The 1662 Book of Common Prayer - by Samuel L Bray & Drew Nathaniel Keane (Hardcover)

About the Book

The Book of Common Prayer (1662) is one of the most beloved liturgical texts in the Christian church. But the classic text presents several difficulties for contemporary users, especially those outside the Church of England. This new international edition gently updates the text for contemporary use, with obscure phrases revised and treasured prayers from later Anglican tradition appended.

Book Synopsis

A Prayerbook for All Christians and All Nations

The Book of Common Prayer (1662) is one of the most beloved liturgical texts in the Christian church, and remains a definitive expression of Anglican identity today. It is still widely used around the world, in public worship and private devotion, and is revered for both its linguistic and theological virtues.

But the classic text of the 1662 prayer book presents several difficulties for contemporary users, especially those outside the Church of England. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer: International Edition gently updates the text for contemporary use while retaining some of the spelling and style of the original seventeenth-century English. In this volume, readers will find:

• state prayers of England have been replaced with prayers that can be used regardless of nation or polity;
• obscure words and phrases have been modestly revised for clarity, while the prayer book's original cadence, including many of its traditional spellings and expressions, have been intentionally preserved; and
• a selection of treasured prayers from later Anglican tradition has been appended.

The 1662 prayer book remains a vital resource today, both in the Anglican Communion and for Christians everywhere. Here it is presented for continued use for today's Christians throughout the world.

Review Quotes

"By sensitively updating the language and adapting the content for use by the worldwide Anglican Communion, this 1662 Book of Common Prayer, International Edition, makes a most welcome contribution toward making the classical liturgy of Anglicanism accessible to younger people and to a wider audience. Those who use it will rediscover a liturgical tradition that has shaped the spiritual life of generations of faithful Anglicans and be strengthened in their faith as they make their pilgrim way to the celestial city."

--Gerald Bray, Beeson Divinity School

"The Book of Common Prayer is and has been the Anglican rule of life for centuries. While many Anglican provinces assert the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as one of their formularies, this assertion often remains an ideal rather than a practice. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer, International Edition, makes the 1662 Prayer Book more accessible to Anglicans and others today. It will be, I pray, an integrating force among Anglican churches in a global Anglicanism that is all too rapidly disintegrating."

--Charles Erlandson, professor of church history at Cranmer Theological House

"The Book of Common Prayer--with its timeless liturgies, lectionary, psalms, and prayers--has long held worldwide Anglicanism together. This splendid new 1662 Book of Common Prayer, International Edition, preserves the beauty, power, and majesty of the original text while making modest linguistic updates throughout and offering judicious amendments to the prayers and psalter. The editors and publisher deserve high praise for presenting this authoritative, affordable, and accessible text for Christians worldwide to use in their private devotions and public worship."

--John Witte Jr., Emory University

"The Prayer Book--in the classic edition of 1662--has been attacked, denigrated, dismissed, damned with faint praise, patronized, patted on the head, and torn in shreds. It's too Protestant, it's too Catholic, it's a typical Anglican muddle, it does not express the new insight of the modern age, it's not open to the Spirit, it's not relevant. Yet all these cantankerous and often sophistical cavillations fall away when you pray according to the rule of prayer it sets forth with an open heart and an open mind. What then meets you in these pages is a pure scriptural teaching, deeply embedded in the catholic tradition, turned into the language of prayer, and in the corporate action of liturgy, with a craftmanship that is quietly breathtaking. Its prose is not Tudor but timeless, not purple but plain in its elegance (simplex munditiis); and in its clarity, dignity, and quiet beauty it carries the weight of conviction as almost nothing else does. That is why it survived the Marian reaction, the Puritan interregnum, and the diktats of modern liturgists; that's why it will encourage and embolden the faithful in the new dark ages of skepticism and hostility to religion. Though this prayer book came out of the Church of England, it belongs not to the English, nor even to Anglicans, much less to Anglophiles (fruity accents and whatnot)--as this edition makes clear, it is a prayer book for English-speaking Christians throughout the world."

--Gavin Dunbar, rector of St. John's Church, Savannah, Georgia (the Episcopal Church), and president of the Prayer Book Society of the USA

"The editors of The 1662 Book of Common Prayer, International Edition, are to be congratulated on making every effort to preserve the substance and form of traditional common prayer in a manner accessible to the widest possible community of Anglican worshippers. The rhythm, meter, and musicality of the language, so critically important for liturgical expression, have been preserved intact. The editors' discerning decision 'to update the language of rubrics most; prayers less; and Psalms, canticles, and biblical texts least of all' is admirable indeed, and strikes just the right balance of minimal but acceptable modification. 'O worship the Lord in beauty of holiness. Let the whole earth stand in awe of Him.'"

--Torrance Kirby, McGill University

About the Author

Samuel L. Bray is a Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, as well as a McDonald Distinguished Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. He is coauthor (with John F. Hobbins) of Genesis 1-11: A New Old Translation for Readers, Scholars, and Translators.

Drew N. Keane is a lecturer in the Department of Writing and Linguistics at Georgia Southern University. From 2012 to 2018, he served on the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music for the Episcopal Church. Among the volumes he contributed to was Lesser Feasts and Fasts.