If you have arrived at this page wondering what kind of community you have found — what we believe, how we worship, and why we use a prayer book that is nearly a century old — this introduction is written for you. It is not a comprehensive history of Anglicanism, nor a defence of our particular practice against other forms. It is an honest account of who we are, where our tradition comes from, and what we hope you will find here.
The 1928 Book of Common Prayer is the third revision of the American Episcopal prayer book, and the last of what scholars call the "classic" Anglican prayer books in American use. It remains the canonical liturgical standard for Continuing Anglican jurisdictions committed to the traditional faith and order of the Church.
Its roots go back to the English Reformation. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury under Edward VI, produced the first English Prayer Book in 1549 — a vernacular liturgy drawn from the ancient Latin rites of Sarum, York, and Bangor, shaped by the Reformed theological convictions of the Continental Reformation. The 1552 revision refined that work, establishing the evangelical structure that still governs Anglican worship: the Law exposing sin, the Gospel declaring grace, repentance, the Supper, and thanksgiving. The 1662 Prayer Book, produced after the English Civil War and the Restoration, settled the tradition in the form that shaped Anglicanism worldwide for the next three centuries.
In America, the first authorized Prayer Book appeared in 1789, drawing heavily on the 1662 text but incorporating a Scottish-influenced Eucharistic prayer with an explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit, and retaining the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds despite proposals to remove them. A conservative revision in 1892 adjusted rubrics and encouraged more frequent Communion. Then, beginning in 1913, the General Convention commissioned the revision that would eventually produce the 1928 book — a process of more than a decade, shaped by bishops, clergy, and laity debating each proposed change at successive conventions.
The 1928 book remained recognizably in continuity with Cranmer's Reformation liturgies and the 1662 tradition. Its framers deliberately preserved the evangelical structure that Cranmer had built into the Prayer Book: the movement from the exposure of sin through the Law, to the declaration of grace through the Gospel, to repentance, to the Supper, to thanksgiving. This shape governs the Holy Communion rite from beginning to end, even though certain ceremonial and textual adjustments gave the service a more Catholic appearance than the plain 1552 form.
At the same time, the 1928 revision made several significant changes. It deliberately cut what its framers called extreme Calvinism — language that implied an absolute double predestination or that treated human beings as entirely passive before God. It softened the tone regarding human sinfulness without abandoning the confession of sin that Cranmer had placed at the heart of Anglican worship. The result is a liturgy that is Reformed in structure and Catholic in tone — Protestant in its doctrinal commitments, generous in its pastoral register.
Pastorally, the revision was responsive to its moment. The Visitation of the Sick was reformed to move away from the assumption that illness was God's direct punishment — a change of pastoral register without a change of doctrine. The Burial Office received a new Collect praying for growth in knowledge and love of God. Most significantly, in the wake of the First World War and its vast toll of the dead, the 1928 book introduced explicit prayers for the departed into an American Prayer Book for the first time since the 1552 English revision had eliminated them. The marriage rite adjusted the pledges of husband and wife to be more nearly parallel, reflecting early twentieth-century concerns about mutuality while preserving traditional structure and language.
The 1928 BCP appoints all three historic Creeds of the Church: the Apostles' Creed (said daily at Morning and Evening Prayer), the Nicene Creed (said at the Holy Communion), and the Athanasian Creed or Quicunque Vult (appointed for thirteen occasions during the year under the permissive rubric may be said). Article VIII of the Thirty-Nine Articles requires all three to be received and believed. The Athanasian Creed in particular is the doctrinal foundation of Trinitarian prayer — the confession that makes intelligible the three-part structure in which the Church addresses the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Ghost.
The 1928 BCP uses the traditional one-year Sunday Eucharistic lectionary, inherited from the Sarum Use through successive Prayer Book revisions. This is the 1945 American lectionary as adjusted for the 1928 BCP — not the Revised Common Lectionary used by most contemporary churches. The 1945 lectionary assigns specific Collects, Epistles, and Gospels to each Sunday and feast day, forming a continuous theological commentary on the Christian year. It is the lectionary this website serves.
In 1976, the Episcopal Church voted to ordain women to the priesthood and episcopate — a decision that a significant number of bishops, clergy, and laity regarded as a departure from the received apostolic tradition. In 1977, at the Congress of St. Louis, a group of these traditionalists formally separated from the Episcopal Church and constituted the Continuing Anglican movement, committed to preserving three things: the historic faith as expressed in the Thirty-Nine Articles, the historic liturgy of the 1928 BCP, and the historic orders of the apostolic succession.
Several jurisdictions emerged from the Congress of St. Louis, committed to preserving the apostolic faith, the 1928 BCP, and the historic orders. Among these is the Anglican Province of Christ the King (APCTK), one of the principal bodies of the Continuing Anglican movement in the United States, whose canonical liturgy is the 1928 BCP and whose episcopal succession runs through the historic lines of the Church of England and the American Episcopal Church.
The foundational document of the Continuing Anglican movement, the Affirmation of St. Louis, declared the intention to maintain the apostolic faith, order, and worship as received by the Anglican tradition. It affirmed the three historic Creeds, the two Gospel Sacraments, the historic episcopate, and the 1928 BCP. The Preservation of the American Episcopate — January 28, 1977 — marks the day when episcopal consecrations secured the apostolic succession in the Continuing movement, and is observed as a feast by congregations within that tradition.
The 1928 BCP was displaced by the 1979 revision in the Episcopal Church, whose adoption effectively ended the older book's normative status and confined it to traditionalist parishes. For those who received their faith through its liturgy, the loss was not merely aesthetic — it was doctrinal. The 1979 book moved away from Cranmer's evangelical structure, softened the confession of sin, adjusted the theology of the Eucharist in directions many regarded as departures from the Anglican formularies, and adopted the Revised Common Lectionary in place of the traditional one-year cycle.
For the Continuing Anglican movement, the 1928 BCP is not a museum piece. It is the living liturgical standard of a confessing community — the form in which the ancient faith is prayed, week by week, by congregations who regard themselves as the stewards of a tradition the broader Episcopal Church has set aside. This website exists to serve those congregations and those individuals: to make the resources of the 1928 BCP tradition available, documented, and accessible to a new generation of worshippers who may be finding their way to this form of Anglican faith for the first time.
This introduction was prepared in the season of Eastertide, Anno Domini 2026. Sources: the 1928 Book of Common Prayer; the Affirmation of St. Louis (1977); E. Crewdson Thomas, The Lay Folks' History of the Liturgy (Rivingtons, 1929); and historical synthesis compiled from primary Anglican liturgical scholarship.