The Prayer Book

One of the most obvious characteristics of Anglicans is that we use a prayer book called The Book of Common Prayer, also known as the BCP. There is a different version or edition of the prayer book for each Anglican province around the world including one for Canada, Mexico, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States.

A bedrock principle of the first Book of Common Prayer, the English book of 1549, was that the liturgy should be in a language understood by the people, and prayed, in common, by all the people. This became a basic principle of Anglicanism wherever it went.

The first prayer book also had the aim of being scriptural, and "agreeable to the order of the early church." Therefore, each prayer in the BCP commonly has several phrases lifted out of the Bible and every BCP contains the whole Book of Psalms and a schedule for reading from the Holy Scriptures ever Sunday so that in three years the bulk of the bible is heard.

The Books of Common Prayer of the Church of England, created in 1549 and revised in 1552, 1559, and 1662 have shaped the English language we speak. The first American BCP was adopted in 1789, and it was revised in 1892, 1928 and again in 1979.

The American Book of Common Prayer (BCP) that we use at Immanuel contains a rich body of information and instruction including:

• Instructions for the calendar and holy days, daily prayer
  services, family prayer services, and weekly Sunday services.
• Liturgies for Lent, Holy Week, and Easter.
• Pastoral services for weddings, the adoption of children,
visiting the sick, confession, and funerals.
• Episcopal services, or those for which the bishop must
  officiate, such as confirmation, ordination, and the
  consecration of a church.
• Additional prayers and the psalms.

The Book of Common Prayer is an inspiring and beautiful storehouse of prayer, spoken earnestly and faithfully by generations of Anglican Christians.