From
The May 2002 St John's Eagle
King's Chapel and its Prayer Book
Members of Saint John's
visiting Boston may have discovered King's Chapel on Tremont Street at the foot
of Beacon Hill. Those who have ventured inside for a service may have been vaguely
disconcerted. The text in their hands was entitled The Book of Common Prayer;
its format and much of the language would have seemed familiar enough. But something
seemed odd about it all. And indeed it might King's Chapel uses a revision of
the traditional Prayer Book—a revision that reflects its status as a Unitarian
congregation. “High Church Unitarian,” we might be tempted to say.
Anglican
worship was forbidden during much of the seventeenth century, when Puritans dominated
the Massachusetts Bay Colony. But in the confusion of the early 1680s when James
II, the last of the Stuart monarchs, occupied the throne and issued new royal
charters, the Calvinist hegemony began to crumble. The new royal governor may
have preferred to commandeer part of the Old South Church for his Anglican services
to the annoyance of those who had founded King's Chapel in 1688, the first church
of our communion in Boston, under the jurisdiction of the bishop of London.
Much
later, after the American Revolution, more changes occurred. The American Episcopal
Church came into existence, drew up its own polity, and issued the first American
Prayer Book. But things were a bit more complicated at King's Chapel, where the
gentle winds of Unitarianism were beginning to stir. James Freeman was officiating
there as lay reader, and it was hoped that he could be ordained by the new bishops
of the Episcopal Church. But in 1785, King's Chapel had already revised the 1662
Book of Common Prayer into a mildly Unitarian document, and this revision proved
unacceptable to the new American bishops. King's Chapel countered by itself ordaining
Freeman as "Rector, Minister, public Teacher, Priest, Pastor, and teaching
Elder." This purely local "lay ordination" established the essential
character of King's Chapel to this day. It is not officially a member of any other
grouping not even of the Unitarians. It defines itself in its Prayer Book as "Unitarian
Christian in theology, anglican in worship, and congregational in government"
(p. 120).
The
King's Chapel Book of Common Prayer is now in its ninth edition (1986); its development
has paralleled in many ways the evolution of our own Prayer Book—and those
of other mainline Protestant denominations. Its language is mostly (though not
entirely) traditional; its contents have expanded to include Midday Prayer, three
orders of Holy Communion, special services for Christmas, for tenebrae, for Easter
Vigil, a two year daily lectionary, a three year lectionary for Sundays and Holy
Days. A detailed Kalendar (in the back end pages) will seem familiar enough to
us, although a close scrutiny will disclose the omission of Trinity Sunday (the
long stretch of Sundays between Pentecost and advent are numbered as Sundays “after
Whitsunday”).
The
careful reader will also note the absence of creeds; the authors of our own American
Prayer book at first rejected even the Apostles’ and the Nicene creeds. The
festivals of saints, even New Testament saints, are not explicitly mentioned.
Within the liturgies, the Gloria Patri is replaced by a scriptural doxology:
Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only Wise God; Be honor and
glory, through Jesus Christ, for ever and ever. Amen (cf. I Timothy 10:17)
What
to make of all this? We Episcopalians know very little about Unitarianism, especially
in its earlier Christian forms. We are surprised to earn how vigorous it was during
the period of the Reformation, especially in Poland and Hungary. The Arian impulse
has never been wholly absent from Christian thought, despite the efforts of Athanasius
and his followers. Many, perhaps most, of the New Testament writers were, to some
degree. Adoptionists in their Christologies (that is, for them the many Jesus
was adopted by God as His Son at some point in His early life at His Baptism or
perhaps at the Transfiguration. Most New Testament passages are susceptible of
an Adoptionist reading: 2 Corinthians 13:14 is typical.
The
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy
spirit be with you all.
The
word Trinity does not occur in the New Testament nor for several centuries after
its completion. Trinity Sunday was a late and unmemorable addition to the church
year—think back on the sermons you have heard on that date! The most explicit
formulation of Trinitarian doctrine, the so called Athanasian Creed (composed
centuries after the death of its namesake) has never appeared in any American
Prayer Book before 1979, where it is relegated to an appendix discreetly called
Historical Documents of the Church pp. 864–865). In the past hundred years
or so, we have come to accept more and more the fact that Jesus was an observant
Jew throughout His life. However He may have conceptualized His relationship to
God, it was not in the theological terminology of the early Middle Ages.
Or
consider church polity. Episcopalians sometimes seem to think that the orders
of bishops, priests, and deacons
(like
gothic church buildings) stretch back to their institution by Jesus. Yet today's
Biblical scholars are hardly in agreement to what New Testament terms such as
bishop (overseer, teacher, presiding officer?) or deacon (servant) may have meant
originally. Few main line interpreters would maintain today that Jesus intended
to found a church: did the very word exist in His first century Jewish vocabulary?
Even Matthew presents “Go reach ye all nations” (28:19 20) as a post
Resurrection utterance.
Congregational
organization, in a wide variety of shapes rather than that of a modem diocese
and its "monarchical" bishop? Secret rather than public services, held
in homes before sun up, with great variety in what was said and done? Something
like this would appear to have been the norm in the first Christian centuries.
King's
Chapel is thus no late eighteenth century aberration. It draws largely through
an Anglican filter upon ancient traditions that go back to the time when Christianity
was an underground movement. It bears living witness to a troubled past, complex
and multiform, that we are only beginning to recover.
“In
an age of liturgical change and experiment, we at King's Chapel are sometimes
asked why we keep the prayer book In fact, it is the prayer book that has kept
us.” (xii)
Can
not as much be said of Saint John's, Ithaca?
A
note to the reader: I am not a “closet Unitarian,” a crypto Arian, or
a “behind barred doors first century Palestinian Adoptionist.” My own
views on the subject have been set forth in “Experiencing the Trinity”
(which I regard as the central Christian metaphor) in The Eagle of June, 1993.
by John Harcourt
Professor Harourt is the Charles A. Dana Professor of
English English
Emeritus at Ithaca College.
