A younger generation is leading a revival in the C of E

The Book of Common Prayer is enjoying a revival in the Church of England, despite the best efforts of some modernists to mothball it. Over the past two years, more and more churchgoers have asked me about a return to Thomas Cranmer’s exquisite language, essentially unaltered since 1662, for church services and private devotions. Other vicars tell me they have had a similar increase in interest.

It helps that the Book of Common Prayer has had a fair bit of attention recently. The late Queen Elizabeth’s insistence on the use of Prayer Book texts in her funeral rites meant that in September more people witnessed the beauty of this liturgical treasure than watched Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon. The hairs on the back of my neck bristled as I heard on TV the solemn words echo around Westminster Abbey: ‘In the midst of life we are in death.’

And in the lead-up to the coronation, the Prayer Book has once again been in the public eye – although not all the publicity has been good. Cambridge University Press’s beautifully bound new Prayer Book, published in time for the coronation, had to be recalled from its first print run when it was noticed that the text mistakenly included France as a dominion under Charles III. Some priests have held on to their misprints in the hope that they might become rare collectors’ items or in case the sorry state of French politics makes them prophetic.

What’s interesting is that the C of E’s Book of Common Prayer revival is overwhelmingly led by millennials. What the 1960s ecclesiastical revolutionaries wrote off, a younger generation is embracing. Brandon LeTourneau, 27, a convert from Judaism and soon to be ordained ministry intern, is hardly a young fogey. He wears Dr Martens and is covered in tattoos. He jokes that from what he can see no one under 40 is joining a church that doesn’t focus on tradition and rigour. ‘Why should I bother with a church that doesn’t challenge me spiritually or a liturgy that doesn’t demand more of me?’ Though he started his Christian life being baptised in a Californian megachurch swimming pool, he found himself longing for something more exacting.

The young chairman of the Prayer Book Society, Bradley Smith, tells me that since the pandemic his small organisation has been overwhelmed with interest, enquiries and new members. Churches are trying to match this enthusiasm and many are trailblazing with billings like ‘Matins ’n’ Brunch’ or ‘Evensong ’n’ Curry’ on their notice boards.

Bradley confirms that his society’s new members are like Brandon – almost exclusively under 35 and more often than not male. He and I speculated as to whether these are also Jordan Peterson fans. Anecdotal evidence is that online Bible lectures from the hugely popular Canadian psychologist have reignited disaffected young men’s interest in traditional Christianity. Perhaps the Prayer Book Society’s incursion into supporting prison ministry substantiates this theory? If the revival can take off in the toughest jails, it can grow anywhere.

The revival also appears to transcend the normative Anglican tribal divides of ‘High’ and ‘Low’ church. A few church schools have taken to assimilating the Book of Common Prayer into their curriculums, providing the prospect of growing future Anglican leaders fluent in the deepest parts of their heritage. Even Roman Catholics are having a go. For the Ordinariate – an enclave for ex-Anglicans, including the former Bishop of Rochester Dr Michael Nazir-Ali – the Vatican has assimilated an adjusted 1662 text.

It would be a mistake to misinterpret renewed interest in the Prayer Book as a purely aesthetic enterprise, a sort of religious Classic FM. What is clear is that the appeal is not just about Shakespearean language, beautiful though it evidently is. The Prayer Book is theology at its best. It is a manual of spiritual disciple that is as far removed from modern, cringe-inducing ‘wellness’ gobbledygook as can be. Its uncompromising opening, ‘We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts’, is a brick through the window to many facets of modern living including narcissism, egotism and the crocodile tears of identity politics.

I am a recent convert to the Book of Common Prayer. I have to confess that ten years ago during a church spring clean I tossed around 60 pocket-sized Prayer Books into a black bin bag and drove them to the tip. What was I thinking? Like many Anglican vicars I believed at the time that Common Prayer services were a roadblock to progress. The antiquated and niche language was attractive only for crusty octogenarians who clung to bygone days.

Halfway through the first lockdown I was fed up with holding daily online services from the vicarage, disconnected from my congregation and my church. Casually, almost out of boredom, I picked a solitary 1662 Prayer Book on the nearby shelf. Yes, I was familiar with Evensong and Cranmer’s communion rite, but more as a pastoral chore than a treasure. Now in Covid-tide I fell upon something concise and beautiful, a liturgy that called me to serve it, not the other way around.

The 2022 census showed an ever-shrinking Christian population inhabiting a secular wilderness. Church attendance continues to decline. Nothing seems to work. Maybe the C of E can be renewed by vicars and laity salvaging the old Prayer Book from vicarage dustbins? Stranger things have happened in Church history.