort of capturing that same animating principle that animated the revisers of the Savoy Conference and the production of the 1662 prayer book. Really, chiefly the great success of the 1662 is that all of the sort of Catholically minded bishops, after the restoration of Charles II, they were wholeheartedly invested in it, and at the same time the language was put forward and words were chosen in such a way, and moderated as they could be, so that many, many of the sort of more puritanically minded within the Church of England could also say, “Yes, we can use this prayer book,” and so compromises were made while still maintaining an uncompromised theology. So, in the very first handwritten draft of the 1662 prayer book there are signatures in the back, and all the bishops signed it, and so did Richard Baxter, and dozens of other priests who we usually think of as kind of being partisan with the puritans, they gladly signed onto the 1662 prayer book and the hope is that the BCB 2019 would function kind of ecclesially in a similar way – that it would simultaneously be compelling and useful to kind of the whole swath of permitted Anglican churchmanship. McDermott: Now obviously since it’s the 2019 and not the 1662 it’s different from the 1662. Jefferies: Yes. McDermott: Can you tell us a little bit about how the 2019 is different from the 1662? Jefferies: Sure. So, a couple of big things ... one, obviously, Elizabethan language, like just the word forms have been updated. There’s no longer thee’s and thou’s; everything is in contemporary English. There is a rubric right in the beginning of the preface to this prayer book that says, “Any texts absent in the new text is permitted to be put back into traditional language.” Setting the contemporary English as the printed standard isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with the traditional language, but we’re just thinking kind of missionally about the 21st century – so it’s put in English that we would today understand. Similarly, 16th and 17th century English is famous for very, very long sentences, which are hard to follow to today’s ears. So, especially in things like the Eucharistic prayers and the long prayer over the baptismal waters, things like that. Sentence length has been greatly reduced for modern English. Apart from the language, the liturgical movement really beginning at the turn of the last century, in the early 1900’s and for that sort of 50 years of liturgical and inquiry and profound academic publishing and one of the things that really recovered was a sense of common participation in the liturgy. This was right in line with Anglican trajectory. When we look at a medieval mass it was like 100% via the priest and the people just said, “Amen” once, maybe, you know? Then Cranmer’s first prayer book puts a lot more of the liturgy back on the lips of the people, so that trajectory is thoroughly Anglican, and the liturgical movement’s impetus to do that, to put more of the prayers on the lips of the people so there’s really a sense of we’re all praying parts of this as one grand synthetic prayer together. That has been extended beyond 1662 in the face of 1928 and 1979 prayer books, both of which incorporated these insights. Our prayer book will be very familiar to users of the 1979 and that there’s a lot of text on the lips of the people and the Deacon as well as the priest, where as in the 1662 prayer book there’s just a whole swatch which are big long paragraphs that really are just the priest’s prayers, and they’ve been sort of reincorporated into the priest and the people together. So that’s a big structural difference from 1662, but similar with 1979. Then lastly there’s just a few things which are just sort of gestured at and rubrics in the 1662 which are given more flesh in our prayer book. Like, famously, in the ministry to the sick in 1662 there’s a rubric saying the priest may invite the sick person to make confession to the priest. And Anglican priests have always practiced private confession to a priest, but since the ’79 prayer book introduced a form for that. That has been continued, a form for reconciliation of the penitent, or as commonly known “confession,” but it’s been structured in our prayer book within the ... under the umbrella of ministry to the sick. So, there’s ministry to the sick, which exists in several sub rites: anointing, communion, confession. Thus kind of trying to communicate that 1662 spirit. McDermott: Now of course most traditionally minded Anglicans in the United States either use or love or are very familiar with the 1928 American prayer book. How is the 2019 different from the 1928? Jefferies: Good question. Well, one of the things that needed to be kept in view from the very beginning Dr. J.I. Packer was on the liturgy task force up right through till the very end. Then one of the sort of ... another member was Father Darrell Critch, who is a Canadian. Because the Anglican Church of North America incorporates the churches in Canada, right, who have broken away from the Anglican Church of Canada. The Canadians never had a 1928 prayer book. Right? That’s an American production. Their prayer book was more continuous of the 