From Worship at St Gregorys, the first part of our series.
The Book of Common Prayer at St Gregorys.
The Book of Common Prayer unites diverse Anglican churches in one worship life, which we share with Christians of all times and places. The American Episcopal Church’s Prayer Book of 1979 goes further than any previous version to strengthen our continuity with worshipers of early centuries, and our common heritage with sisters and brothers outside the British historical lineage. Here our present Prayer Book fulfills the intentions of the sixteenth and seventeenth century Anglican Reformers, though it sometimes differs from their chosen practices. The 1979 Book also acknowledges local variation, and opens all usage to rational choice based on scripture, tradition and pastoral circumstance. Besides reconciling weary divisions, this innovation fosters creativity and responsible experiment within our public liturgical life. Thus the present Prayer Book sets forth an authentic Anglican approach to worship, in place of a fictitious conformity, as the tradition unifying our church’s prayer.
The debates that worked out that approach uncovered an Anglican identity transcending wide differences. Dr Massey Shepherd of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific at Berkeley lectured throughout the Episcopal Church during the process, and contributed much to the identity that emerged. After one such lecture in 1962, I heard a Connecticut questioner challenge his argument for weekly eucharistic worship, asking how such Popish stuff could properly be called Anglican. Dr Shepherd’s answer surprised him. Anglican liturgy has only one distinctive property, he said: if all Prayer Book editions from all Anglican provinces were stacked in order of their publication dates alone, each Prayer Book would represent a significant step eastward — not toward Rome but toward Jerusalem, Syria and Constantinople. Indeed, our eastward drift did not begin with any edition of the Book of Common Prayer, but was already underway in medieval times: pilgrims who wanted to see the liturgy well celebrated were advised to avoid Rome and visit Constantinople or England for Sarum ritual ingeniously adapted Byzantine use. The eastern churches had never lost the popular weekly eucharistic tradition which our liturgical movement hoped to restore. Thanks partly to Dr Shepherd’s work, the present American Prayer Book follows this traditional Anglican inclination, not only in the eucharist, but in many other services besides. It gives us a rite that expresses the living tradition uniting all Christians, east and west.
In 1978 the Bishop and Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of California organized the Church of St Gregory Nyssen at San Francisco, honoring a fourth century Greek theologian whose teaching has enriched eastern and western churches alike. Our charter charged us to continue liturgical development in the direction the new Book of Common Prayer had set out. We were to draw directly on the classical resources that inspired this Prayer Book — including Jewish and eastern Christian resources, newly emphasised in this version — for practices which would enhance congregational participation. We were not limited to the traditions as currently practiced, for some of what we found, though once popular, are less prominent in Jewish and eastern Christian worship today. And we were to build congregational music, dance, and other expressions beyond what settled parishes might readily attempt. Our goal was not a unique “experimental” or “eastern” liturgy, but a liturgy embodying an authentic Anglican approach, gaining from modern scholarship, open to new material, and yielding experience to serve the whole Church.
Our resulting worship style may surprise visitors from parishes that have kept their accustomed modifications of former Prayer Books unchanged under the new version, or adapted the new Prayer Book following contemporary Roman Catholic use. Those who enjoy our liturgy often ask our reasons for this or that feature, or our sources for material new to them. Some have taken ideas from us, applied them in their home churches, and returned with questions and discussion. These have enriched our vision and worship. The response of non-Anglican friends suggests that our approach also serves ecumenical fellowship, as an authentic Anglican approach should do. For example, eastern Christian visitors tell us ours is plainly a western liturgy, only they feel at home as they rarely do when visiting western parishes. Many others urge us to add our experience to ecumenical liturgical dialogue. Meanwhile, new St Gregory’s Church members press for fuller knowledge about the worship they enjoy as their own. For these reasons, I began two years ago assembling an introduction to Worship at St Gregory’s. Twenty church members took part in a seminar discovering what wanted explaining; and Fr Benedict Green, CR, sometime Principal of the College of the Resurrection at Mirfield, Yorkshire, reviewed an early draft, noting what wanted explaining better. To Benedict I owe much underlying this enterprise, most of all the historical critical approach he fostered as my tutor. The present pamphlet can only be called a current result: our liturgy changes yearly as we search for ways to make it richer or more effective —or shorter!— and the rationale must change likewise. Bishop Kilmer Myers (R.I.P.) and Bishop William Swing have shown loving patience as we learned from our mistakes (not just early mistakes) and have helped me keep my mind on what really counts, which is the gospel the liturgy celebrates and serves. My fellow pastor Donald Schell’s influence planning, celebrating and re-shaping our worship with me over twelve years’ working partnership pervades our liturgy and permanently implicates him in what follows. Fred Goff, Jacob Slichter and other St Gregory’s people have also left fingerprints in prominent places. To all these I owe thanks or apologies.
Richard Fabian
All Saints’ Day, 1988
Preface to the 2001 Edition
Much has changed since I first wrote. Our award-winning new church building welcomes hundreds weekly. Newcomers have grown more diverse, more demanding of corporate worship, and less predictably attached to familiar Anglican ways. Their questions, if now rarely hostile, are even more challenging, seeking explanations from the ground up. The ecumenical context for liturgical renewal is commonplace, and research into Byzantine and other eastern sources has become the next frontier for Jewish and Christian scholars alike. Their work will revise many long-held assumptions, no doubt including some I rely on here. Donald Schell and scores of contributors have continuously re-molded our worship. Sanford Dole, Scott King, and a choirful of composers and singers have published and recorded our music; Mark Dukes, John Goldman, and a myriad builders and artists and seamsters have made St Gregory’s Church a visionary mecca. Lynn Baird, Betsy De Ruff, John Golenksi, Nancy Milholland, Leslie Nipps, M.R. Ritley (R.I.P.), Philip Wickeri and devoted lay ministers have added pastoral improvements weekly. None of us are satisfied with the results quite yet, but we are still working. Experience has brought me only one regret: that I could not Byzantinize more deeply from the start, sacking that historic storehouse of popular worship. Twenty-two years ago the critical resources were not ready to hand; now as they emerge, I hope others will take up our lead and surpass us. This is the next frontier for renewal, as well as for research. This has been our Anglican liturgical destiny since Sarum.
Transfiguration, 2001
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Editor’s Preface to the Electronic Edition
I am grateful to Rick Fabian, Donald Schell and All Saints Company for their permission to seralise and edit this text for publication and discussion in this electronic forum. This is, for me, a labour of love as I truely love both the liturgy of St Gregory’s parish and this text. As a true Liturgy Geek, there were many nights before sleep and many morning commutes on the San Francisco Muni when I would loose myself in Rick’s wonderfully informative writing: the extensive footnotes, alone, are worth the price of admission. As a member of the parish it was a joy to know the “why” behind the things I performed weekly in my duties as a liturgical deacon. This knowledge also helped me process and debunk some of the folk tales Christians tell ourselves about our rites.
I see most of this project as editing the footnotes into the text. But it is also an exploration of how this text and the liturgical tradition it documents can be used outside of the context of St Gregory of Nyssa Parish. 20 years after the initial publication, there is a world wide communication of inforamtion available to us via the Internet. This text is to be part of that conversation. In this electronic form, the conversation is as important as the text itself.
I hope you’ll feel welcomed to participate.
Huw Richardson, editor
Ascension Day, 2008
