Alternative Service Book - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Alternative Service Book 1980 (ASB) was the first complete prayer book produced by the Church of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

since 1662. Its name derives from the fact that it was proposed not as a replacement for the Book of Common Prayer

Book of Common Prayer

The Book of Common Prayer is the short title of a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion, as well as by the Continuing Anglican, "Anglican realignment" and other Anglican churches. The original book, published in 1549 , in the reign of Edward VI, was a product of the English...

(BCP) but merely as an alternative to it. In practice, it was so popular that the various printers had to produce several editions very quickly and churches which retained the BCP drew attention to this fact as something to be noted. The Prayer Book Society was soon complaining that it was becoming hard to find a church which used the old prayer book and that theological colleges were not introducing students to it. It has now been replaced by Common Worship

Common Worship

Common Worship is the name given to the series of services authorised by the General Synod of the Church of England and launched on the first Sunday of Advent in 2000. It represents the most recent stage of development of the Liturgical Movement within the Church and is the successor to the...

Earlier attempts at Reform

Following the failure of the attempts to introduce a new Prayer book through Parliament in the 1920s, liturgical reform had idled.

Some Anglo-Catholic parishes used the English Missal

English Missal

The English Missal is a translation of the Roman Missal used by some liturgically advanced Anglo-Catholic parish churches. After its publication by W. Knott & Son Limited in 1912, the English Missal was rapidly endorsed by the growing Ritualist movement of Anglo-Catholic clergy, who viewed the...

, a version of the BCP, which included the Prayers of the Latin Mass both in translation and in the original interspersed with prayers from the Prayer book; most used either the BCP or the 1928 Prayer Book

1928 Prayer Book

The 1928 Prayer Book was approved in 1927 by the Church Assembly of the Church of England but its authorization was defeated in the House of Commons on 14 June 1928. In 1966, with some changes, it was authorized as legal for public worship, as the First Series of Alternative Services...

, which though it was never approved, has continued in print until the present day with the warning "The publication of this book does not directly or indirectly imply that it can be regarded as authorized for use in churches". As time passed and liturgical scholarship proceeded, it became clear that a new attempt should be made to provide orders of service for the church. In an attempt to break the deadlock, Dom Gregory Dix

Gregory Dix

George Eglinton Alston Dix was an English monk and priest of Nashdom Abbey, an Anglican Benedictine community. He was a noted liturgical scholar whose work had particular influence on the reform of Anglican liturgy in the mid-20th century.-Life:Dix was born in Woolwich...

, in his book The Shape of the Liturgy published in 1945, proposed that his own thinking about the Eucharist, using the so-called "Four Action Shape" be the basis of a rite. He suggested that such a rite be produced by a number of bishops, too many for them to be victimised but not so many so as to suggest rebellion, who would allow such a rite to be used in their own dioceses but who would not protect parish clergy from legal challenge if they used it. Dix's ideas were very influential but no one took up the suggestion.

Only in 1955 did the Church set up a Liturgical Commission and ten years later the Church Assembly passed the Prayer Book (Alternative and Other Services) Measure 1965. A series of books followed: the Series 1 Communion Book scarcely differed from the 1928 book (as was the case with its Wedding Service). Series 2, issued at the same time, put forward a form which followed the Dix formula: Offertory

Offertory

The Offertory is the portion of a Eucharistic service when bread and wine are brought to the altar. The offertory exists in many liturgical Christian denominations, though the Eucharistic theology varies among celebrations conducted by these denominations....

, Consecration

Consecration

Consecration is the solemn dedication to a special purpose or service, usually religious. The word "consecration" literally means "to associate with the sacred". Persons, places, or things can be consecrated, and the term is used in various ways by different groups...

, Fraction

Fraction (religion)

The Fraction is the ceremonial act of breaking the consecrated bread during the Eucharistic rite in some Christian denominations.-Roman Catholic:In the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, it is accompanied by the singing or recitation of the Agnus Dei....

, Communion

Eucharist

The Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...

. This was a pattern which was to be widely influential in countries which had used the BCP.

