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Episode 109 · July 2, 2026 · 37:09

Anglican Liturgy

In this episode of Peaceable and Kind, Derek Vreeland continues the Holy Convergence series by exploring the gift of Anglican liturgy.

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Show Notes

In this episode of Peaceable and Kind, Derek Vreeland continues the Holy Convergence series by exploring the gift of Anglican liturgy. While Anglicanism is often associated with the Church of England and its complicated break from Rome under Henry VIII, Derek argues that its deeper story is rooted in a desire to remain connected to the ancient catholic and apostolic faith while embracing the reforms of the Protestant Reformation.

The episode traces the development of Anglicanism from the early Christian presence in Britain through the English Reformation and into the formation of The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in North America. Derek highlights Anglicanism’s unique ability to hold together ancient tradition and biblical reform, creating a worshiping community shaped by Scripture, sacrament, liturgy, and the rhythms of the Christian calendar.

At the center of Anglican worship is The Book of Common Prayer, first compiled by Thomas Cranmer in 1549. More than a collection of prayers, the Prayer Book provides a form for worship that is deeply biblical, Trinitarian, Christ-centered, and spiritually formative. Derek reflects on how the Daily Office Lectionary, and the Christian calendar have enriched both his personal devotional life and the worship life of his church.

Ultimately, Anglican liturgy offers a beautiful pattern for prayer and worship—one marked by wholeness, harmony, and clarity. It is a gift that keeps Christians rooted in Scripture, connected to the historic church, and centered on Jesus Christ.

Key Takeaways

Resources Mentioned

Anglican Compass

Why I Became Anglican (And You Should, Too!)

