The Episcopal Church Prayer Book (1979)

Historical background

The twentieth-century liturgical movement, scholarship on early Christian worship (such as Gregory Dix’s The Shape of the Liturgy), and the reforms of the Second Vatican Council encouraged churches to revise their liturgies. The Episcopal Church’s Standing Liturgical Commission issued Prayer Book Studies from 1950 and trial liturgies from 1967 (including the “Green Book” and “Zebra Book”). A proposed book was approved in 1976 and adopted in 1979.

What changed

The book offered both traditional (“Rite One”) and contemporary (“Rite Two”) language for the Daily Office and Holy Eucharist, with several eucharistic prayers. It made the Eucharist the principal Sunday service, placed Baptism at the center of church membership in a public service with a Baptismal Covenant, restored the Easter Vigil and other services of Holy Week, added services such as the Reconciliation of a Penitent, Ministration to the Sick with anointing, and a revised Ordinal. It included a new Psalter translation, a catechism, and historical documents (including the Thirty-Nine Articles) in a separate section, and a three-year Sunday lectionary.

Notable and controversial

Many traditionalists saw the book as a break with the classical Prayer Book in language and theology, particularly the change in the place of the Articles and the emphasis on baptismal ecclesiology. Its adoption, along with the ordination of women (1976), contributed to the formation of the Continuing Anglican churches. The book has also been widely praised and imitated across the Anglican Communion, and later formed a major source for the 2019 ACNA book.