1662. Similarly at the table was Canon Ron Mook who was a veteran priest in the Reformed Episcopal Church, and they also never had the 1928 prayer book, which is sort of famously more Catholically minded than its predecessors. So, one of the things we had to do was to actually make sure that this prayer book was useful for both the Church of Canada, the Anglican network in Canada, and the Reformed Episcopal Church, that it wouldn’t be so sort of up front ... not up front ... it would be so ... It wouldn’t be exclusively Catholic. It is undoubtedly a prayer book in stream of the great tradition of liturgy and therefore it is a catholic prayer book, but there were some parts of the 1928 specific prayer of languages, like some of the specific language of prayers over the dead at the funeral, or intercessions at other times in that vein. Some of the language of the Eucharistic prayer, which to a Canadian or a Reformed Episcopal Church member would just stick out as like, “Wait, what?” (laughs) And so in a way it’s ... I would place the 2019 prayer book as sort of halfway between, if we drew a line with 1662 on one end and 1928 on the other, it’s kind of halfway between. It definitely has some more Catholic elements than 1662 has on the face of it, but yet it’s not quite as up front ... it’s not quite as ... up front is not a great word, ‘cause it makes it sound like it’s trying to be sneaky. The language was moderated and conciliated to be not forcibly sort of Anglo-Catholic, if that makes sense. McDermott: Well, it does make sense and it relates to my next two questions, which I’ll probably combine into one. I mean, I’ve had my evangelical Anglican friends tell me they fear that the 2019 shoves Anglo-Catholicism down our throats. And they had particular reference to the burial rite, in which they took to be prayers for the dead. Then some of my higher church Anglican friends worry that it’ll be too evangelical and not have a high enough view of the sacraments and liturgy. Jefferies: Yeah. There’s that old adage that if you’re upsetting both sides you’re probably in an okay place. (laughs) There’s going to be a little bit of that going on, but one of the things that was really kind of a revelation. Everyone at the table of the Liturgy Task Force, the core committee. So, there’s the “core committee,” each of whom is a head of a subcommittee that kind of provided the initial text for working. One of the real revelations through the process, even though with a collective deep familiarity with the history of the prayer book and liturgies, upon deeper study, and you know it’s not until you start breaking apart the syntax and the punctuation and the phrasing that you really kind of turnover and look underneath the hood, as it were, of the prayer book – it was a real revelation actually how Catholically minded the 1662 prayer book is. When we sort of think in the way it’s spoken about there’s this sort of common idea that the 1662 isn’t all that Catholic. But upon study it actually revealed itself to be in a very profound way. So, for instance, you know there’s a handful of kind of famous lightning rods, right, in the later prayer book tradition. So, a couple words on those. So, for instance, the “blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” after the Sanctus was sort of a traditional lightning rod that distinguished lower churchmanship from higher churchmanship for various reasons 100 years ago. And still today in some quarters. Anything which is, I should say, almost anything which is sort of been a lightning rod for a past disagreement has been made rubricly optional. The rubrics say “there may be said,” things like that. So, there are many, many places where if something is objectionable look at the rubrics, it’s often going to be an optional text so that the people don’t feel strong-armed into saying a prayer that would cause cognitive spiritual dissonance for them. So, there’s a lot of options built in. I would even say more ... the word “may” was used more times in this prayer book than I think any of its predecessors. On the other hand, a number of things where ... another traditional lightning rod, the idea of the regenerative function of baptism. If you look at the 1662 baptismal rite, it uses the word “regeneration” in predicate sentences at least nine times in the baptismal rite. Then another dozen or so times in the confirmation rite, saying “when you were baptized you were made regenerate,” the word “regenerate” is just littered throughout baptism and confirmation in the 1662 prayer book. So, for people today to say, “Well, regenerate, that’s so Catholic,” it’s like well, that’s 1662 language. And so recognizing we’re still creating this prayer book on this side of history. The word “regenerate” is a stumbling block for many, so rather than have it nine times in the baptismal liturgy it occurs only once and in additional direction it says, “this word may be replaced with the phrase “forgiveness of sins” so that it doesn’t cause a stumbling block in parishes where it might possibly do so. We even toned down some of the sort of Catholic signals from the 1662, because of their later controversial status, but the 1662 prayer book ... So, for instance, the prayers for the dead in the 1662 it’s unequivocally permitted to be praying for the soul of the deceased between the time they died and the time they were buried. So, the traditional watch time. You know, usually a three day window before formaldehyde and all the modern burial practices. So, the 1662 definitely authorizes prayers for the dead in a limited window. Then that has been taken in the late Middle Ages to these sort of un-Anglican extremes, like these sort of chantry mass chapels for the dead, kind of clearly losing sight of the core reason the Eucharist was instituted. But in our prayer book, the 2019, we are building on the 1662 foundation of saying these are used for the dead, and even actually in the Eucharistic prayer of 1662 there’s mention of the departed. So, if these things which we, upon study, our prayer book has the language of the mention of the deceased and the prayers for the people in the Anglican standard Eucharistic text. It doesn’t go beyond ... it’s right next to the language of the 1662 prayer book. So, if someone says “this is too Catholic,” I would say, “Well, study the 1662 prayer book closer. If this is too Catholic, maybe Anglicanism is too Catholic for you. That’s a hard way of putting it, but Anglicanism is essentially a great tradition expression of the Christian faith, which means we are unapologetically connected to the Catholic tradition. McDermott: Well, thank you Ben. Now let’s turn to the Psalms. Jefferies: Yeah. McDermott: Which for thousands of years have been called “the prayer book of the church and the synagogue,” Jonathan Edwards would refer to the synagogue as “the Jewish Church,” historically. So, for over three thousand years the prayer book of God’s people. Tell us about what you did with the Psalms. What version of the Psalms is used in the 2019? Jefferies: Yeah. So, the tiny bit of back-story that’s needed to answer that is that when Thomas Cranmer put forward the first prayer book in 1549, he grabbed the Psalter that was familiar to English speakers, which was that of the great Bible of 1535, so 14 years prior, which Miles Coverdale had a hand in, and he was himself the translator of the Psalms. He was a great scholar, a great Hebraist, a great poet. He was sort of ... he is the pen that gave us the Psalter that was attached to the prayer book from the very beginning. And so through all the revisions, 1549, 1559, 1662, and American 1789, it was always just the 1892, 1928, they all had essentially the Psalter from the Bible of 1535, the Miles Coverdale Psalter. It underwent a few little kind of grammatical little tweaks, or sort of switching a word order here and there, or a couple of tiny changes in the late 19th century that just gave it a tiny bit of polish. But it was essentially the same. Then in the 1979 prayer book, beginning in the mid 1950s a whole new translation of the Psalter was begun. And it used the Coverdale Psalter as a touchstone, but it really departed from it. It really greatly departed from it, actually. It’s a very new translation to itself. And it’s not a bad translation. I mean, we’ve all been using it prior till now, coming from that other prayer book. But it does have some pretty serious ... Two things that seemed worthy of remedy. One, from compared to its Coverdale predecessor, the first is that poetically it’s just not as memorable. It’s not as good a poetry. The great Anglican poet, W.H. Auden was on that Psalm committee in the 60s. One of the things he kept saying, and he ended up dying before they completed their work, and they radically departed from, he was an anchor saying, “Don’t change Coverdale, it reads like great poetry,” and he’s arguably one of the greatest poets himself of the 20th century. He said, “Coverdale is where it’s at.” But then the committee didn’t heed that advice in the 60s and they did their own thing, and Auden didn’t like it, but so it went. Some of the poetic value ... the degree to which the phrases of that Psalter imprinted on the English language, I mean, in studying Coverdale it’s like you can’t go three verses without seeing some phrase or some clause that’s almost a part of everyday speech in English, and it was Coverdale that gave it to us. So, it’s great poetry. Additionally, two other things, there was in the 1979 Psalter, there was a desire to sort of see masculine pronouns gender neutralized. Which has a seed of a good impulse in it, right, which is to say, “Look, the Psalms are the prayer book of the Church. Men and women pray them. So, let’s change “he” to “they” to make it sort of gender inclusive.” There’s an impulse there that is fine. The trouble is they didn’t do it only when, say, a member of the congregation is sort of the voice in the Psalms, but for so many of the Psalms they are direct prophesies about Jesus, right? Jesus says in the road to Emmaus, the Psalms that speak about him, directly, that David himself was a prophet. So, when you take ... So, Psalm 1 and you say, “Happy are [they] who do these things,” there’s still a great biblical teaching, but what’s lost is that undertone, that sort of prophetic note of “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the way