Daily Office Lectionary

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Transcript

Welcome back. To another episode of Peaceable and Kind. I am your host, Derek Vreeland, and we are in a mini-series of sorts here on the podcast where we are exploring a holy convergent. of seven Christian traditions. These are seven traditions that have shaped my heart and life. They have shaped my thinking and my writing and teaching, and they’ve also shaped the church where I serve. And so I want to explore another one of these traditions that are a part of this holy convergence. But before we jump into today’s episode, let me invite you to subscribe if you are new to Peaceable and Kind and leave us a rating and a review that helps a whole lot. So on this episode, I want to describe the great gift of Anglican liturgy. We’ve already explored and described Orthodox mystery and Catholic beauty, and now I’m ready to talk a little bit about Anglican liturgy So let me start off by defining the pertinent terms. My government teacher’s senior year of high school. Taught us that as we are writing term papers, we should define the pertinent terms. So, in speaking of Anglican liturgy, let me define some terms. First, by Anglican, I’m referring to the Church of England, which is known in the United States as the Episcopal Church, the Episcopalians. Now there’s also the Anglican Church in the U. S. , the Anglican Church of North America. These are two different denominations. I’ll talk about that in a little bit. But when I’m speaking of Anglican, I’m talking about the Church of England. And by liturgy, I’m talking about the form and shape of our worship and prayers. So want to describe and explore what I have received as a wonderful gift, the gift of Anglican liturgy. But I feel like I need to give you a little bit of historical background. So before you can, I think, understand The value of the liturgies created by the Anglican Church, I think it’s helpful to know a little bit of the history, to know where the Church of England came from So, for many people, Anglicanism begins with King Henry VIII and his six wives and the split from Rome and the Roman Catholic Church. And people have heard these stories. They’re salacious. Uh King Henry uh wanted a divorce. And the Pope was refusing, and so there was this split from Rome. And of course, these events are very important. In the formation of what we now know as Anglican, but there is a much bigger story, one for me that’s much more interesting. The gospel came to Britain long before there was ever a Church of England. By the third and fourth centuries, there were already Christian communities that were spread abroad through the British Isles. Later, missionaries came and helped to strengthen and expand the church’s presence there. I’m thinking of missionaries like St. Patrick. whose feast day is still celebrated on Saint Patrick’s Day. There’s also Augustine of Canterbury. This is not the Augustine who is the Bishop of Hippo who wrote the confessions and on the Trinity and on Christian doctrine and all these other great books, The City of God, uh not that Augustine, uh, but there was Augustine of Canterbury. So, for nearly a thousand years, the English Church existed as a part of the wider Western Church, which is to say the Roman Catholic Church Then came the upheaval of the sixteenth century. Across Europe, the Protestant Reformation Was challenging long-held assumptions about authority, who’s in charge, about doctrine, what do we believe. They were challenging assumptions about worship and the role of scripture and the nature of the church itself. And in England, these theological debates about the authority over the church, the church itself, scripture, doctrine. These theological debates collided with political realities. Henry VIII’s break with Rome in the fifteen thirties separated the English Church from the authority of the Pope. Yes, Henry VIII wanted an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragorn, and the Pope said no. Much has been written, movies have been made about this. And Henry in receiving Notification that the Pope was not going to annul his marriage, said, Well, I’m the king of England, and you can’t tell me what to do. Subsequently, the English Parliament swiftly passed the Act of Supremacy in fifteen thirty-four, which declared the King of England and not the Pope in Rome was the supreme head of the Church of England. This was the official break of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church, establishing the King, King Henry, as the supreme leader over the Church of England. But this break from Roman authority didn’t instantly or immediately create a distinct Anglican identity and vibe That identity emerged over the next several decades through important leaders, important early leaders. in the Church of England. And I’m thinking of people like Thomas Cranmer, who helped shape Anglican worship Through the publication of the Book of Common Prayer. And I’ll have a whole lot more to say about the Book of Common Prayer as this podcast episode continues. Because when I speak about the gift of Anglican liturgy, I’m thinking first and foremost about the Book of Common Prayer. And but it’s important to know some of this history behind this prayer book, which has been such a gift to the English-speaking language. Thomas Cranmer, in composing this prayer book, sought a reformed church that remained rooted in the ancient Catholic tradition. And what resulted was some of the key distinctiveness of Anglicanism. distinctives that include a church that embraced Scripture in English for worship and for daily prayer A church that valued the early church fathers and ancient liturgies, and a church that retained a sacramental vision of worship, but one that did not go as far as Roman Catholicism And so historically, the Church of England in the United States is called the Episcopal Church, and there are also Anglican churches in the US which are a part of the Anglican Church in North America. Which the Church of England in America has its own history. So you have to back up to the late 18th century And after the Revolutionary War, American Anglicans faced a challenge. They were a part of a new nation, these United States, but they were Anglican in their religious and Christian convictions. But they knew that they could not swear allegiance to the King of England. And so there was a dilemma The United States and the Anglican Christians within the colonies, now becoming this new nation, wanted to retain the liturgy of Anglicanism But they couldn’t remain Anglican in a strict sense because the head of the Anglican church was the king that they had just revolted against So they wanted to use Anglican liturgy in these new