[NOTE: This work was originally published in the July-August,
1981 edition of the New Oxford Review, and was a review of the
then newly-published book of essays entitled Worship Points
the Way - a celebration of the life and work of Massey Hamilton
Shepherd, Jr., published by Seabury Press in 1981 and now
out of print]
When the 1979 Book of Common Prayer was undergoing
trial use in the Episcopal Church, its theological implications
were seriously questioned by a large number of devout churchmen.
It was charged that the basis of traditional Anglicanism was
threatened thereby and would be eroded and finally undermined
if the new book were to be adopted. The Standing Liturgical Commission
(SLC) and the champions of the new book craftily refused to meet
these charges head on, but by ignoring them (or when this was
not possible, by evasion and deliberately ambiguous rhetoric)
lulled General Convention and the whole Episcopal Church into
thinking that merely liturgical reform and updating were intended,
and so obtained final adoption of the book as the Church's one
and only authorized liturgy. But now, it has finally been revealed
that the new book was actually intended by its framers to alter
radically the whole theological basis of Episcopalian worship.
The silence, crafty evasions, and ambiguous rhetoric that met
charges that theological change was implicit in the new rites
are now justified as strategic ploys to secure parliamentary
victory.
Chief among those who make these admissions - nay, these boasts
- is Dean Urban T. Holmes of the School of Theology of the University
of the South. His chapter on "Education for Liturgy: An
unfinished Symphony in Four Movements," is the outstanding
contribution to this book of essays in celebration of the life
and work of liturgist Massey H. Shepherd Jr..
H. Boone Porter, editor of The Living Church, touches
on the history of Prayer Book revision and Sherman Johnson, former
Dean of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, gives some
background, but it is Dean Holmes who really gets down to cases.
(The remaining 11 essays make interesting reading, but have little
relation to the Prayer Book revision of the Episcopal Church.)
It has long been a truism that the law of worship is the law
of belief (lex orandi, lex credendi ), and that as a church
worships so it believes. What simpler way, then, could there
be to change the Episcopal Church's theological stance than to
alter its worship through Prayer Book revision? So the title
of the book of essays is extremely apt: Worship Points
the Way.
Since the essay by Holmes is the one that really shows how worship
points the way, extended quotations therefrom are necessary to
show what has really happened. He begins by telling how he and
other liturgical scholars in this country were disappointed by
what Dom Gregory Dix had to say in his Shape of the Liturgy.
The scholarship of this prominent English liturgist is
impugned and his definitive work, which is perhaps the greatest
contribution in this field in this present century, is discounted:
The Shape of the Liturgy by Dom Gregory Dix
(was) published in 1945. I remember as a young, enthusiastic
churchman eagerly awaiting the publication of this magnum opus.
Dom Gregory Dix was the Anglo Catholic liturgical scholar, we
thought, whose erudition would make inevitable of fulfillment
the longings of the liturgical movement. The result was both
impressive and disappointing. Dix wrote movingly, sometimes with
no relation to the facts, occasionally drawing from sources which,
as far as other scholars could tell, did not exist. His principal
substantive contribution was the identification of the fourfold
shape of the eucharistic action. His book met a reading public
ready for solid liturgical fare. We were ready to move to the
task outlined by Herbert, Ladd, Jones, and others; but Dix was
to be more an inspiration than a resource for liturgical renewal."
Perhaps the reason for this outburst against Dix was his theological
difference with Holmes on the subject of Confirmation. In The
Theology of Confirmation in Relation to Baptism (1946), Dix
states and defends the classical Anglican understanding of Confirmation
as set forth in the 1928 American Prayer Book.
Very little is said by Holmes about the activities of the SLC
in the 1950s which resulted in Prayer Book Studies I-XVI, except
that "all show a commitment to liturgical revision based
upon Cranmer's work and the 1928 Book of Common Prayer."
It may be mentioned here that Massey Shepherd was a member of
the SLC during most of this time. These studies, it may also
be observed, contemplated a revision of the 1928 book without
altering in any way the theology on which Anglicanism had always
rested. Almost without exception, the rites proposed therein
would have been acceptable to the overwhelming majority of those
who opposed the adoption of the 1979 book.
But this work miscarried because some members of the SLC seem
to have had a change of heart along the way, Holmes describes
what occurred:
The liturgical movement that emerged in the post World War
II Episcopal Church was a theological renewal, not the result
of a romantic longing for the past, as in the mid-nineteenth
century, or of a fondness for sacristies. Its leaders were awakened
to what the liturgy is to the Christian's perception of his world.
My belief is that it took a long time for us to become aware
of the radical nature of that theological revolution. As evidenced
in Jones's statement in Prayer Book Studies IV we do not see
that what was ultimately challenged was the theology and, consequently,
the content of our "incomparable prayer book."
He later observes:
What made the 1928 Book of Common Prayer a difficult book
to revise was that the culture and its theological concepts which
produced the Book of Common Prayer in the sixteenth century no
longer existed."
How the avant garde theologians gained control of the revision
process through the activities of the Associated Parishes and
infiltration of the seminaries is detailed by Holmes, who remarks: If the church was to be educated for liturgy, the theology of
liturgical renewal had to be taught and lived in our parishes.
This meant that it had to become a part of the curriculum of
our seminaries."
This was the beginning of the indoctrination of "The New
Breed of Clergy." Holmes goes on to say: The 1960s was a time when theologians became aware of the bankruptcy
of so-called "classical theology." As Hans Urs von
Balthasar stated, we discovered that "man has attained a
new stage of his religious consciousness."
