Two leading scholars explore the story of the American Prayer Book's development through nine critical turning points.
The Book of Common Prayer has a central place in the faith and practice of Anglicans around the world and, within the United States, in The Episcopal Church. In their exciting and comprehensive new work, Nathan Jennings and Matthew S.C. Olver offer a fresh and original argument: the American prayer book tradition is not merely a historical artifact but a living body of binding precedent ― similar to a constitutional tradition that actively governs liturgical interpretation and revision today. Drawing on the analogy of common law, Jennings and Olver identify nine decisive moments in prayer book history, from Thomas Cranmer's founding criteria for liturgical reform in 1549 to the contested marriage rites of the contemporary Episcopal Church, showing how each turning point set precedent that still bears upon decisions made in worship planning and General Convention alike.
Unlike conventional prayer book histories that narrate events chronologically, Turning Points in Prayer Book History argues that tradition is something earned through active engagement, not merely inherited. Clergy, ordinands, and lay leaders who have vowed to uphold the doctrine, discipline, and worship of The Episcopal Church will find here both the historical grounding and the theological framework to make those vows meaningful. Enriched by archival photographs of rare prayer books, discussion questions, and a liturgical glossary, this is an essential resource for seminary courses, book studies, and anyone navigating the current moment of prayer book revision.
Nathan G. Jennings is the J. Milton Richardson Professor of Liturgics and Anglican Studies at the Seminary of the Southwest. He is the author of Theology as Ascetic Act: Disciplining Christian Discourse and Liturgy and Theology, Economy and Reality. He lives in Austin, Texas.
Matthew S.C. Olver is the Executive Director and Publisher of The Living Church Foundation, Senior Lecturer in Liturgics at Nashotah House Theological Seminary, priest associate at Zion Episcopal Church, and an Honorary Fellow at the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University (UK). Before moving to Wisconsin, he was the assistant rector of Church of the Incarnation, Dallas, and undertook his previous studies at Wheaton College and Duke Divinity School. Olver was a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Consultation in the U.S and has published extensively in the Harvard Theological Review, Ecclesia Orans, Anglican Theological Review, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Worship, Questions Liturgiques, Studia Patristica, the Journal of Anglican Studies, Nova et Vetera, Studia Liturgica, Antiphon, was a contributor to the fourth edition of the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church , and the Oxford Handbook to the Book of Common Prayer. His monograph, The Origin of the Roman Canon Missae, will be published soon in the Studia Traditionis Theologiae series with Brepols. He lives in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.
