How Do Anglicans Pray

[Dominik Ransom]

Everytime I get on an airplane, I pray the rosary. Flying is nerve-racking for me, even after several years of routine air travel. Praying the rosary comforts me and keeps me calm: I feel protected and able to trust that the plane will be a safe place for me, no matter what happens.

Some people would probably find that surprising. The rosary is not a particularly common devotion for Episcopalians. In fact, the invention of the so-called Anglican rosary in the latter half of the last century was intended to give Episcopalians a way of praying with beads without being associated with anything that seemed too Roman Catholic.

Nonetheless, my first rosary was purchased at the gift shop of Washington National Cathedral, an Episcopal parish. A Roman Catholic friend in college had shown me how to offer the prayers, but it was through Anglo-Catholic devotionals like The Practice of Religion that I really became proficient at it. In the last 14 years, the rosary has become a powerful force in my life. I believe that more Christians of all kinds, including Episcopalians, ought to take it up as a spiritual discipline.

The practice of praying with beads goes back even before Christianity. No one knows exactly where the rosary as we have it today came from, but there is a tradition that suggests it has its roots in an appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Saint Dominic in the 13th century. Regardless of how much truth there is to that, it is clear that Mary is the heart of the rosary.

The tactile nature of the rosary makes it easy for me, as someone who does not sit still easily, to engage with it. At the same time, the repetition of the prayers focuses my mind and allows me to pray on two levels, one conscious and one almost beneath consciousness, as if my whole mind and body are drawn together into a single purpose.

These are great advantages, but the main reason I would encourage Christians today to take up the rosary is that it will guard your faith. In our current cultural and ecclesial landscape, that is no small thing.

Jesus is all that we need, he is all-sufficient, yet he chooses to offer himself to us through his mother, making her a channel of his grace, and in so doing gives us an example of how he works through all Christians to share his love and his light with the world. We are not merely empty vessels. Our Lord has given each of us unique gifts that he puts to his service whenever we answer his call to share the Gospel with the world.

We live at a time when our faith is threatened almost daily, when secularism and materialism seek to rob from us the pearl of great price. God has sent us as Christians to be his ambassadors in a culture that is not only foreign but hostile. We need our mother to protect us, to guide us, to keep the spark of our faith lit and to help it to grow.

I reach for the rosary whenever I am in danger or trouble, whenever I feel threatened or insecure. It always brings me back to being centered in the love of God. It never fails. Sometimes even just holding it is enough.

It is not because I think of it as some kind of talisman with magic powers. I know that the plane could just as easily go down after I have prayed the rosary as it might have if I had not. But I feel different after I have prayed it, because I know that my mother is looking out for me.

Thanks for this one, Fr. Jonathan. I had taken up the rosary just a little bit before 2015, but began using it seriously as I entered my ordination training at Westcott House. It was a real anchor, in the midst of a time of transition.

Thanks for a great piece, Father Jonathan. The Society of Mary (American Region) provides a venue for Episcopalians (and others) who want to get together to pray the Rosary and engage in other Marian devotions. Visit us at somamerica.org.

My proposal for a Reformed Litany of the Saints unintentionally caused quite a stir. What I intended to be a constructive creation was received in large part as being destructive. Moreover, the wave of displeasure caused a number of related theological issues to wash ashore, which I believe are in need of a careful response.

It is also probable to the point of certainty that they are engaging in the same work they began on earth: Not only of worship, but also of Christ-like comportment in longing for the redemption of mankind, and they are very probably interceding for the church on earth as part of this longing.

To pray the Litany of the Saints, as an Anglican with a good conscience, means that either Article 34 is being ignored entirely, or the Litanist believes the absence of the Litany of the Saints is itself repugnant to the Word of God, which would be a very tall claim indeed, and would be a judgment against the two formularies (BCP & Articles) that they are in deep error, which would be to cut down the tree while standing on its branches.

Revelation 5 and 8 have been brought forward, but somewhat confusingly, since the image of prayer as incense is manifestly apocalyptic, and again, there is no warrant for addressing a saint, since those prayers symbolized by the incense are directed to God.

