I found myself pondering this question again when January first rolled around last week. It comes up every year – either with the beginning of Advent or alternatively with the beginning of the new civil year. You see, a number of years ago I got tired of using the Daily Office lectionary from the 1928 BCP as the basis for my daily Scripture readings and decided to try something different each year.
The fact is that every Christian – and even more so every clergyman – ought to be reading through all of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, at least once every year. We all make excuses and we all have to deal with major demands on our time, but if our time here on earth has been graciously given to us in preparation for a life of worship in heaven, shouldn't we be making the study of God's Holy Word a major priority? And really, when it comes down to it, it's not that hard. It works out to about four chapters a day, and just about anyone can manage that.
My parents and my Sunday school teachers THANKFULLY beat the need for daily Bible reading and study into my head from a young age. When I was young my grandparents gave me a Today's English Version and my mom would make up a monthly chart of daily readings and tack it to the wall near the head of my bed. By the time I was at university I had formed the habit of doing the best I could to read the entire Bible through each year. I was only vaguely aware of the Daily Office at that point and the Lectionary was only a confusing chart in the front of the BCP. But along came The One Year Bible, a copy of which was given to me in those years. It moves through the Bible from beginning to end with selections each day from the Old Testament, the New, a Psalm, and few verses from Proverbs. Then came the one I really liked: The Daily Bible. This was even better, because it took one through all of the Bible, but did so chronologically. Almost every year I made it through the Bible from page 1 to page 1957 (yes I used the same Bible for so many years and was so anxious by December to get to that last page, that I still remember the page number where Revelation 22 ended). Even though I wasn't using the Daily Office, I value those years of consistent Bible reading and study.
Eventually I learned how the Daily Office and its accompanying lectionary works and started using the BCP daily. The problem is that the revised lectionary of 1945 found in most 1928 BCP's doesn't take one through ALL of the Bible in a year -- it covers most of the Bible, but as I gradually learned, it's selective (and not just because it attempts to follow the Church Year), it's somewhat antinomian, and it begins to show the liberal bias that the Episcopal Church had by then already swallowed whole. I don't mind using such a lectionary every once in a while, but it's not good for a steady annual diet -- I found it shortchanged me in what it left out. Often I would read the missing portions of Scripture that fell between the specified lessons, but this still doesn't get one reading the WHOLE Bible.
So a few years ago I decided to seek out other options by perusing the other Prayer Books in my collection and sampling their lectionaries. What I basically found is this: up through the various revisions of the 1920's most of them follow the same pattern. Like Cranmer's original, they aren't tied to the Church year. They move through the Bible systematically and most of them, especially the older ones, cover every single verse during the year. (In fact, the oldest covers the Old Testament once in the year and the New Testament TWICE.) The original 1928 American lectionary falls into this category, as do the revised 1662 English lectionary, the Canadian 1918, the English 1928, the Irish 1926, and the Scottish 1929. By 1945 the Episcopal Church had lost the high view of Scripture it once had. Sadly the Lectionary of my own church, the REC, is much more like the ECUSA 1945 than it is the older ones. The Canadian 1962 is even worse and then everything took a dive off a cliff from that point on.
I've enjoyed several years using in turn Cranmer's original lectionary from the 1549, the revised English lectionary of 1871, the 1928 American lectionary, and my favourite: the 1918 Canadian lectionary. I returned to the 1945 in 2006 just to see what the difference was and I was jarred by how much it left out. I guess that experience drove me back to what I hadn't used in years: The One Year Bible. I used it's plan for all of 2007 with a few modifications. I like using the Coverdale Psalter as arranged in The Anglican Breviary, which covers all 150 psalms each week, so I used that instead. This year I'm getting a late (post-Christmas) start with the 1918 Canadian lectionary.
So this is simply the long way of stressing the need for each of us to be faithful to our calling to read the Word and to read it daily – and to regularly read it all. I've found it to be true in my own life that Christian growth stagnates, perhaps even retreats, when I'm not reading and studying the divine rulebook and manual. I've certainly seen it in others. I've known some very knowledgeable Christians whom you'd never know were Christians except for the depth of their theological booklearning. As I've come to know them the common denominator is a lack of consistent and daily Scripture study and prayer.
I urge you as the new (civil) year begins, to find a way to read the Bible through this year and then to make it an annual habit. Find a pre-1945 American BCP or some other old edition, download one of those old lectionaries from the internet, or support your local Christian bookstore and pick up a One Year Bible or Daily Bible and put it to use.