of the wicked.” Right? This is a picture of Jesus, who is going to be the man, ecce homo, behold “the man.” So, the prophetic quality of the Psalms is really lost when the pronouns are neutralized. So, anytime the pronoun ... in our Psalter we wanted to recover all that sort of ... all of those texts in which the Church has long treasured as prophecies to restore them in singular male pronoun so that those would be more visible, but in cases where it’s talking about the great mass of us wicked, using sometimes a male pronoun or let’s make that a plural noun, because we’re all in the mass of the wicked, you know? So, there was a sensitive ear to the sort of conversation about gender and language and liturgy that’s around, but not to run rough-shot over the great traditional interpretations of these Psalms. The other thing, of course, in the 60s – there was a real hubris of saying, “What did anyone before us know about Hebrew scholarship? We are the greatest Hebrew scholars ever.” They slammed Coverdale saying, “Oh, it’s not great Hebrew.” We put some of the best Hebrew scholars ... some great Hebrew scholars. One in particular, the Hebrew professor at Nashotah House, Dr. Travis Bott. He wrote his dissertation at Emory on the Psalms. Like, he is sort of world class Psalter, Hebrew scholar. His Hebrew scholarship is actually progressed into the 60s beyond that hubris to say, “Actually, some of the earlier scholarship actually was really onto something. It’s not infinitely flexible, the semantic range. It’s not ... you can’t just play willy nilly with the vowel pointing.” So, actually scholars today have actually really re-affirmed, in many ways, Coverdale’s work. They were given the charge by Archbishop, the chair, to say examine every word of the Coverdale Psalter against the Hebrew and see if the English can ... if the Hebrew can bear that translation. It might not be what you think is the absolute best, but is it within range? The answer in most cases was “yes,” surprisingly. Then what was really fascinating, sorry to ramble, but it was really exciting to see unfold – the Hebrew of the Psalms in places is notoriously difficult. What’s really interesting is Coverdale, well ahead of his time, when encountering a vague Hebrew that’s difficult to interpret it seems like he’s really looking as a sort of secondary source to the Septuagint, the Greek Psalter. When he has to make a decision he errs on the side of the Greek, of the Septuagint Psalter. So, there’s this kind of cool traditional Septuagintial influence as well. It just is a really remarkable thing. The Psalms that we created were a revision of the Coverdale and the other great touchstone text was a 1961 Psalter produced by a committee in England that had C.S. Lewis and T.S. Elliott on it. And they did an update of Coverdale and then that thing got squashed in committee in England. It was finished and then never put forward. A great tragedy. But whenever we were looking in the different rounds of revision of how something should be phrased in contemporary English the first question was, “Well, how did the 1963 Psalter, what did they do?” And then we’d ask the scholars, “How does that sound?” You know? And kind of making sure that the poetry and the scholarship kind of move in tandem together. So, that’s how it was created. McDermott: Well, in the Septuagint ... I’m glad to hear that Coverdale looked to the Septuagint and your committee looks to the Septuagint, because it was the Bible of the Early Church. Jefferies: Right. McDermott: And scholars have discovered in recent decades that the reason why so many New Testament quotations of the Psalms seem to a lot of us to misquote the Psalms which usually are translated from the Hebrew is because they were using the Greek. Jefferies: Right. Right. Exactly. McDermott: So, I am really looking forward to this translation of the Psalms. Now, Ben, let’s turn to the Eucharistic prayers. For many of us the most important, or one of the most important parts of the prayer book. How many Eucharistic prayers, which Eucharistic prayers, and how rooted in the ancient tradition are these Eucharistic prayers? Jefferies: Yeah. Good question. There’s been a bit of confusion about this, because initially there were two Eucharistic prayers put forward. There was ... I think it was called, “the long form” and “the short form.” What we realized was right away there’s going to be a branding problem. Because who’s going to say, “I’ll do the long one! Sign me up for the long one!” (laughs) And they were substantially very similar, just with the short one having paragraphs of the long one excised. So, then there was a phrase of okay we’ll call this one ... Oh, I’ve forgotten ... It went through three or four levels of naming and branding, trying to figure out how do we give a title to these things that describes them well. And so one was called “the standard” but then it made it sound like you had to get permission to deviate from it. So, that’s not quite right. So, then along the way there was ... one of the geniuses of coming up with useful vehicles of presentation was Bishop Neil LaBar who was on a bishops review committee who sort of was a first ... they