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.
– Rev Daniel French, Why millennial men are turning to the Book of Common Prayer