congregations in this newly formed United States. And so they reorganized as an independent church In 1784, Samuel Seabury became the first American Anglican bishop. He was consecrated by bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church. In 1789, the newly formed church in the newly formed United States adopted its first Book of Common Prayer. It also established a system of governance that combined bishops and clergy and lay representatives. It became known as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, or as we know it today, the Episcopal Church. And throughout the 19th century, the church grew steadily, particularly among political leaders and educators, influential families, and it It played a significant role in American religious and civic life. On into the 20th century, the Episcopal Church became increasingly engaged in social issues Including civil rights, racial reconciliation, women’s ordination, and ecumenical dialogue, that is, conversations with other churches from other traditions In 1976, the Episcopal Church approved the ordination of women priests, fully codifying within the Episcopal Church Anglican tradition the value of women in leadership and women in ministry. And in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, debates over human sexuality became a major point of controversy. The consecration of Gene Robinson, an openly gay bishop, in O three, I think it was, intensified the the tensions and the hostility within the church and throughout the Anglican world. And sadly These disputes led to many clergy and congregations to leave the Episcopal Church and to form what we now know as the Anglican Church in North America, which was established in 2009. I have friends that are in in both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in North America. And while I understand their division over theological and social issues, it’s always sad to me. when the church is fracturing. But as you would know it commonly, when you see an episcopal church This is the historic Episcopal Church of the United States that will ordain women in ministry at all levels. They will also perform same-sex marriages. And then if you see Anglican churches that use that name, Anglican, these are these newer um Anglican churches. that have been around since 09. And they will, some will ordain women priests, they do not ordain women bishops, and they do not perform same-sex marriages So there is a bit of history there, which is important to understand where Anglican liturgy comes from. Now, to understand some of the distinctiveness of Anglicanism, I wanted to share an article that I read on the Anglican Compass website. It’s an article entitled Why I Became Anglican and You Should Too by Andrew Bass. And I thought it was a helpful article. By the way, Um the Anglican Compass website, anglicancompass. com, is a great resource. So if you’re like me and you’re interested in Anglicanism, but you’re on the outside looking in, because I’m not an Anglican, the Anglican Compass has been such a great resource, great articles And this article by Andrew Bass, I thought was good because it highlights some of the distinctiveness of Anglicanism and I think helps to define it. So he offers five, well, technically six reasons why he became Anglican. Andrew was previously in the Southern Baptist world. He had grown up a Southern Baptist and he left to join the Anglican Church of North America. And he gives five, actually he gives six reasons why he became Anglican. Number one, he says Anglicanism is Catholic. Which I know sounds confusing because we’ve already talked about Catholic beauty and Roman Catholicism and this break that the Church of England had from the Roman Church. But it is Catholic not in the sense of organizational structure, right? Because the Anglican Church, or the Church of England, officially split from the Roman Catholic Church in fifteen thirty four. But the Anglican Church is Catholic in its historical rootedness. In his article, Bass writes The Church of England officially found its place in 597 A. D. , after Pope Gregory sent a priest named Augustine. Not that Augustine to start a new church. Augustine would become the first Archbishop of Canterbury So similar to Roman Catholics, Anglicans follow the church calendar with all of its liturgical seasons. They see the value of tradition. They see, for example, the value of honoring the saints of old, even though they don’t pray to the saints. Anglicans also believe in the sacramental life and sacramental worship of the church, particularly the two sacraments of baptism and communion. In the Roman Catholic Church, there are seven sacraments, but for Anglicans, they hold, like most Protestants, to just two sacraments, the sacrament of baptism and communion. And while they do not agree with Roman Catholics theologically on the meaning of communion, they do share with Catholics the understanding that the real presence of Christ is present. Through the bread and cup, the celebration of Holy Communion. So Anglicanism is Catholic in its historical rootedness, even though it’s not technically Roman Catholic. In that it’s a part of the same organization. A second thing that Bass mentions is that Anglicanism is reformed Now, we’ll talk more about the Protestant Reformation in the next episode, but the Church of England is reformed in the sense that they want to use Scripture Sola scriptura. We’ll talk about it in the next episode. They want to use scripture and hold scripture. uh to a sacred place and and use scripture to reform the church, to get the church back to its apostolic roots. And we’ll talk more about Protestant Reformation in the next episode. Hey friends, I want to pause this episode for just a moment to let you know that Resurrection, eight lessons on how God restores us, the third and final book in the God in the Neighborhood Bible study series is out now. Go to the show notes for ordering information. And the third reason that Bass says he became Anglican is that Anglican liturgy is beautiful. To which I say amen, and I’ll have a lot more to say about the beauty of Anglican liturgy. But again, remember, defining our terms here, liturgy is the form and shape of our worship and prayers And the liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer is beautiful. Remember in the last episode when we were talking about Thomas Aquinas and his definition. of beauty and Aquinas used these three Latin words. Aquinas said that something is beautiful when it has integritas that is integrity, it has wholeness, where nothing is lacking. Secondly, he said that something beautiful has consonantia That is, it is ordered. It’s in harmony with itself. There’s no parts within it that are competing or fighting And then Aquinas said, the beautiful has claritas, that is clarity or Radiance, it shines in such a way that it attracts us to it So, Anglican liturgy has these things to it. The liturgy that is within the Book of Common Prayer has an integrity. It has a wholeness. It’s very complete. There’s nothing missing there. It has internal harmony. It’s very ordered and structured. And for me, it shines. The prayers that we pray on Sunday In the Book of Common Prayer, they are called colics. In our church, we call them the prayer for the week. These are well-crafted prayers that are beautiful. They they they shine, they have a radiance to them. So then Bass throws in a sixth reason, which he says is his reason 3. 