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The "Book of Common Prayer": A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books) Hardcover – September 29, 2013

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Alan Jacobs (Author)
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Alan Jacobs (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars 27 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Series: Lives of Great Religious Books
  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press; First Edition edition (September 29, 2013)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0691154813
  • ISBN-13: 978-0691154817
  • Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 4.8 x 7.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #238,182 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsAn Essential Primer on a Beloved Primer
By Alex on October 8, 2013
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Only those who care so little about religion or religious history that they count it all as nonsense will find anything to dislike about this book. Alan Jacobs has outdone himself in both in the quality of his historical research and the more difficult trick of rendering complicated history in plain language and a merciful page count. His own practice of Anglicanism has apparently only increased his attention to contradiction, foiled plans, multiple visions, and historical change throughout the life of the Anglican Church's second-most-treasured book. One sometimes sees the shape of present religious struggles in his account of the Book of Common Prayer, but more often--and perhaps more fruitfully--he gives readers a lucid look at people whose hearts were far closer to the heart of religious belief and observance than the modern world often affords us. The choices they made, the worship they attempted to craft, and the battles they fought with each other need to be told with a keen attention to the structures and motivations of religious belief. In this, Jacobs has surpassed many modern historians who attempt to account for religious movements by all manner of reductive tactics, refusing stubbornly to grant religious belief and observance its own oeuvre, its own life. Jacobs's deceptively slim volume--a part of a larger series, it should be noted--is an uncommonly insightful work of religious history with much to teach our modern minds.
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4.0 out of 5 starsInteresting story even for a low church baptist
By Adam Shields VINE VOICE on October 15, 2013
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
I grew up low church baptist and have only come to see the value of the Book of Common Prayer fairly recently. So this was a great book to bring some history to my understanding.

Alan Jacobs is an excellent writer and his history of the book is both of solid history and readable.

To me, what is most interesting about story of the BCP, is how it was intended as a tool of unity but from the very beginning that was thwarted. Cranmer, who compiled the BCP thought that a single prayer book with a single service was important both theologically and politically to the unity of the Church in England. This was not a simple expedient or politically motivated conscription of Christianity but a different world view on how church and state should relate.

But from the beginning the minutia of the BCP and its practice were used to factionalize the church. As one very small example, John Knox insisted that communion should be taken while sitting (instead of kneeling) because he wanted to distance the church from the Catholic view of transubstantiation. Others wanted kneeling to show honor and devotion during the Eucharist.

But as theological and cultural movements between high and low church Anglicans and Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals and other groups, the prayer book became like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Unchanging not so much because it was perfect, but unchanging because no one can agree on how to change it. And now it is venerated in part because it was unchanged.

Outside the UK, most other Anglican churches have adapted their own Books of Common Prayer (and most have updated theirs several times), but in in the UK it is still the 1662 version that is the authorized one.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsBook of Common Prayer
By Carole McDonnell on October 6, 2013
Format: Hardcover
I received this book as a review copy and will be writing a review for it on a couple other sites. But I'll put a small review here in passing. Alan Jacobs does a great job showing the historical and doctrinal issues that caused the Book of Common Prayer to be created. He also traces its history throughout the years -- how history influenced it and how it was influenced by history and changing opinons throughout English history. The research is all there without the book seeming stuffy, arrogant, and hard to trudge through. For a book written by an academic, it has humor and accessibility. I thoroughly recommend this book.
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3.0 out of 5 starsLimitations
By Dr. John Bunyan on January 31, 2014
Format: Hardcover
I agree with many of reviewers' positive statements about this book which its cover indicates is also commended, for example, by Bishop Rowan Williams and which has been praised in a Church Times review by long-time stalwart BCP supporter, The Revd Professor David Martin, and I certainly welcome its publication.

However, the work is not without faults. For example, Charles I was executed on the 30th not the 4th January (p.77) and there are generalisations that suggest that the author perhaps is writing as somewhat of an outsider (I may be wrong). There is at least one absurdity that suggests more careful sub-editing would have helped - the reference to "slippered priests bearing thurifers"!

The "Chronology" at the beginning is a help for anyone coming to the BCP and its story for the first time, and there are detailed and useful notes (which somewhat make up for the lack of a bibliography) and there is a good index. However there are many older books that tell that story more clearly. I would share the author's high regard for the recent edition of the BCP edited by Brian Cummings, The Book of Common Prayer : The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662 (OUP 2011) but much of The Oxford Guide to the BCP (2006) which he also commends relates to the prayer books of other parts of the Anglican Communion rather than to the BCP itself. I myself should commend, in addition, the new Everyman's Library BCP which includes as well as the text of the 1662 BCP, the 1549 Holy Communion and Burial services, the formerly authorised services for January 30th, May 29th, and November 5th, an excellent introduction by historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, and a Select Bibliography. The books listed in the latter include D.E.W.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsThe Broad Sweep of Anglican Liturgical History

This "biography of a book" served to illuminate the complex changes in Anglican liturgy over the almost 500 years of formal change. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Michael H. McGrath
5.0 out of 5 starsA very useful history of an important book.

Well worth the time to read for any serious Anglican and any student of the history of religions and religious practices. Read more

Published 2 months ago by FolkKey
5.0 out of 5 starsEngaging History of the Book of Common Prayer

"Speak now or forever hold your peace," "till death do us part," "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," "the world, the flesh, and the... Read more

Published 4 months ago by D Glover
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent

A scholarly but easily readable history of the development and life of the Book of Common Prayer. Well done.

Published 12 months ago by compassrose
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Was an interesting book and caused me to look up more on the Book of Common Prayer.

Published 15 months ago by Linda Lou
5.0 out of 5 starsBoth received in good condition and presented as gifts (recipients...

I ordered two copies. Both received in good condition and presented as gifts (recipients were well pleasec).

Published 16 months ago by William W. Burns
5.0 out of 5 starseasily readable book on a subject whose history may be ...

This is a lovely, easily readable book on a subject whose history may be unknown to so many people, even Anglicans. Read more

Published 18 months ago by B. Marold
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Good product. Thanks.

Published 19 months ago by yoga sutra
5.0 out of 5 starsThe Beauty and Importance of the Book of Common Prayer

Jacobs has done an excellent in putting together information on the development of the Book of Common Prayer. It is well documented and easy to read. Read more

Published 19 months ago by budman
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent and I learned a lot

Chapter 1 alone is worth the price of the book. Excellent and I learned a lot, thought I knew not a little already. I admit that I have not gone farther---yet.

Published 20 months ago by Dean Brown

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