1662 is the Standard for ACNA

Well, if any of you want to send me a '79, PM me. There was a nice one in my house, given by the retired bishop of CT on the occasion of my late wife's confirmation, but I think my sister in law hauled it away after my wife died. She probably didn't realize what it was and with her limited grasp of English she probably can't make sense of it. But she's never offered to return it.

 

I have one, but would like to acquire more for utility purposes, but if you really need it, I could send it to you. It is not what our C of E members would call a “posh” edition however; it was a pew book, in average condition, given to me by the priest of the Episcopalian church I attended, before he retired.

Right now my mother is using it as a reference along with a copy I made of the 1662 BCP texts, for composing a set of canticles for Choral Evensong. St. Sepulchre without Newgate accepts submissions of anthems and canticles for their weekly Evensong, and my mother is pursuing that.

She also has an interest in setting the 2019 book to music. There is one huge problem with the 2019 BCP, in that, since it lacks a Rite I, it is incompatible with the existing corpus of Anglican music. I really wish the ACNA had released it into the public domain in the tradition of the Episcopal church, because this would allow for that to be corrected.

 

We have the 2019 BCPs in the pews as of, I think, July.

 

My pastor (who is also archdeacon) said it.... unless I misunderstood what he said. Can't guarantee my memory or my ears, though. I have slept about 60 times since then, after all....

 

PM sent.

 

Would you have any spares for me?

 

I will check to see whether any remaining '79s are stored at the church. Maybe I'll have an answer on Sunday. At some point, any unclaimed copies were going to be discarded. If there are some, how many are you thinking about?

 

As many as you can spare.

 

There may be need of a reminder, for those who forget, that in the ACNA liturgical authority is found in the diocesan bishop. Whatever he permits or restricts or orders is the liturgical rule. If some say "you may keep using the 1979" then parishes will do so. My previous bishop tried to make a point of getting all of us onto the Texts for Common Prayer, which now is the 2019 book, and I suspect that every church in my diocese is now using it, or a previous draft of it. I am happy to see the '79 book gone from my sphere of activity, but that's apparently not the case everywhere in the ACNA.

On the other hand, this "what-the-bishop-says" policy also ensures the survival of the 1928 and REC prayer books in their respective spheres of influence, which I see as a good thing... we need the more-classical books around to bring balance and witness to the modernist influences surviving in the 2019 use.

 

I emailed to find out, and they are gone now. Sorry I can't help out.

 

I have realized that since the ACNA has not released the 2019 BCP into the public domain, and since the otherwise superb 1928 BCP has non-standard Preces, there is a need for something like the 2019 BCP, but with a traditional language “Rite I” taken directly from the 1662 BCP, and other material from the 1928 and other BCP editions (the Deposited Book, the 1929 Scottish BCP, the 1938 Melanesian BCP), and a modern language section, which would be smaller than the traditional language portion but still available, as well as some hybrid sections, in a modular format, so that people who desire a contemporary language prayerbook can still enjoy the beautiful Anglican canticles for Morning Prayer and Evensong by Byrd, Tallis, SS Wesley, Wood, Tomkins, Gibbons, Sumsion, Dyson, Bairstow, Francis Jackson, Healey Willam, Herbert Howells, CV Stanford, T. Tertius Noble, and many other excellent composers, whose work is incompatible with the revised texts in the 2019 BCP.

Also, the 2019 BCP retains a three year lectionary, which I oppose to; I intend to implement the lectionary of the 1662 and 1928 American BCP editions in traditional language, but perhaps copy and paste collects from the 1979 BCP and quote selections from a suitable modern bible, if one exists, and otherwise make provision for people who want a three year lectionary to use the Revised Common Lectionary, but perhaps modify the table of lessons so as to correct the most severe faults, for example, the omission of 1 Corinthians 11:27-34 from the Maundy Thursday service.

Indeed it would probably not be a bad idea to quote this verse in every contemporary language communion service.

This task will be made easier because I have recently set up with a Russian Orthodox priest a venture to manufacture Gospel Books for Eastern Orthodox parishes using the King James Version, because the main manufacturer stopped making them, and also started selling marijuana on their homepage. Also, years ago I was working on a traditional service book for Methodists, which was basically adapted from the BCP, and that material is reusable, I have a non-profit with a Priest of the Assyrian Church of the East for the translation and dissemination of liturgical materials.

I have in the past week after meditating on a conversation I had with @Phoenix and listening to Choral Evensong recordings from the BBC for the past several years, developed a new appreciation for the 1662 BCP, so a major objective of what we might call the 2020 BCP will be to actually put the 1662 BCP into the hands of people who would otherwise not use it.

 

That’s OK my friend! I know there are more sitting around somewhere. Since the mass production of my 2020 book will be impossible, I want to attempt to acquire large quantities of 1662, 1928, 1962 Canadian and 1979 BCPs to give to people. The 1979 BCP is problematic of course, but there are worse things out there.