Series 3 was less dependent on, and, by implication, more reflective of criticism of, Dix. The evidence for the Offertory had been challenged from left and right by liturgical scholars such as Colin Buchanan and Ronald Jasper: it had been championed by the adherents of the Liturgical Movement but came to be regarded as suspect not only by evangelicals. In his Durham Essays and Addresses Michael Ramsey

Michael Ramsey

Arthur Michael Ramsey, Baron Ramsey of Canterbury PC was the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury. He was appointed on 31 May 1961 and was in office from June 1961 to 1974.-Career:...

had warned against a 'shallow Pelagianism' which it seemed to betoken. E.L. Mascall asked "what can we offer at the Eucharist?". (Contrary views were expressed by the likes of Donald Gray and Roger Arguile, partly on the ground that, following the writings of St. Irenaeus, the goodness of the natural order and its relation to the eucharist was an important element; the offertory brought the world into church) The Fraction, or breaking of the bread, was criticised on the grounds that it was not nearly as significant as the Consecration or Administration; it was largely a practical act. Other services were less controversial and some scarcely surfaced, including the Funeral Service, which never got beyond the draft stage. The Baptism service, allowing more responses from the godparents and being considerably less wordy than the BCP, became popular.

The Birth of the Book

In 1974, the Worship and Doctrine Measure, passed by the new General Synod

General Synod

-Church of England:In the Church of England, the General Synod, which was established in 1970 , is the legislative body of the Church.-Episcopal Church of the United States:...

allowed the production of a new book which was to contain everything that would be required of priest and congregation: Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, Holy Communion, Initiation Services (Baptism and Confirmation), Marriage, Funeral Services, the Ordinal, Sunday Readings, a Lectionary and a Psalter. Once again, after a gap of nearly fifteen years, parishes which did not want to use the Book of Common Prayer had in their hands all the words, including readings ordered according to themes and with a two year cycle.

Discussion in General Synod was lengthy. Hundreds of amendments to the initial proposals were debated on the floor of the chamber. Debate about the significance of the communion was taken up again. Since very many more parishes had, following the influence of the Parish Communion movement adopted the Communion as their main service, debates about the Eucharist became even more pertinent.

The Book

The book was very variable in the degree to which it departed from the Book of Common Prayer

Book of Common Prayer

. The Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer

Evening Prayer (Anglican)

Evening Prayer is a liturgy in use in the Anglican Communion and celebrated in the late afternoon or evening...

provided alternative canticles and all were now ecumenically approved translations, the so-called ICET texts (English Language Liturgical Consultation), but the form was conservative. In addition, a shorter order was provided for weekdays.

There were two forms of the Holy Communion, Rite A and Rite B. Rite A allowed for the Confession to come at the beginning of the service, following Roman practice; it gave space for extempore prayers in the intercessions and introduced the rubric 'or other suitable words' which were to become normative in modern liturgical book

Liturgical book

A liturgical book is a book published by the authority of a church, that contains the text and directions for the liturgy of its official religious services.-Roman Catholic:...

s, allowing as it did, a departure from the form set down. The prayer of Humble Access was removed to a place before the Offertory - styled 'the Preparation of the Gifts' and the Four Action Shape was on its way. There were four Eucharistic prayers, a new departure, one of which derived from Cranmer's form, two from the earlier experiments and one from work done between two scholars, one Evangelical and one Catholic, during the progress of the debates; it owed much to a prayer from the Ordo Missae of the Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

. All were heavily dependent on scholarly acceptance of the primacy of a third century work called the Apostolic Tradition

Apostolic Tradition

The Apostolic Tradition is an early Christian treatise which belongs to genre of the Church Orders. It has been described as of "incomparable importance as a source of information about church life and liturgy in the third century".Re-discovered in the 19th century, it was given the name of...

written by the Egyptian bishop Hippolytus, and which had been published only in 1900. (This work was hugely influential on the Liturgical Movement

Liturgical Movement

The Liturgical Movement began as a movement of scholarship for the reform of worship within the Roman Catholic Church. It has grown over the last century and a half and has affected many other Christian Churches, including the Church of England and other Churches of the Anglican Communion, and some...

, both Roman Catholic and Anglican.) Rite B retained a version of Elizabethan language and prayers from the BCP such as the Prayer for the Church Militant (for which an alternative was allowed), and the first Eucharistic Prayer. The word 'Offertory

Offertory

' (though without indication of any actions) survived after the Peace. The Prayer of Oblation, a bowdlerised version of the first Prayer of Thanksgiving in the BCP, was added to it to conform to the modern pattern. (That prayer had its origin in the 1549 Prayer book, had been moved in 1552 to a position after the Communion, and was now moved back without the words, held to be offensive for the reasons set out above, 'we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice', which was the main point of the prayer). However, Rite A (but not, oddly, Rite B) was permitted to be said following the order of the Book of Common Prayer, a concession to those who valued Cranmer's insertion of the Administration of the Communion within the Canon.

