Book of Common Prayer (BCP) is the official book of worship of churches in the Anglican Communion , a global fellowship of churches. The Communion includes dozens of self-governing regional or national churches, including the Church of England and other churches around the world that developed from it. The Book of Common Prayer contains rites for regular public worship, including the rites of Holy Eucharist , Holy Baptism , and morning and evening prayer; the pastoral offices of confirmation , marriage, and burial; services of ordination; and rites for major feasts of the church year. Pastoral offices are rites that are performed at significant times in church members’ lives. The BCP also contains the church calendar; prayers for assorted occasions; the Catechism , a statement of faith in the form of questions and answers; and the Psalter (the Book of Psalms ).
Worship according to the BCP is one of the primary characteristics of Anglicanism throughout the world. Unlike members of other denominations that arose as a result of the Protestant Reformation, Anglicans do not share a single confession—that is, a common statement of belief. Rather, the primary source of Anglican doctrine, worship, and spirituality is the liturgy as shaped by the BCP. A liturgy is a collection of formal acts of worship. What makes worship according to the BCP unique is that the liturgy is not only shaped by a formal structure, but also based in the life of local communities and deeply scriptural, drawing directly from various forms of Biblical literature.
The Book of Common Prayer first was composed by Thomas Cranmer , the archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England, in 1549. Cranmer combined his own literary style with a variety of contemporary sources. Such sources included the Bible, the teachings of the Church Fathers, Lutheran sources, and the Roman Catholic missal (devotional book for church services). The Church Fathers were early Christian theologians—that is, people who study God and religion. The BCP originally was published in English rather than traditional church Latin in the belief that people should worship in their own language.
The BCP was revised in 1552. However, that edition was revoked in 1553 when Queen Mary I tried to abolish the Church of England and reestablish Roman Catholicism in the country. Queen Elizabeth I restored the Church of England and the BCP in 1559. The book was revised again in 1662, following the English Civil War (1642-1648), which was caused partly by religious differences. The 1662 edition today remains the official prayer book of the Church of England.
Beginning in the 1600’s, the expansion of the British Empire spread Anglicanism and the Book of Common Prayer throughout the world. The 1662 BCP became the basis for the prayer books of other Anglican churches, including the Episcopal Church in the United States. The 1662 edition has evolved and been adapted to Anglican worship in dozens of countries and more than 150 languages.