8 comments:
I think you are correct about the importance of reading the whole of Scripture over the course of the year to the tradition of Common Prayer. It is worth noting that this, obviously Protestant, emphasis is in fact a restoration (as CRanmer himself suggests) of Catholic tradition prior to the Franciscan reform of the Breviary, which reduced the office lessons to the snippets found in the late medieval and Tridentine breviaries, and of which Cranmer complained.
I believe you are also correct about the weakness of the 1943 lectionary found in the 1928 PB. May I also recommend, by way of its replacement, the office lectionary of the 1962 Canadian BCP? This comes very close to the admirable aim of harmonizing Cranmer's project (the reading of the whole of Scripture in its canonical integrity over the course of the year) wiht the logic of the Church year (a project begun by Cranmer with his choice of proper lessons for major feasts and by his reserving of Isaiah to the end of the civil year, where it overlapped ADvent).
Fr. Dunbar,
Actually, the 1962 Canadian lectionary is quite a bit worse than the 1945 American one. Where the theological problems in ECUSA show through the revised lectionary of the 1928 BCP, the same theological problems in the Canadian Church show through to a much greater extent. That's generally the case throughout the 1962 BCP. The penitential nature of the liturgies were been watered down throughout, the Prayer for the Church in the Communion service changed in focus, and, in my opinion worst of all, the Psalter was massively edited and whole psalms removed to suit a very liberal agenda. The liturgies are salvageable, but not as good as the 1662. The rest of the 1962 ought to be thrown out.
When I was still in the Anglican Church of Canada my parish opted to use the 1918 (a localised 1662) instead of the 1962, precisely because the theology behind the 1962 revisions was so bad. It seems to be a real Trojan Horse in that it maintains Cranmerian English, and thus many assume that it's orthodox simply because it's in traditional language. Sadly that's not the case. I'd like to see the Canadian Prayer Book Society and other conservative groups in Canada ditch the 1962 BCP and stand up in support for the 1918 revision of the 1662.
Bill+
Father, how different is the Canadian 1918 from the English Revised Lectionary of 1922?
Just to follow up: I ask because at least according to this article: http://tinyurl.com/2x9cyu
"[T]he 1918 English lectionary, officially called the 1922 lectionary, became the lectionary of the official 1922 Canadian Prayer Book." Is the 1922 Canadian PB the same as what you refer to as the 1918? Sorry for all of the confusing dates--
Yes, the 1918 and 1922 Canadian Prayer Books are one and the same. The revision was formally put into use Easter 1922, but is referred to as the "1918 Prayer Book" by everyone I've ever known -- probably because that's what it calls itself in its own preface. The final form of the book was settled in 1918, even though it was not formally adopted for several years.
The first draft was present to General Synod and approved for trial use in 1915. It was amended and approved by General Convention in its final form in 1918. It was not until 1921 that the book was confirmed by adopting the canon that made it legal. What is now known as the 1962 BCP went through a similar process and copies of the original draft of 1959 are still around (I have a few).
As far as the lectionary is concerned, the 1918 Canadian lectionary is essentially the same as the English revised lectionary of 1922. I've not done a line-by-line comparison, but if they differ, I haven't seen those differences myself.
Thanks for the explanation, Father. I have used what I knew as the Revised Lectionary of 1922 on and off for a few years and I appreciate it very much. Sometimes its lections border on the epic, but taken as a whole it is a great means to combine the discipline of the office with a regular schedule of Scripture reading.
Fr. Klock,
Stumbled onto your blog while searching for Prayer Book/Bible combos. This is an interesting topic, and I was grateful to have a priest who emphasized Bible reading. He was partial to Robert Murray M'Cheyne's plan for reading the Bible, and would use it with different translation each year.
I'm eager now to try one of the ones you suggest.
Jamie
Fr. Klock,
That was very interesting. One of the great things about the BCP is that it allows a form of "Daily Office" which I as an (Orthodox) Deacon with family and a day-job can handle. Of course using the BCP as an Orthodox some adaptations are necessary, but the basic structure of the BCP is beautiful and practical with the added benefit of reading most of the Holy Scriptures in about a year.
Regular Scripture reading is not in fact peculiarly Protestant as has been remarked elsewhere, in fact as Fr. John Behr (current Dean of Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary) teaches all theology that is truly Patristic (and hence Orthodox) is exegesis of Scripture!
Thank you again.
Fr. Deacon Gregory
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