were the first people to see what the liturgy task force produced before it went to all the bishops and they did their own polishing. He came up with the two-word nomenclature “Anglican Standard,” was kind of what it got stuck as. And so that prayer is really very much in keeping with the 1662 Eucharistic prayers. If you are familiar with the 1979 prayer book, it’s very much like Rite One, Prayer One. It’s very much like the 1928 Eucharistic prayer. It is sort of the classic Anglican language for a Eucharistic prayer. So, that’s why it’s called the “Anglican Standard.” Along the way, Rite Two, Prayer A in the 1979 prayer book is one of the most familiar Eucharistic prayers in the Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Church in America. So, there was sort of a ground swell from bishops and priests saying, “Hey, can we have something kind of like Prayer A?” Something like Hippolytus. Something traditional. So, there was this sort of renewed ancient, is the name we have now, I forget what it was called at first, but it was sort of a prayer that resembled the Hippolytan canon, you know, that we know through the Apostolic Constitution, the fourth century text. A real touchstone, again, for the liturgical movement of the early 20th century. That was there, but we really wanted to go to the source. We were like, “If we’re going to call it ‘renewed ancient’,” no we called it the “ancient canon,” that’s right. Just the ancient canon. Then it sort of left the problem, “Well, is the Anglican one not ancient?” Of course it is, it’s just British and Gallican, and you can trace it’s ancient history. But you can trace it’s ancient history, but if you call one “ancient” it makes ... so, you can see the naming dilemma. But then we went straight to the source for Hippolytus, which was somewhat different than Prayer A and all these folks were saying, “You know? We want something like Prayer A. There’s phrases in there that are so memorable and so good.” So, at one point in one meeting we were looking ... okay, are we going to have four different Eucharistic prayers? The Standard, The Short, The Hippolytan, and then a Prayer A? Man, what happened to “common prayer?” If we’ve got four different Eucharistic prayers. There was this sort of moment of, I think it was really the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, realizing that the shorter one is just a form of the longer one, and there’s a convention in the prayer book of putting a vertical bar in the margin for option paragraphs. So, we can collapse those into two, two into one, and then what if we hybridized the Hippolytan and the Prayer A prayer and kind of made a synthesis that had the best phrases from Prayer A, the ones that all the clergy who are familiar with it loved, and so that language, that ancient language of Hippolytus, and sort of wove them together into a single prayer, and that’s what has emerged as what we’ve now given the name: Renewed Ancient. So, you have an Anglican Standard, which can be abbreviated according to the marginal bars, shortening those paragraphs, and then you have a Renewed Ancient, which is a synthesis of Hippolytus’s canon and the best phrases from Prayer A out of the 1979 prayer book – kind of woven together. And accompanying those, also then, is a differing Prayers of the People – that the Prayers of the People in the Renewed Ancient are modeled off of one of the small litanies in the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, kind of harkening to that eastern ecumenical heritage. And then the Prayers of the People in the Anglican Standard are essentially the prayers for the whole church from the 1662 broken into paragraph chunks so they can be used sort of more participatory way. So, those are the two things that differentiate the two Eucharistic rites. Unlike the ’79 which printed the Eucharist and then you kind of had to turn the page for different canons. To make it simpler for the newer user, for all the new folks who are coming into Anglicanism, both rites were printed in their entirety so that you don’t have to do the page flipping, you can just pray it right through with your congregation. That’s why it’s an extra 10-15 pages of printing, but much easier. Rather than saying, “Now skip ten pages to the ancient prayer,” or something. So, that’s how that came about. McDermott: Well, Ben, with all this cutting and pasting and changing and re-writing, has the committee made an effort to retain the elegance that ... the beauty of holiness in liturgy that Anglicanism has come to be known for? I ask that because some early versions of the prayer book that were released electronically in parts were criticized as too clunky. Jefferies: Yes. Right. Yeah, what we learned along the way through just the act of working as a committee together was that if we tried to work on a text as a whole committee, it would inevitably turn out kind of Frankenstein-ish. You lose the bigger picture of like the flow of thought, the flow of words, and it became ... then you end up arguing and agonizing over word placement or punctuation, and it’s a farrago. So, Archbishop Duncan, the chair of the central committee, realized pretty early on that if we’re