Words and Stuff
With dwindling congregations and a dearth of clergy, you might expect the Church of England to be modernising its liturgy. It’s time to refresh the brand, I can hear someone say. The Church needs to take control of the narrative going forward and that means repackaging the message. ‘Bring some joy to your inbox,’ the C of E website already urges.
The old Book of Common Prayer is the obvious place to start. Nearly forty years have passed since it was given a makeover, and if that produced a series of revisions that now seem bland, even banal, that’s because pap soon goes stale.
So let’s get going with Morning Prayer. ‘We have erred and strayed like lost sheep.’ Why sheep? Sheep play little part in modern lives, except as cutlets. ‘Lost mobiles’ or, for seniors, ‘lost glasses’ would surely be more relevant. And ‘we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture’: that would be better as ‘his people and his followers on Twitter’. As for the ‘lamb of God’, ‘the Labrador of God’ would be more accessible, or perhaps, in disadvantaged areas, the ‘Staffie of God’ – which some would appreciate as a subtle allusion to ‘thy rod and staff’ in the 23rd Psalm.
Then that bit about ‘our daily bread’ in the Lord’s Prayer: bread is just carbs – it shouldn’t be eaten more than once a week. Something healthy such as ‘quinoa’ would be more appropriate. ‘Trespasses’ should go too. In the age of the right to roam, trespasses are passé. How about asking forgiveness for ‘offending behaviour’? ‘Offending behaviours’ would be even better, showing the church is abreast of modern psychological terminology.
The Benedicite is nice, referencing, as it does, ye Dews and Frosts, ye Ice and Snow and so on, but why nothing about ye Pollen Count and ye UV Levels? We can move with the times here. And don’t let’s ‘judge the quick and the dead’. Change that to ‘the fast and the loose’.
There are also some unfortunate omissions. It’s good to ask God to ‘bless thine inheritance’, but we really need something specific about ‘payment for end-of-life social care’. Then, in the Collect for Grace, when we ask that we should not run into ‘any kind of danger’, we should also call for ‘regularly updated risk assessments’. The Litany, too, is showing its age. Take the request to ‘preserve all that travel by land or by water’. What about air travellers? Make that ‘travel by land, water or Ryanair’.
It could be said, of course, that Cranmer and the other white men in suits who produced the original prayer book in 1549 didn’t make a bad job of it. In some ways they were actually rather prescient. There is a timely reference to ‘miserable offenders’ in the General Confession, and the Benedicite is really a hymn to environmentalism, being addressed to ‘all ye Green Things upon the Earth’. Greenpeace should be pleased that ye Whales get a special mention.
The Benedictus contains a thoughtful request for a worldwide rollout of electrification to ‘give light to them that sit in darkness’ and the Prayer of St Chrysostom shows a keen awareness of the need for referendums. ‘Fulfil now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants,’ it goes, adding helpfully for unprincipled politicians, ‘as may be most expedient for them.’
‘Endue thy Ministers with righteousness’ is another thoroughly modern appeal, alas too often ignored: room here for mention of ‘inappropriate behaviour’. But perhaps the most far-sighted passage of all, cutting-edge in its 21st-century relevance, is the admission that ‘we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts’. Fancy knowing so long ago that one day our devices and desires would become synonymous. Verily, our inboxes can indeed be joyful.