O praise ye delors

Spectator, The, Sep 16, 2000 by Hitchens, Peter

Peter Hitchens on the interesting new injunctions of the Church of England

MOST gentle Christian souls would probably agree that the politburos and supreme soviets of Brussels and Strasbourg are much in need of divine help, and their euro-rouble even more so; but does the Church of England really need to pray for them? The latest Anglican services, now being introduced, are stark and unsettling as never before, but their most striking innovation is a prayer for the European Union. Worshippers are henceforth supposed to ask God to give `vision, understanding and integrity' to the members of European institutions. The same petition also nods to multiculturalism and devolution, describing the monarch as the `symbol of loyalty and unity for all our different peoples' and speaking of `the parliaments in these islands'.

The appearance of Euro-prayers shows the extent of the cultural revolution in this most English of institutions. The ThirtyNine Articles, the founding charter of the Church, are thoroughly conservative and Eurosceptic, insisting firmly that the King's Majesty `is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign jurisdiction'. Anglicanism has always been a political faith and its Prayer Book is the most sonorous and uncompromising endorsement of the Elizabethan settlement - national independence under a Christian monarch subject to the law. It insists on the individual rather than the social conscience, and is solemn and earthy about sin and repentance, rather than happy or clappy. It even has special prayers for the Navy. It is as near as you can get to an English ideology in style and substance. Every word in it, especially the formal and respectful use of 'Thou' when God himself is addressed, supports uniquely English ideas of hierarchy, law and respect for the past. No wonder the reforming liberals hate it so.

The 20th century has taught us that language is one of the main weapons of modem power, whether it be the verbless, evasive drivel of Tony Blair or the barbarous jargons of Bolshevism and National Socialism. Yet the battle to save the 1662 Prayer Book has been left almost entirely to poets and liturgists. Perhaps that is why it is now nearly dead, despite having the support of almost everyone of sense, taste or learning in the cultural establishment. In 1979, in revulsion against the 'alternative' services and jolly Bibles then being imposed by reforming clergy, a great petition was organised to plead for the old and good, attracting such supporters as Iris Murdoch, Alan Bennett, A.J.P. Taylor, Ralph Richardson, Philip Larkin and John Gielgud. `We are concerned,' they said, `for the wellsprings of expressive power in the Authorised Version of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer, the great originals of English life and language, informing piety and inspiring justice.' They warned of a `terrible act of forgetting'. Their arguments were unanswerable and have never been adequately addressed by the reformers, whose eloquent response was to carry on reforming.

Such an assembly of wisdom and talent would have succeeded had they been trying to save an ancient woodland from the roadbuilders or, say, Shakespeare's plays from crass updating. But the petition, for all its grandeur, had no effect at all. What the defenders of the Prayer Book failed to grasp was that the innovators did not just wish to change the words. They wanted to change the world. It was England and the English idea of God that they wanted to modernise, and they couldn't do it without destroying one of the most beautiful books ever written. In the 20 years since, they have driven it to the margins of national worship.

This is despite the failure of the unloved Alternative Service Book, a treasury of banality now being recycled or thrown away without regret after two decades of continuing and accelerating Anglican decline though, to be fair, the modernisers never claimed that their changes would fill the churches. But the thing which replaces it, known as Common Worship, is still more dangerous to what is left of traditional Anglicanism. Hundreds of vicarages have already received a chirpy manual explaining how customised orders of service can be created from `Common Worship', most of which is already available on the Internet. For as this guide explains, Common Worship `is not a book. It is a collection of services and resources that will be published in books, as separate booklets, on simple cards, on computer disks and on the Internet.'

Churches may download what they wish from the Net and assemble their own services according to choice - so that it is much more a Website of Diverse Devotion than a Book of Common Prayer. Many clergy are already inflicting versions of the new liturgy on their flocks, and some may even have copied the sample services in the handbook in which Confession is headlined by the words `We say "Sorry" ', or `Dishing the dirt on ourselves'. A progressive vanguard will perhaps follow the hints on how to dispense with books altogether and use an overhead projector instead so that the congregation `are free to clap or do other demonstrative things with their hands'. Many of the new prayers are still more woeful and embarrassing than the early modern liturgies produced 20 and 30 years ago. The hope that there might be some sort of retreat from ugly modernisation, like British Telecom's rediscovery of red phone boxes, is not borne out by a Communion service which opens its account of the Last Supper with the words `On the night before he died he had supper with his friends'.