going to do crafting constructive work, it needs to be the work of one or two hands, which then the larger committee of ten could review. And so this is where what would happen when we sort of realized that something needed sort of some fresh minting – and we couldn’t just ... something needed to be worked together, ad hoc subcommittees would be appointed. And here’s where two people really ... their skills were really used for the good of the Church; Father Jonathan Canary, who’s working on a PhD in English literature at Baylor and so just deeply steeped in the sort of tone and sound of the English language. And Father Marcus Kaiser, a South Carolina priest who has been just using the Rite One language his entire ministry, and so he’s steeped in sort of the sound of the old prayer books. Together with Dr. J.I. Packer’s charge – he was always saying, “We need to use weighty words,” and Archbishop Duncan’s familiarity with the same ... So, what happened is subcommittees often with Father Jonathan and Father Marcus, at least one of the two of them on a subcommittee, would create a text, present it to the committee, and we’d say, “That’s great. Maybe this one word needs reflection, but everything else is great.” So, having a single pen in the drafting stage of individuals sentences and kind of in the case of the Eucharistic prayers, it was really Father Marcus who did the weaving together of Prayer A and Hippolytus. It was very pleasing then to see that work and we could all say, “That sounds great.” We’d pray it out loud together and sign off on it. Then we’d send it to the Bishop’s review panel, who then they would occasionally touch it here or there, but then they would send it to the College of Bishops. But what it meant was that the committees never had ... there was never more than a couple hands on the pen when drafting was taking place. That really, I hope ... obviously feedback will tell, but I really hope the prayer book, as it sits now, is in a much more beautiful, melodious state than it could have been. (laughs) McDermott: Well, that is reassuring, Father Ben. Now let’s talk about the use. As we bring this podcast to a close. This is the Book of Common Prayer. And critics have said, I think with some justification, that in the last 20-30 years, as the Anglican Churches around the world put more and more of the prayer book up on overheads or in a bulletin hand-out and people don’t actually hold the Book of Common Prayer and use the Book of Common Prayer in their hands, they’re discouraged from using it at home because they’re given these bits and pieces in other ways on Sunday morning. I’d like to get your opinion on that. Should the ACNA, once this is released, be encouraging priests and parishes to use the whole hard cover book in their hands, or do you think it’s okay to continue this recent practice of putting it into the bulletin so that they don’t need the book, or putting it up on the overhead? Jefferies: Hmm. Yeah, you know, I’ve been on a bit of a journey with this myself. I love graphic design and typesetting, book publishing, and I’ve been producing church bulletins since before seminary, for years. And always I’ve been workshopping my functionality of type design and really like, in a way, the great upturn of a bulletin with ... is the hospitality of it. It’s very ... it’s exceedingly easy for the new user, for the visitor and the new Anglican. I think overhead projectors also have their merits. To have a digital projection in that it does ... it gives you the text right there. Again, it’s easier to follow. There’s sort of a hospitality element to it. I think churches will continue to, who are able to use those things, will continue to do so, to great effect. There’s nothing wrong with using those things. But I’ve personally really come around to the great value of having the book in your hands, for a couple of reasons. One, it actually communicates that sort of a sensory, tactile, even like subconscious level that I’m praying the same thing as all other Anglicans. Right? That when you’re praying something that’s on an overhead or in a bulletin it very well could just be the creation of that priest, or that parish administrator put it together, you know? It may not be the Anglican way. You wouldn’t know, unless you’re well trained in liturgy, which very few are. So, that sense of stability and connection I think is lost when you don’t have the actual book. Additionally, you know, the Anglican Church in North America – since its founding has been very mission-minded, like planting churches, getting onto college campuses, reaching out to communities, evangelizing – and it’s actually very cumbersome to have to lug along a projector and set up a screen, or to prep a bulletin ahead of time and print it out, and make sure you’ve got enough copies and fold and staple them, and you know? There’s something to say of, “Look, I’m just going to grab a suitcase full of books, we’re going to meet in this room, and we’re going to worship God together. And we don’t need anything else.” There’s actually something very mission-minded about that. That you can grab a stack of six books and go to someone’s living room, and pray Compline