5, connected to beauty, and that is that Anglicanism is biblical. And so in keeping with the Protestant Reformation, Anglican life stays close to the scriptures in study and scholarship as well as in daily prayer and worship. Reason number four, he became Anglican is that Anglicanism is diverse. Bass writes, in the Anglican church, you will find reformed readers of Calvin. charismatic continualists, sacramental Anglo Catholics, and plain old evangelical Protestants all worshipping under the same roof. Now, again, I don’t worship in an Anglican church, but I do know a number of Anglicans, and I can say, yes, there’s a good deal of diversity within Anglicanism, but there’s also been the division over the ordination of gay priests and the celebration of same-sex marriage. So there is diversity, but there’s also been division, which again for me is always sad. Then the fifth reason that he gives for becoming Anglican is that Anglicanism is global. There are Anglican bishops and Anglican churches all over the world So the Church of England is not just in England and the United States, but it is all over the world. If you want to read his entire article, I highly recommend it. I think it’ll give you a good flavor for Anglicanism. We’ll put a link to Bass’s article in the show notes So as I have mentioned, the heart of Anglican liturgy is the book of common prayer. Which has become a wonderful resource for us in our congregation and also for me personally. It is a prayer book that I use almost every single day. Now, the original Book of Common Prayer was produced by Thomas Cranmer and first printed in 1549. And there’s a couple things about the prayer book that I always want to emphasize. First, it is common. It’s the book of common prayer Don’t misunderstand the title. It’s not the common book of prayer. It’s the book of common prayer. That word common means it’s for common people. The Book of Common Prayer was written in English for the entire English-speaking world. So I talked to an Episcopal priest one time about our use at Word of Life Church of the Book of Common Prayer. And I said, you know, we do kind of pick and choose. We don’t follow the liturgy precisely. And completely, but we kind of pick and choose what we want to use. Is that okay? Is that offensive? That we only use parts of your prayer book, but not all of it And he said, no, not offensive at all, because Thomas Cranmer from the beginning was producing a prayer book for the English speaking world, a prayer book For English speakers that would have required no translation. So he he said, Yeah, that’s not offensive at all. Uh Cranmer would be happy. Uh you’re a part of the English speaking world and and you’re using this great prayer book. So it’s common in the sense that it’s in the common language of people. And so it’s it’s common prayer for common people, that is, English-speaking people. It’s also reformed. The Book of Common Prayer is reformed because while it is based on Roman Catholic liturgies All sorts of changes and reforms were made. So, for example, in Roman Catholic liturgy, there are prayers to the saints. But in the Book of Common Prayer, there is an acknowledgement of the celebration of the saints, the feast days of the saints, but the prayers have been changed to be prayers to God. inspired by the saints. So it’s reformed in that sense because it was trying to get the church, the entire Protestant Reformation was to move the church back to its historical roots. And then finally, one of the most outstanding qualities of the Book of Common Prayer is Scripture. The prayers, the services throughout the Book of Common Prayer are saturated in Scripture So the colics, what we call the prayer for the week, we pray on Sunday as we teach morning prayer. We teach people to pray. that Sunday morning prayer every day during the week that follows that Sunday. And if you know your Bible well enough, you will be able to pick out where These prayers come from because they come from the scriptures. The other part that’s been so impactful for me is that the Book of Common Prayer in the back, towards the end. has the Daily Office Lectionary, which is a collection of Bible readings for every day. I’ve been following that Bible reading plan for about 10 years. And it was designed by Cranmer to have Bible readings in the morning and the evening. The ideas is is as people living in the English countryside would rise in the morning. and light a lamp and and read Holy Scripture in English before heading out into the fields or their daily work, then when they came home at night before or after their evening meal. uh they would again open the scriptures. So there was a morning and evening tradition that was established early on. But in its entirety, the Book of Common Prayer is such a wonderful, helpful, beautiful resource. Now, it was first published in 1549, but it there’s been many edits over the years. I currently use the 1979 edition. That was published by the Episcopal Church. And this is also the edition that we use in our congregation. We draw a lot of resources from the Book of Common Prayer for worship. We pay attention. to what the prayer book offers. And so it gives us direction in a lot of the aspects of the worship that we do. Again, I use it uh for morning prayer. I pray the prayer for the week every morning as a as a part of morning prayer. And my love and practice of daily scripture has really grown over the last decade. as I’ve been using the Daily Office lectionary. I’ve loved it so much that in 2023 I edited my own version of the Daily Office lectionary. So I took the lectionary that is in the back of the Book of Common Prayer and I revised and edited and published my own We’ll put a link in the show notes where you can get a copy if you’re interested. So let me talk to you about the Daily Office lectionary Because this is one of the bits of Anglican liturgy that has just so impacted my life. Lectionary is a traditional word for a collection of scripture passages. to be read at a particular time. These are