jkk@aiai.ed.ac.uk (John Kingston) (10/22/90)
In article <1053@halley.UUCP> kidd@halley.UUCP (Dave Kidd) writes: >I recently acquired my grandmother's Anglican (CofE) Book of Common Prayer. >It'd be circa 1900, since the prayer for the sovereign was for VICTORIA. >However, the last signature of pages is missing, from about psalm 105 on. > >My question is about a service which occurs in the table of contents, >about a form of prayer to be used on June 20th. My question: what's so special >about June 20th? I looked in the calendar for my Canadian BCP 1959, and >the US Episcopal BCP 1976, but didn't find anything worth a service to itself! I have no idea what's special about June 20th, unless it was the birthday of a member of the royal family. I'm crossposting this to soc.religion.christian - I've seen discussion there about special days (and special colours to be worn on special days) in the Catholic/Orthodox/high Anglican tradition. > >By the way, does CofE still use BCP 1662, as they did when I was there many >years ago? Or have has their liturgy been reformed, too? This weekend, when >our Texas church read Psalm 23, we used the Burial of the Dead KJV version >instead of the psalter (Great Bible?) version. The C of E published an Alternative Service Book a while ago. The Anglican churches I used to go to both adopted the ASB (Series 3 - I presume there are other series) in place of the prayer book. The ASB is thinner (almost no psalms in it) and replaces a lot of "thy"s and "thou"s with "your" and "you". It can, however, be quite beautiful - one church (St. Nicholas' Durham) chose to sing certain of the passages in the Communion service, which I appreciated greatly. There are probably other alterations to the ASB from the prayer book which are based on contemporary thought and new Bible manuscripts (cf. new translations of the Bible). I believe some Anglican churches still use the 1662 prayer book. John Kingston, AI Applications Institute, University of Edinburgh, 80 South Bridge, Edinburgh EH1 1HN, Scotland E-mail jkk@uk.ac.ed.aiai, phone 031-225 4464 ext. 213 FAX: 031 226 2730 Arpanet: J.Kingston%uk.ac.ed@nfsnet-relay.ac.uk TELEX: 727442 UNIVED G
credmond@watmath.waterloo.edu (Chris Redmond) (10/29/90)
In article <1053@halley.UUCP> kidd@halley.UUCP (Dave Kidd) writes: >I recently acquired my grandmother's Anglican (CofE) Book of Common Prayer. >It'd be circa 1900, since the prayer for the sovereign was for VICTORIA. >However, the last signature of pages is missing, from about psalm 105 on. >My question is about a service which occurs in the table of contents, >about a form of prayer to be used on June 20th. My question: what's so special >about June 20th? June 20 was the anniversary of the day on which Victoria became queen (in 1837). According to my Annotated Book of Common Prayer (fourth edition, 1869), "The Form of Prayer for the Accession of the Sovereign" was one of four "state services" that had formerly been prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer. (The other three were for November 5, the date of the Gunpowder Plot; January 30, the anniversary of the beheading of Charles I; and May 29, the day of the restoration of Charles II.) After 1859, only the Accession service continued to appear in the prayer book, and it was somewhat modified. Unfortunately my Annotated does not include the text of the relevant "form of prayer", only a note casting serious doubt on its legal status after the 1859 reforms. CAR credmond@watmath