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Book Review:
Give Us Grace: An Anthology of Anglican Prayers
Edited by Christopher L. Webber
Reviewed by Phoebe Pettingell
I have always loved anthologies of prayers. When we read the thanksgivings and supplications of others, we enter into their hearts and souls, praying along with them. The words of Christianity’s saints enrich and expand our own prayer life. When my feelings are in too much turmoil to formulate what I want to say to God, the expressions of other praying men and women help me find my own center so that I can hear that still small voice of calm that is Christ speaking to me.
Give Us Grace: An Anthology of Anglican Prayers, edited by Christopher L. Webber (Morehouse) will become a treasured, well-worn volume in many personal libraries. Beginning with Thomas Cranmer’s contribution to the first Book of Common Prayer (1549), it follows the prayers of members of the Anglican Communion through the present day, including both corporate and private forms by all sorts and conditions of people: from housewives and novelists to bishops and monarchs, from African martyrs to Confederate soldiers, from George Herbert to Jane Austen, Phillips Brooks to Desmond Tutu.
Webber observes in a judicious introduction that the sources of Anglican prayer are threefold. Christianity in the British Isles was first shaped by the Celtic tradition. Traces of its influence continue to show up throughout our history and have now been considerably strengthened in some recent Prayer Books. Another strand comes from Cranmer who held fast to many aspects of medieval traditions that had formed and shaped him. Translating many parts of the liturgy from the Latin, he also preserved the litany in English. A generation later, Eastern Orthodoxy greatly influenced some of the most influential 17th century divines. One of these was Lancelot Andrewes, chair of the commission that produced the King James Bible. By studying liturgies and prayers from the early Church, they hoped to move closer to the Church of Christ and the apostles. This last influence profoundly shaped the 1662 Prayer Book, still in use in the Church of England, together with the Scottish liturgy from which the Episcopal BCP derives. These three strands blend into the unique voice and cadences that we recognize as Anglican. Over the centuries, other branches of our Communion have absorbed them, adding riches from their own traditions. Webber ends his collection with samplings from the most recent Prayer Books from around the world.
Give Us Grace provides bountiful information about the development of the Prayer Book: the authors of many of its traditional collects and thanksgivings, and the ways in which their works were smoothed from century to century into the versions many of us know by heart. At any given period of Anglicanism, its voice has combined a variety of traditions, often in disagreement with one another, yet still united in worship: High Church and Puritan, Establishment and Non- Juror, Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical, to name but a few. From a contemporary vantage point, the prayers of these adversaries fighting bitterly over the issues of the day, now seem to express the fullness of devotion in their period, sounding like aspects of a whole rather than different sides. In the words of a recent Nigerian prayer: “We praise and thank you, O God, for calling us out of our individual tribal and traditional backgrounds and bringing us into a living dynamic relationship with yourself and with one another. Help us, as your people, whom you have called out of darkness into your wonderful light, to declare your praises always, and may we bring honor and glory by the lives we live in you. Amen.”
Phoebe Pettingell is a professional writer and literary critic. She has served the Episcopal Church in many capacities, from the parish to the national level, including her work as Communications Director at St. Michael & St. George. She currently resides in Wisconsin.