Which "Miserable Offenders"?

Petitions and hot words over England's modernized prayer book

"Many believers fear that it amounts to the most willful act of puritanical vandalism since Cromwell's Roundheads defaced the statues and shattered the stained glass," an editorial in the London Daily Mail thundered last week. What was enraging the editors? It turned out to be the publication of the Church of England's new Alternative Service Book. The book will henceforth be used in liturgy as a modernized alternative to the version of the Book of Common Prayer issued in the 17th century, just after the Roundheads lost power.

This is the first time since 1662 that the Church of England has made any substantial change in its liturgy. The Episcopal Church, the U.S. offshoot of the Church of England, updated its Book of Common Prayer in 1928. But in England a similar effort was blocked by the House of Commons. Parliament did not give the church authority to revise its liturgy until 1965.

Like the latest U.S. Episcopal revision, voted in last year after fierce debate, the English Alternative Service Book aims to provide easily understood language and numerous optional forms of services. In the process, many resounding and beloved phrases have been dropped or altered. The archaic "I plight thee my troth" of the wedding vow gives way to "This is my solemn vow." "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace" becomes "Lord now you let your servant go in peace." "We praise thee, O God" changes to "You are God and we praise you." "We are truly sorry and repent for our sins" replaces "O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offenders." For traditionalists in England the miserable offenders are the people who produced such rewrites.

The new U.S. Book of Common Prayer has supplanted the old. The new Alternative Service Book, English church officials insist, is merely to "supplement" the 1662 version. But opponents fear that it will eventually eliminate traditional prayers and King James Bible readings. As evidence, they contend that the old services are already virtually unused in theological schools and in parishes that have used the new rites during an extended trial period.

In reaction, hundreds of famous and distinguished Britons have petitioned the church to keep the 1662 book in the "mainstream of worship." Among signers: former Prime Minister Lord Home, Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, Historian Lord Dacre (Hugh Trevor-Roper), Conductor Sir Adrian Boult, Sculptor Henry Moore, Novelist William Golding, Lord Olivier and Glenda Jackson. Actor Paul Scofield says Britons feel "dismay" over the likely loss of so much "that is deeply poetic and influential in our language."

Bishops together with priests and lay delegates established a liturgical commission to modernize church rites, and then voted to approve its work. But David Martin, a sociologist at the London School of Economics who leads the opposition campaign, claims that the majority of Christians on the nation's university faculties want to retain the old liturgy. Martin contends that theologically the new book "diminishes the majesty of God" and that aesthetically "the church has contracted a severe dislike of beauty. If it supposes that these words are going to reach out to the unchurched masses, it is mightily deluded."

Proponents of the changes, by contrast, claim that the simpler text will attract people who have fallen away from the church, especially the young. Presenting a copy of the Alternative Service Book to Queen Elizabeth last week, Archbishop of York Stuart Blanch declared that the Book of Common Prayer was "imposed by law upon a largely unwilling church." The new liturgy, he stated, is a "people's book." Perhaps. But traditionalists cite a Gallup survey showing that a majority of English churchgoers favor the old rites over the new.

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