JESUS WEPT
Peter Mullen says the new prayer book
is even more sickening and banal than the last revision
AFTER a mere 19 years, the Church of England has decided that its vaunted Alter- native Service Book — the book which was meant to replace the Book of Common Prayer and was supposed to fill the pews — is a failure and out of date. So, at great expense, a new book, Common Worship, is to be foisted on the parishes. Early drafts of the book reveal that this latest liturgical misadventure turns out to be a catalogue of infelicities and desecrations even worse than the ASB.
In the Book of Common Prayer Holy Baptism is a rite which takes sin and the devil seriously. But in Common Worship baptism becomes an 'initiation service' — a title which will only remind the casual wor- shipper of late-night witchcraft thrillers on television. But he will recognise well enough the corporate phraseology of the introduction: 'This is a demanding task for which you will need the help and grace of God.' And only those parents with mushy New Age sympathies will warm to 'God invites you on a life-long journey.. . ' and 'Christian formation must allow an individ- ual's story to be heard'.
The Marriage Service offers the same unstable mixture of sentimentality and tedious bureaucratic banality. The priest introduces the ceremony praying `that with delight and tenderness they may know each other in love'. But this Hollywood goo sounds odd alongside the council-tax- office-style injunction to the bride and groom: 'I am required to ask.' The Book of Common Prayer at this point has 'I require and charge you both', which leaves the cou- ple in no doubt that marriage is a holy estate. The BCP talks of marriage as 'adorned and beautified by Christ's pres- ence and first miracle he wrought at Cana of Galilee'. In the new service, gone is the adorning and beautifying and, of course, gone is the miracle and we are left with the bathetic, 'Christ was himself a guest at a wedding'. Not even the guest, mind you — just another distant acquaintance.
The old Burial of the Dead service rang out its words of magnificent defiance: know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand upon the earth at the latter day and though worms destroy this body yet in my flesh shall I see God.' Words of faith made more faithful by their association with the triumphant aria from Handel's Messiah. But this marvellous encourage- ment finds no inclusion in Common Wor- ship because the bland and cowardly liturgical thinking that produced it will cer- tainly not mention such nasty things as worms. No vile bodies either. What, corpses at funerals? That will never do.
Where the Authorised Version of St John's Gospel says 'Jesus wept' — surely one of the most numinous and terrible verses in the Bible — this deathless funeral rite has, 'Jesus was moved to tears', as if he'd just been watching a video of Random Harvest for the umpteenth time. The Book of Common Prayer included Miles Coverdale's incomparable translation of the Psalms. Common Worship discards these. Coverdale's wonderful setting of Psalm Eight says, 'What is man that thou art mindful of him; and the son of man that thou visitest him?' Oh, the vacuous circum- locution we are offered instead in order to avoid the sexist word 'man': 'What are mortals that you should be mindful of them; mere human beings that you should care for them?' Can you imagine a cathe- dral choir singing that?
T.S.Eliot said, 'The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living'; and so all liturgical language should be tongued with fire. Common Worship offers only the same sort of clapped-out utilitarian blandness we used to find in the ASB. There is no grandeur here, only an embarrassed eva- sion of the central mystery. For Christians Entre nous, it was us who tipped off Gordon Brown.' that signifies a loss of faith.
Needless to say, Common Worship is being ruthlessly promoted by the Agitation and Propaganda Department of the General Synod with what amounts to moral black- mail. A whole series of 'information bul- letins' is being hurled at the clergy. Thus: 'You will need to prepare to stop using ASB services by 31 December [2000].' But what if I never started using the ASB? 'Contact your diocesan liturgical committee secre- tary,' the instructions continue, 'and ask them [sic] to come and make a presenta- tion.' The whole damned propaganda exer- cise is designed to coerce the clergy into buying hundreds of copies of this rubbish with funds from their already hard-pressed parishes. And a lot of the clergy will buy them because they reckon that's what the bishops want, and what keen young parson wants to get on the wrong side of his boss?
But why not scrap Common Worship and return to the Book of Common Prayer? From time to time I hear people complain that things have declined too far and too fast, and that nothing can now be done. For 25 years traditional churchgoers have been stealthily and progressively dispossessed by a mod- ernising synodical bureaucracy and by bish- ops who have no sympathy with the words they promised to use when they were ordained and consecrated. Parishioners have been bullied relentlessly into casting aside the words and phrases, the collects and prayers, wllich can really nourish them, and have been made to adopt this tawdry and inferior stuff devised by tin-eared people devoid of spiritual sense. But we should not allow ourselves to feel defeated. We must determine not to be defeated. As T.S. Eliot said, 'Do you need to be told that whatever has been can still be?'
Worse has happened in the past, much worse. From the beheading of King Charles in 1649 to the Restoration, this country endured 11 years of a puritanical dictator- ship in which it was intended that the Church of England should be abolished. But we recovered and thrived then. We can do so again. In the last century the totalitar- ian regime in Russia outlawed Christianity for 70 years and shot priests. Now religion is restored in that country. What are a few iconoclastic synodical bureaucrats corn- pared with Cromwell's Ironsides? What is a mere excitement of trendy bishops beside Stalin's secret police?
What has been can be again. But in order to restore the Book of Common Prayer we shall have to wake up. We must fight in the synodical committees. We must fight in the newspapers and magazines. We must fight in the schools and universities. We must fight in the parishes. We will never surren- der. Not because we enjoy fighting, but because we are under divine orders. Our cause is our calling and our obligation.
The Revd Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Comhill, in the City of London and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.
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