by Adam M Carrington, World
Cranmer’s book and its descendants have had an enduring linguistic, theological, and political impact
On June 9, 1549, parishioners in England’s churches walked or drove to their particular parishes for Sunday services. The liturgy they heard that day was not in Latin, which long had been the language of public worship. Instead, the entire service was conducted in English. That English liturgy came from the newly instituted Book of Common Prayer. The work primarily of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, this first Prayer Book and its descendants have exerted immense influence on the English-speaking world these past 476 years.
Its wording did much to form the English language as we know it. Phrases such as “at death’s door,” “land of the living,” and “the upper hand” all gained widespread usage through the Prayer Book. Have you ever been to a wedding that began, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this Congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy Matrimony”? That phrasing comes straight from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. In fact, nearly every traditional, English-speaking wedding ceremony, Anglican or not, owes some level of rhetorical debt to the Prayer Book. The same almost could be said for funerals and phrases such as “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
More than a masterpiece of English prose, the Prayer Book also exhibited the theology of the Protestant Reformation. First, the Prayer Book showed the primacy of God’s Word for the Church. Its first and subsequent versions were saturated in Scripture. As much as 85% of its text either directly quoted Biblical passages or made allusions to them. Thus, the Prayer Book committed the English church to Paul’s declaration that, “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”