Anglican Worship

Anglican worship has a variegated history, having fluctuated between worship forms similar to those of Catholicism and worship influenced by the Puritans. This accounts in part for the variations in worship within the Anglican communion of today. Nevertheless The Book of Common Prayer is basic to all Anglican churches. The Anglican tradition is ambiguous: what started off as a fairly moderate reformation, and remained so for three centuries, reversed itself in the nineteenth century and moved to reappropriate a great deal of the medieval cultus. To modern observers, Anglican worship seems more conservative than Lutheran; but the theological origins are far more liberal. Anglican liturgy began with Archbishop Thomas Cranmer's (14891556) two editions of The Book of Common Prayer, that of 1549 and the much more radical 1552 book. Using the latest technology, Cranmer sought to put all the services in the hands of everyone by translating, condensing, and revising them before publishing th…