together. You know? You don’t need ... it’s low tech, and this is sort of what we’re seeing generationally, those in the sort of age range, 40 to 60, I think are still very excited about high tech. The 35 and down, the kind of Millennium generation, ironically, even though because tech is ubiquitous and woven into normal life, actually low tech is the more endearing compelling thing. Why are people going to farm to table restaurants and sometimes eating on the farm? Why are they using leather press again? Low tech actually is connecting us to each other and to God’s world in a way that high tech doesn’t. So, I actually think there’s a sort of appeal to the next generation of having a book. Of, these are the ancient prayers in a book, which has a real missional, and also winsome value for the presentation of Anglicanism. I’m all about the book. People sometimes say, “What about the illiterate?” The nature of liturgy has always been such. There’s always been folks who can’t read. You don’t have to come to an Anglican service very long before learning what your part to play is. You know? When I go to visit ... I have friends who are Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic, and I join them for some special liturgy; a marriage or a confirmation, or something – I don’t know the liturgy. Rather than pretend to try and follow along and ace it, I just watch and listen, and pray the bits I know. Like when it’s the “Our Father,” or whatever, and so if you can jump in without literacy very easily, and yeah, so I think the book is really, really great. McDermott: Sure. I mean, I compare it sometimes to going to a professional or a college basketball game, and you’ve never known anything about basketball, and it’s exciting to go and you watch and you don’t know quite when to cheer, except to follow the others. And over the course of time you go to enough basketball games, you read enough about it, and you learn the liturgy of basketball. So to the liturgy of worshipping God. Finally, Ben, so by the time this appears, the book will be out. The Book of Common Prayer 2019. How do our listeners find it, and what’s it going to cost? Jefferies: Yeah. So, it will initially be available on www.AnglicanLiturgyPress.com or www.AnglicanLiturgyPress.org. Which is the imprint of Anglican House Media Ministries and the pew edition will be $16. If you buy a case of them for your church there’s a few dollars off of that, if you buy them by the case. I think they’re like $14 if you buy them by the case. That will be just about the same size as when you think of the pew edition of the ’79 prayer book. It’s just about identical size. It’s an 1/8th of an inch wider and a tiny bit thinner. That will be hard cover, red canvass over board construction. There will be sort of also a deluxe edition, which is a nice imitation leather, and it’s sort of a flexible cover, and it’s larger. It’s 6 inches by 8 1/2. So, that’s great for officiants to use. But also great as a personal edition to have, especially to read in low light. That one will be, off the top of my head, it’s around $27, maybe $29. Because it’s a more deluxe cover. And that will also have gilded edges, ribbons, you know, the whole ... it’s really, really a nice edition. So, that will be just a little under $30 for that edition. McDermott: Well, Ben, we thank you so much for educating us on our new prayer book in ACNA. Jefferies: Thank you. I’m pumped! McDermott: Hopefully people outside of ACNA will get this book and introduce it to their churches. Jefferies: Yeah, that’s one of the really exciting things is it’s amazing. There was a Barner study just about a year and a half ago where, believe it or not, of all the people who profess Christianity and are regular churchgoers in this country, ten percent of them use a Book of Common Prayer at least once a week. McDermott: Whoa. Jefferies: And that number came from all different denominations. Methodists, Baptists ... a lot of people ... the influence of the prayer book is far wider than just the Anglican Church. So, that’s what’s really exciting is that this prayer book will be a gift not only to the Anglican Church, but to the Christians in North America generally. And also actually to our brothers, our sister provinces around the world. There’s a handful of provinces in Africa who they use the 1662 prayer book and open and considering revision, and they may either build on the work we’ve done, or take parts of it whole hog and just use it in their own liturgies. Maybe especially the Psalter. So, the reach of this thing, according to the Lord’s pleasure, could be very great. Which is just very exciting. McDermott: Well, that sounds perfect. Ben, thank you so much for being with us today. And all of those of you listening, thank you for joining Via Media. Announcer: You've been listening to Via Media with host Gerald McDermott, the director of The Institute of Anglican Study Studies at Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. The Institute of Anglican Studies trains men and women for Anglican ministry, and seeks to educate the public in the riches of the Anglican tradition. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Via Media.