But, in the same way that the Apostolic Fathers and the earliest witness of the Faith outside the New Testament help us sort out the evidence of ministry into a threefold Order, do we see any early and continuous tradition of Addressing the Saints in the first age of the Post-Apostolic Church?

Here it is worth addressing the point more generally: We do not receive as of the catholic Faith something simply because it is old. The 5th century is no more infallible than our own. We receive old things as catholics in as much as they testify to a continuous witness to the Apostolic Age. The widespread confusion on this point leads many toward Rome, and away from the actual catholic Faith.

But when it comes to Addressing the Saints in a public liturgy, we have a different story: The Articles are definitive, the Prayerbook is definitive (when contrasted to predecessor liturgies, the total absence of the Litany of Saints is glaring), The entire witness of catholic-minded teachers in England prior to 1850 are in perfect harmony and are definitive: it is not to be promulgated.

The Rev. Ben Jefferies is a sinner, grateful to the Lord for his mercy.He grew up in England, and emigrated to the United States in 1999. He went to Wheaton College, and several years later discerned a call to ministry and went to seminary at Nashotah House Theological Seminary. He was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Duncan in 2014. He currently serves The Good Shepherd Anglican Church in Opelika, Alabama. He served on the Liturgy Task Force of the ACNA from 2015-2019, and was the lead designer for the production of the printed prayer book. He continues as the Assistant to the Custodian of the Book of Common Prayer (2019), and serves on the board of directors of Anglican House Media Ministries. He is married with three daughters.

Anglican devotions are private prayers and practices used by Anglican Christians to promote spiritual growth and communion with God. Among members of the Anglican Communion, private devotional habits vary widely, depending on personal preference and on their affiliation with low-church or high-church parishes.

Devotional practices among people and parishes who self-identify as Anglo-Catholic will naturally be different from those Anglicans who are Evangelical. Anglo-Catholics are likely to follow devotional customs familiar to the majority of Christians that have roots in the early and mediaeval periods as well as the contemporary form of devotion. These include daily prayer, particularly the Daily Office, and meditative and contemplative devotions hallowed by the centuries, e.g. the Rosary, the Stations of the Cross and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Increasingly, Anglo-Catholics are discovering the spiritual riches of Eastern Christianity, e.g. praying with icons and the use of the Jesus Prayer. Evangelical Anglicans have been strongly influenced by the Protestant Reformation and, in some cases, by pietistic, charismatic or Pentecostal habits.

The Book of Common Prayer was a foundational prayer book of Anglicanism when printed in 1549. The original was one of the instruments of the English Reformation. In addition to the authorized Prayer Book of the Church of England, the book by the tame issued in 1662, many member churches of the Anglican Communion have their own official versions, which may be used by individual Anglicans for their private devotions. Most Anglican churches, however, use contemporary alternatives to the Various editions of the Book of Common Prayer, such as Common Worship (Church of England), or the Book of Alternative Services (Anglican Church of Canada). The liturgies of the Episcopal church in the United States and the Church of Ireland use modern books each of which is named after the Book of Common Prayer.

Many devout Anglicans begin and end their day with the Daily Office of a prayer book, which includes the forms for morning, noonday, evening, and bedtime prayer, as well as suggested Bible readings appropriate to each. Some Anglo-Catholics use forms of the Roman Catholic Daily Office, such as the Divine Office, or the forms contained in the Anglican Breviary.

Although direct prayer to the saints is a practice that was continued in the first Litany in English, it was not particularly encouraged after the English Reformation. It is, however, an important part of Anglo-Catholics' public and private spiritual practices. In Anglo-Catholic theology, veneration is a type of honour distinct from the worship due to God alone. High church theologians have long used the terms latria for the sacrificial worship due to God alone, and dulia for the veneration given to saints and icons. They base this distinction on the conclusions of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787), which also decreed that iconoclasm (forbidding icons and their veneration) is a heresy that amounts to a denial of the incarnation of Jesus. Prayer is directed to God; one prays with and for the saints as they pray with and for us through Christ to God.

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