A new rite for Thanksgiving after Adoption preceded the revision of the Old 'Churching of Women' service. Baptism
Baptism
In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...

could now be incorporated into the main Sunday service, the result of other influences intended to bring it back into the mainstream of worship. The Baptism of those able to answer for themselves was much more prominent, a result of the influence of those who questioned infant baptism in a post-Christian society. The questions, however, now addressed to the godparents or the person baptised directly, no longer required the renunciation of the devil or 'the vain pomp and glory of the world' or 'the carnal desires of the flesh' but instead a turning to Christ, a repentance from sin and a renunciation of evil. Likewise the ancient Apostles Creed was replaced by three tritheistic questions, which were criticised (by, among others, John Habgood, sometime Archbishop of York) as being unknown to the credal discussions of the Church, Eastern or Western, modern or ancient.

The Marriage
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...

rite followed the 1928 book in no longer suggesting that men might be 'like brute beasts that have no understanding' and allowed readings and a sermon (which the BCP had not). It added words for the giving and receiving of the ring and made provision for a communion.

The Funeral
Funeral
A funeral is a ceremony for celebrating, sanctifying, or remembering the life of a person who has died. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from interment itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor...

service officially allowed the coffin into Church, though Church funerals - or in a crematorium - had not ceased with Cranmer. It no longer excluded suicides or the unbaptised: the rubric was simply omitted. The deceased was not to be addressed directly, as had been the case before the Reformation, but a form of committal was now included: the deceased was 'entrust[ed] to '[God's] merciful keeping'.

A two year cycle of Readings was provided, to which thematic titles were given. These proved not very hardwearing - they did not always adequately reflect the readings and were considered too narrow in their scope; It was not long before priests, if not parishioners, noticed that in spite of the huge increase in the amount of Scripture heard - there were now three readings, Old Testament, New Testament and Gospel, much was missed out. When the reading aloud of the Bible at home and Scripture as the basis of Religious Education were the rule, this may not have mattered; people's general knowledge of the Bible was broader. Now that both had disappeared it did. Moreover, the readings jumped from book to book week by week following the themes. It was not therefore possible to follow the thought of a particular biblical writer, something that was noted by the Liturgical Commission and was corrected in the ASB's successor, Common Worship

Common Worship

. The book was also the high point of Tractarian influence: apart from retaining something of the Four Action Shape of Gregory Dix, there were set lections for the Blessing of An Abbot, for Those Taking Vows and for Vocations to Religious Communities. These were to disappear in 2000. The same applied to the Saints who would no longer be distinguished as to whether they were Martyr

Martyr

A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...

s, Teachers or Confessor

Confessor

-Confessor of the Faith:Its oldest use is to indicate a saint who has suffered persecution and torture for the faith, but not to the point of death. The term is still used in this way in the East. In Latin Christianity it has come to signify any saint, as well as those who have been declared...

s. There was a good range of Preface

Preface

A preface is an introduction to a book or other literary work written by the work's author. An introductory essay written by a different person is a foreword and precedes an author's preface...

s to the Eucharistic Prayers, including one for St. Michael and All Angels (for which festival there is now no such provision).

The Sunday Lectionary originated in the work of the Joint Liturgical Group, an English ecumenical grouping. The Weekday lectionary which, for the first time provided Eucharistic Readings for every day of the year, originated with the Weekday Missal of the Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

Further changes

The ASB survived until the turn of the Millennium. General Synod

General Synod

-Church of England:In the Church of England, the General Synod, which was established in 1970 , is the legislative body of the Church.-Episcopal Church of the United States:...

learned not to repeat the time-hungry debates through which it had been born, and had amended standing orders allowing for a much more expeditious means of liturgical revision. The Daily or Sunday offices had been superseded in many churches by less formal forms - the Services of the Word - which accommodated the desire of Evangelicals not to be bound very much by liturgical forms and by the growing popularity of informal family services. Additional material had been provided for use by General Synod in such books as 'Patterns for Worship' and seasonal material in the book 'Lent, Holy Week and Easter' and, for the winter seasons of Advent, Christmas and Ephiphany, in 'The Promise of his Glory'. Some parishes were using the Roman Catholic derived Revised Common Lectionary

Revised Common Lectionary

The Revised Common Lectionary is a lectionary of readings or pericopes from the Bible for use in Christian worship, making provision for the liturgical year with its pattern of observances of festivals and seasons. Its first version was known as the Common Lectionary, assembled in 1983. It was...

, which allowed each Biblical writer to speak in his own voice and on a three year cycle. The intention had been to replace the ASB and the time seemed ripe. The single, if somewhat bulky book that the ASB was, was replaced by a series of books, none of which include readings, and by software packages and online support. This was Common Worship

Common Worship

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