The real tragedy with the 1979 BCP is that a group actually fixed it, producing the superb traditional language Anglican Service Book of 1994, but only a few high church Episcopalian parishes bought it.

 

It's a sad day when a good book maker lterally goes to pot...

 

I don’t know what they are even thinking putting a marijuana leaf on the homepage of a website which sells the most sacred book and other supplies used in Orthodox churches. No sane priest will buy from them now. They must be doing a lot more than marijuana; LSD perhaps or some other potent hallucinogen.

Orthodox Gospel Books are consecrated and placed on the altar. In the Syriac Orthodox church the faithful kiss them after the liturgy, whereas in the Eastern Orthodox church you kiss the Gospel Book after confession. However, only someone with the rank of Deacon or higher is allowed to read the Gospel Book during a Divine Liturgy.

But at a Coptic monastery I myself was chosen to read the Gospel for one of the hours of the Agpeya (the Divine Office) once, and I am not in holy orders, whereas many boys were visiting the monastery who were tonsured Psaltis or Readers, and the service was being led by Fr. Pavli, a full Deacon.

 

A good reminder to all of us, myself included. The ACNA is adopting the less top-down approach, which is extremely healthy for lots of different reasons (subsidiarity, etc). Bit it's also extremely helpful to the classical Anglican party within ACNA. The modernist '79 influences are drastically diminished, while the classical 1662/1928 influences continue to exert their impact.

 

If only they had released the 2019 book into the public domain, because it is the best modern language translation, but traditional language material is still needed for compatibility with liturgical music.

For my project I expect to use heavily edited text from the 1979 BCP, with all ICELisms like “and with Thy spirit” translated into “And also with you” removed, so it will be close in style, with the same approach also used by the new translation of the Novus Ordo Missae ordered by Pope Benedict XVI before he retired and this current vile heresiarch Papa Fransesca took his place.

~

By the way, can any of you think of a way to express the semantics of the second personal pronoun in modern English without using it? In other words, to convey the distinct meaning of Thou, Thee, Thy and Thine, versus You, Ye and Your, without using Thou, Thee, Thy and Thine.

 

I lived in the South (US) for a few years and came to really like the usefulness of "y'all".

 

Indeed so but I dare say y’all or even you all is too vernacular for Scripture. However,
old translations like the KJV have our Lord saying “Drink this All of you, This is my blood of the New Covenant, given for you and for many for the remittance of sins.”

So perhaps a solution might like with “All of you”? And in a pinch, even “You all” might work, or indeed “All” in a liturgical context where it is implied that “all” refers to all present. Or also “Each of you.”

How would each of those look with the response: “And with your spirit?”

We have to replace the Bugnini, ICEL & Company P: “And also with you” , which is an inaccurate translation of the response even on the basis of Dynamic Equivalence*, but hoe we do the Priest’s statement is an open question. It is possible the classic “Peace be unto all” might still be sufficiently comprehensible, and given that, on the basis of Shakespeare, we know that Prayer Book English and Authorized Version English were in a very high, formal register even by the standards of the 16th century, a time when Thou was not universally employed and the replacement of Thou with You fairly common, probably a process initiated by Franco-Norman etiquette concerning the propriety of addressing someone as tu rather than voux, which spun out of control in English and wound up causing Thy/Thou/Thee/Thine to fall into disuse, and to generally require being used with what is almost a separate gramatical case, with alternate declensions of words “For thou willest that we should holpen him who asketh,” and so on.

But it seems to me a formal register for the modern vernacular would best conform with Anglican tradition and the Article of Religion requiring a language understanded of the people. To wit, perhaps I should simply rewrite the vernacular sections in my usual high-register idiosyncratic affectation.


*Unless dynamic equivalence now means we can take something that has a specific and well understood meaning which is still supported by the semantics of modern Enflisj

 

By the way, for my modular BCP project, which will include an optimized set of pre-configured variants I call the 2020 BCP, I intend to make the contemporary language portion smaller and less expansive than the traditional language portion, but still usable and containing all essential services, because my desire is that we incentivize people to retain the ability to use Ecclesiastical English, which was understood but not strictly speaking low vernacular even during the era of Cranmer. Actually I find the syntax in Shakespeare’s plays, which I expect form the Elizabethan equivalent of BBC English, to be more annoying and jarring than most of Ecclesiastical English, with a few easy to fix exceptions (the word “holpen”, the semantics of the word “conversation”, which have since changed, and the phrase “sitting at meat” instead of “eating,” come to mind, but these few exceptions are exceedingly rare).

Verily, I might vouchsafe to, for a time provided, address ye primarily in a tongue akin to the Ecclesiastical accent, which deserveth not the title of Dialect, for its manifold likenesses to the common speech of Englishmen and divers Colonists and several other Peoples who do speak aforesaid, that it might be proven that the Ecclesiastical accent be no harder to comprehend than the works of Shakespeare or the newer usages of the English tongue when used after the fashion of Learned men and Scholars.