It seems to have been about this time that revision was given
up in favor of a radical rewriting of the Prayer Book, for in
view of current theological thought, Holmes says that:
The shift, then, in liturgical renewal in the Episcopal Church
coming at this time away from Cranmer and the Tudor deity should
not then be at all surprising."
But his conscience seems to bother him about the failure of the
SLC to level with the whole Church about it all, for he goes
on: It is unfortunate in one sense - although strategically understandable
- that we were not clear to ourselves and to others that a real
theological crisis lay behind the liturgical movement. This explication
of the theological crisis would have served to make what was
happening in the new rites not just a pastoral concern or a question
of literary taste, but a theological response to our age. It
would probably have also made revision even that much more controversial
(emphasis added)."
The theological implications of liturgical renewal are expressly
set forth:
The church has awakened to the demise of classical theology.
I know that there are those who do not understand this and protest
it vigorously.
As I reflect upon the educational process that has brought the
Episcopal Church to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, it seems
clear that it is a symbol of a theological revolution, which
is a victory for none of the old "parties" that those
of us over 40 remember so vividly from our youth. The new prayer
book has, consciously or unconsciously, come to emphasize that
understanding of the Christian experience which one might describe
as a postcritical apprehension of symbolic reality and life in
the community. It is consonant with Ricoeur's "second naivete"
and is more expressive of Husserl, Heidegger, Otto, and Rahner
than Barth or Brunner. It embraces a Logos Christology. This
viewpoint was shaped liturgically at Maria Laach, transmitted
to Anglicanism by Herbert, Ladd, and Shepherd, and reinforced
by Vatican II and a cluster of theologians and teachers who are,
directly or indirectly, part of the theological movement reflected
in that most significant gathering of the church in the 20th
century."
Failure of the SLC to obtain sanction of the bishops to a radical
theological change occurred in 1970, when Prayer Book Studies
XVIII was issued. Holmes says:
Its recommendations were more than the bishops of the Episcopal
Church could fathom. They had been out of the seminary too long
and were too threatened; so it never came to be. Here was an
educational failure."
But how the revisers got around the objections of the bishops
is subsequently told:
The subcommittee on Christian initiation and the SLC knew
that the old understanding of Confirmation was theologically,
historically, and psychologically untenable. With a passion that
we could only interpret as the result of a deeply invested role
image, a number of bishops defended the old understanding of
Confirmation. It became clear that we did not have the means
to educate the bishops on this matter; so the alternative was
to make the Confirmation rite as ambiguous as possible in the
hope that eventually greater theological clarity would emerge
and the rite would be an appropriate expression of that new clarity
and a source - not a resource - for understanding the meaning
of the sacrament."
What the revision really does, Holmes tells in these words: For those of us that believe that the theological emphases of
the 1979 book are appropriate for people in the late 20th and
early 21st centuries this is a splendid opportunity. It is why
we do not see the choice between 1928 and 1979 as a matter of
taste. It is more a question of truth for our time. Two standard
Books of Common Prayer would be theologically naive, to put it
kindly. The task that lies before us is to show how in fact lex
orandi is lex credendi and to rewrite our theology books in the
light of our liturgy."
But the fact that a theological revolution was taking place under
the smoke screen of liturgical revision was carefully concealed
from the Church at large. During the time most of the events
described by Holmes were taking place, the present writer, as
an Associate Editor of the American Church News (predecessor
of the New Oxford Review), repeatedly called for a resolution
similar to the one that authorized the 1928 revision, declaring
that no proposal involving a change in doctrine be presented
or considered. These insistent demands were simply ignored by
the SLC when plain honesty demanded that the avowed intentions
of theological change be known. This duplicity is admitted by
Holmes to have misled the Church, for he justified the failure
to respond to the challenge of the Society for the Preservation
of the Book of Common Prayer (SPBCP) in these words: They were correct when they said, as they did repeatedly and
sometimes abrasively, that the theologies of the 1928 Book of
Common Prayer and STU (Services for Trial Use. i.e., what was
to become the 1979 book) were different. The SLC probably
was strategically wise in not affirming this too loudly,
but its members knew that the SPBCP was correct. There is a clear
theological change." (emphasis added.)
He further admits the duplicity of the SLC:
It is evident that Episcopalians as a whole are not clear
about what has happened. The renewal movement in the 1970s, apart
from the liturgical renewal, often reflects a nostalgia for a
classical theology which many theologians know has not been viable
for almost 200 years. The 1979 Book of Common Prayers is a product
of a corporate, differentiated theological mind, which is not
totally congruent with many of the inherited formularies of the
last few centuries. This reality must soon "come home to
roost" in one way or another."
The result is what he calls a "fundamental rift in the
Episcopal Church."
He further admits this dissatisfaction when he remarks: But
I do not see smooth sailing ahead as we seek to develop the theological
implications of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer."
He attributes this predicted stormy sailing to "an
attempt to bring to this country a brand of English Evangelicalism
which has never really found much acceptance here before."
But he entirely ignores the far more significant movement which
led to the 1978 consecrations at Denver and subsequent growth
of the traditional Episcopal movement. The book is worth the
purchase price for this essay alone, because it demonstrates
beyond any possible rebuttal how the Episcopal Church was "sold
a bill of goods" in getting General Convention to approve
the new book as a mere updating of its liturgy, only to find
that it now had a new theology. Is
it any wonder that there are so many disaffected, disenchanted,
and disaffiliated Episcopalians?
first printed in the New Oxford Review - July-August, 1981