scripture passages that have been selected or elected and compiled into a lectionary. So when you see the word lectionary, think selection or election. So These are Bible reading passages that in the Daily Office lectionary that I edited are for morning Bible reading as a part of morning prayer. Daily office, that title, daily office, refers to fixed times of prayer throughout the day So while the Church of England designed the Daily Office Lectionary for Bible reading in the morning and the evening, what I have revised and updated is just for morning Bible reading. And the primary revision of my lectionary has been the removal of the readings from the apocryphal or deutero-canonical books. The Apocrypha is a group of Old Testament books that appear in the Catholic Bible, but do not appear in Protestant Bibles. I don’t want to really get into why the Protestants didn’t keep those books in the Bible. I would just say nothing is lost by not reading them. But in the Episcopal Anglican Book of Common Prayer, they kept those books in the Daily Office Lectionary for daily Bible reading And because I serve a congregation that is primarily Protestant, uh people kept asking me about these books, and I said, oh, well, just Don’t read those. So that was the big renovation. That was the big update that I did for my lectionary. is I took out any readings from the Apocrypha and put in more Old Testament readings. Now this is a two-year Bible reading plan. It will get you through most of the Bible. In two years, it does skip some sections. People have asked, why does your lectionary or the lectionary in the Book of Common Prayer skip passages? And what I tell people is if it skips passages, I normally end up reading them anyway. I use the Daily Office Lectionary as a guide. It takes maybe ten minutes, fifteen minutes to do Bible reading But often I will read more than just what I’m assigned every day. So here is how I use the Daily Office Lectionary. What I use it for is It gives me a scripture passage from the Old Testament, the Epistles, and the Gospels every day. So I don’t read from scripture what I want to read in the morning. I read what the Daily Office lectionary tells me to read. Now again, I might read more than that, but at a minimum, I’m going to read what it gives me. And these readings are organized not around the secular calendar, the January to December calendar But it’s shaped around the Christian calendar. So it begins not with January 1st, but with the first Sunday of Advent. And it’s a two-year system. So year one begins on the first Sunday of Advent, preceding odd-numbered years that start the next January. And then year two begins on the first Sunday of Advent, preceding even numbered years that start the next January. Now I know I have just confused you because in editing my uh lectionary I just really struggled to understand that language. The first Sunday of Advent preceding odd number years? Okay, so so for example We started year two during advent last year in twenty twenty-five. Um we’ll start back around with year one, this Advent, the first sudden day of Advent this year in 2026. So why does year one start Advent 2026? Because that will be the season of Advent that comes before an odd-numbered year. So next year is 2027, an odd-numbered year. So year one starts the season of advent preceding odd-numbered years. I know it’s confusing. I give you a list in my Daily Office lectionary of when year one and year two start for a couple years to get you started. But it’s important to recognize that with the lectionary, you can start at any time. And you can start whether we’re in year one or year two. Right now we’re in year two and you can start with year two. But it follows the church calendar, so you have to have some working knowledge of the seasons of the church calendar in order to follow it. Now, because the daily opus lectionary aligns itself with the sacred calendar that’s telling the story of Jesus It does not go completely through every book in the Bible before moving on to another scripture passage. Because the thought is you’re not just reading the Bible to read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. You are reading the Bible so that you can enter and re-enter into the story of Jesus. And to me, this is the best feature of the Daily Office lectionary. It’s that it helps us focus on Jesus particularly the order of the readings. I love the order, because you get the Old Testament first, so that’s what I first read, something in the Old Testament, then something from the Epistles. Something from the New Testament, not including Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, then you get a gospel reading. And I love that because the last thing I read From Scripture in the morning is something about Jesus or something from Jesus. And I think that the entirety of Anglican liturgy, I know I’ve just been spending all this time talking about the Daily Office Lectionary and and the Bible reading plan we get in Anglican liturgy. But I think the entirety of Anglican liturgy is beautiful. It it has a wholeness, a completeness to it. It has such beautiful structure and harmony, and it shines It’s why so many people are drawn to it. I have a number of friends that were formerly evangelical or Pentecostal that have joined Anglican churches Because there is something beautiful about the form and shape of Anglican worship and prayer. Those prayers keep us focused on the Trinity. Anglican prayers have this very well-known and famous ending, a Trinitarian ending. For example, here’s a prayer I prayed recently every day for a week or so. Grant, O Lord, that the course of this world may be peaceably governed by your providence. And that your church may joyfully serve you in confidence and serenity through Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. A lot of Anglican prayers end like that, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. I love the ending to those prayers. Not only are we acknowledging the Holy Trinity, but we’re acknowledging the kingdom of God. We’re acknowledging the kingliness of King Jesus. It’s beautiful And then I also love Anglican liturgy because it keeps us focused on Jesus. So I can say so much more. About Anglican liturgy. But that’s gonna be it for this episode. If you’ve been exploring Anglicanism, I would love to know about it. Reach out to me on social media and let me know what your experience of Anglicanism has been like. I’ll put a link to all of my social media accounts in the show notes, but reach out, I’d love to have a conversation about the beauty of Anglican liturgy. Well, that’s it. Thank you for joining me for this episode. Go in peace. And be kind.

This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.