‘Common Worship’ — what does it say about the Church of England?

by Jean Mayland

When the TV commentator spoke of the 15 years of work on ‘Common Worship’ and said that it would be a very long time before the Church of England changed its liturgy again, my heart sank. ‘Common Worship’ is a backward-looking collection which testifies to an inward-looking church setting up barriers against the world and even against ecumenical co-operation.

If my beloved Church of England cannot change its attitude and its worship again — and before too long — then the outlook for its future is grim. Remember, the Church of England is above all a church which is known and defined by its worship which also ‘forms’ its people.

As a member of the Liturgical Commission which prepared the ASB, I always believed that those who loved the Book of Common Prayer should not be deprived of it. My husband always provided 1662 services in the parish, and as long as Ronald Jasper was Dean of York one main Sunday morning Eucharist a month was according to the rite of 1662 in addition to evensong and said services. This, however, was not enough for the 1662 lobby. 17th-century services must be included in the new book, and parishes must pay to have them there even if they never wanted to use them (letter to The Times by Bill Beavers).

This may please a small but vociferous and powerful lobby of public persons, princes and poets, but it does not meet the needs of wider society in England. Even this, however, was not enough. 1662 collects and 1662-type language must be re-introduced into the ‘new’ services. So we are treated to long wordy collects whose sentiments are more suited to the 17th century than to the new millennium. Add to these the ‘new post-communion prayers, which are mostly very churchy and concentrate on building up the cosy community, and we can go through a Eucharist, the celebratory and challenging covenant banquet of God’s new and living community, and pray only to be kept safe in a nostalgic church ghetto. Only if one of the ASB post-communion prayers is added is there anything about the world or witness or service or God’s call.

Along with the 1662-type language go signs of the current evangelical domination of the General Synod and the Church. The new baptism service may be fine for the baptism of a teenage evangelical who wants to tell God everything, but it is useless for the parents wanting to do the best for their child but for whom standing up and saying anything in church is acutely embarrassing. If I were a parish priest it would always be a ‘pastoral necessity’ to use the ASB words of ‘turning’ and commitment. I would not even be prepared myself to use words of devils and rebellion. Moreover ‘submit’ is always a negative word, especially for women who have faced centuries of submission to and violence from men. It does not seem to me that it is a word which the Jesus of the Gospels would care for much either.

It also seems the height of absurdity to move the giving of candle to the end of the service —especially in order to make space to change the baby’s clothes. Does not the Liturgical Commission realise how hard it is for the mum to get one set of clothes on the baby and be at the church on time without having to take another with her! What world are we in? Moreover, a serious scholar and pastor like Charles Whittacker was doubtful whether it had happened much even in the early church.

I admit there are some good things — the sense of movement in initiation, the pastoral sensitivity of the funeral services, and the Eucharistic Prayer which describes God as acting ‘like a mother’ — included after the efforts of the Bishop of Oxford. There is, however, liturgical tinkering which was quite unnecessary, like that which has ruined any poetry in the preface to the wedding service. There is much ‘churchy’ language and also ‘wooden’ language — especially in the eucharistic prayer for children. This and other eucharistic prayers are dominated by the concept of substitutionary atonement which is dear to evangelicals and a travesty of truth to others of us.

I am not an ASB fundamentalist. I did want things to change, although perhaps not quite so quickly as they have. I wanted them to change by moving forwards and reaching outwards to meet the needs of those in our land today who have a spiritual hunger. In order to do this I longed for us to continue the kind of exploration begun by David Frost in his post-communion prayer and his alternative prayer of humble access. We needed to retrieve evocative images from the spirituality of the past to supplement biblical images, and above all to discover new ways of imaging and describing God which nurture the understanding of women and men in our world today.

As an ecumenical officer I have the privilege of sharing in the worship of many churches and groups. I often worship with fringe groups on the edge of the churches whose spiritual search is very real. The kind of prayer and language which 'feeds’ these groups is worship such as that prepared by the lona Community and also by Jim Cotter and Janet Morley. Both of the latter are Anglicans, and I know from conversation that at least one of them would have been thrilled and honoured to serve on the Liturgical Commission.

Moreover the prayers and writings of Janet and Jim are greatly valued by members of many mainstream churches both in these islands and in the rest of the world. Anglican churches in other parts of the Communion do include them in their liturgies. O why not in the Church of England? How closed can our minds be?

What can we do? I am an Anglican. The Daily Office and the Eucharist, together with habitual reflection, are the foundation of my spiritual life, but I also need the succour of new language and new imagery and the challenge of the concepts which I find in Jim and Janet. It is too late now to include their work in Common Worship. If this had happened, then the book might have contained some ‘tingle factor’. I shall use Common Worship, but I shall add some Janet and Jim when I can. I am also glad that I will be able to lead worship in other churches and to celebrate communion from the new Methodist Service Book which, thank God, also contains the ecumenical Lord’s Prayer and Creed.

I wonder if Synod realised just what it was doing when it rejected these ecumenical texts. We were prevented from launching the new Lord’s Prayer at the Millennium. When the Synod is told that the Church of England is right to reject the ecumenically agreed text of the Creed, and that other churches will come to see that Church of England texts are better, do we know just how arrogant it sounds?

Yet for all my ecumenical commitment I am an Anglican at heart, and for all its faults I love the Church of England. That is why I say to my church with love — for God’s sake grow out of Common Worship as soon as you can. Find new, inclusive, poetic language and symbolism from our own age to describe and worship God and meet the needs of the millions in this nation. Above all, be prepared to do this along with your fellow Christians in the other churches.

Jean Mayland

This page was last updated on Saturday, 07 May 2005

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