CRANMER’S BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER CHANGED THE CHURCH FOREVER

By Chuck Collins

June 9, 2025

England’s Act of Uniformity of 1549 was the first time in the Church of England that liturgical uniformity was ordered for all. It aimed to convert the hearts and minds of the English people for the transformation of society.

The 1549 Book of Common Prayer was a theological and liturgical tsunami: a night-and-day change from the Medieval Roman Catholic worship and theology. Gregory Dix commented, “With an inexcusable suddenness, between a Saturday night and a Monday morning at Pentecost 1549, the English liturgical tradition of nearly a thousand years was altogether overturned.”

The new Prayer Book was mandated for use in every church in England starting Pentecost Sunday, June 9, 1549. This Book was the work of the Archbishop of Canterbury, but also that of a committee of six bishops and six other learned men under the presidency of Thomas Cranmer. They reportedly began with Cranmer’s working draft, and had as few as three weeks of actual in-person discussions.

The Book was never intended to be but an interim step toward the unashamed Protestantism of the Edwardian Church of England. Cranmer “began planning a second edition as soon as the first was off the presses” (G.J. Cuming). The first Book was not printed in a people’s edition or pocket size as a permanent book would indicate, but only in “altar size” for the clergy. The more Protestant 1552 revision became (verbatim, with a few minor changes) the 1559 and the 1662 editions of the Book of Common Prayer - the standard for all future Prayer Book revisions in the Church of England.

In the words of the 2008 Jerusalem Declaration: “We rejoice in our Anglican sacramental and liturgical heritage as an expression of the gospel, and we uphold the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as a true and authoritative standard of worship and prayer, to be translated and locally adapted for each culture.”

Cranmer’s Prayer Book was in English, not Latin, which represented a gigantic move to make worship the work of the people and not just a priest doing his magic at a high altar.

It removed all suggestions of Eucharistic sacrifice, transubstantiation, the invocation of saints, and purgatory. Stone altars, which suggested that Jesus is re-sacrificed in every mass, were replaced by wooden communion tables placed in the midst of the congregation.

The Word of God (God’s promises proclaimed) replaced the priest as the instrument by which grace is offered in the sacrament. Other sacerdotal priestly actions were summarily removed: the lifting-up (elevation) and adoration of the sacrament, sanctus bells, and the prayer invoking the Holy Spirit (the “epiclesis”).

Whereas in the Middle Ages the wine of Holy Communion was considered too holy for non-clergy, the new Prayer Book ordered that everyone, lay and clergy alike, were to receive both the bread and wine. Private confession to a priest was offered as a pastoral option for some who would find it helpful, but it was no longer a requirement for receiving Holy Communion.

What was Cranmer trying to do? To teach the grace and mercy of God for sinners. “Thomas Cranmer devoted the full powers of his position as Primate of All England to inculcating the Protestant faith into every fibre of English life and law” (Ashley Null). Week-after-week Anglican worship takes the congregation from guilt to grace to gratitude (from the Commandments to the Creed to the Prayer of Thanksgiving after communion).

Each Sunday Anglicans rehearse the saving actions of Jesus Christ for sinners. “What he [Cranmer] wants us to see is that Prayer Book worship is, first to last, justification by faith set forth in liturgy so that it might be re-apprehended and re-experienced in regular acts of devotion" (J. I. Packer).

Cranmer’s Prayer Book is “the only effective attempt ever made to give liturgical expression to the doctrine of ‘justification by faith alone’” (Gregory Dix).  Zac Hicks says it best: “What overwhelmed Cranmer was God’s love for him in Christ, and once that love seized him, the Archbishop became fiercely committed to the clear proclamation of that good news. In other words, Cranmer’s vision for liturgical renewal was intensely fixated on the gospel. His evangelical convictions drove his liturgical decisions.”

The Rev. Canon Chuck Collins is a reform theologian who regularly writes on Anglican issues. He resides in Texas.