Religion: Prayer for the 20th Century

It is doubtful whether the Prayer Book will satisfy the Church during the second half of the century.” So spoke the Custodian of the Standard Book of Common Prayer, at San Francisco last week, where the Protestant Episcopal Church was beginning its 56th two-week General Convention. Before a mass meeting, the Very Rev John W. Suter, Dean of Washington Cathedral, urgently recommended revision of the American Prayer Book (an adaptation of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer), which has stood in its present form since 1928.

Dean Suter knew exactly what he wanted: a prayer book that would help people pray, and let the chips of esthetics and sentiment fall where they might. “The Prayer Book has been praised for its style through many generations,” he said, “but its supremacy in this respect should not lead us to be hypnotized into immobility . . . Archaisms, however full of charm for the initiated, should be deleted when they are neither beautiful, significant, nor helpful.

The second rubric in the service of Holy Baptism, for example, should say Boy and Girl, not Male-child and Female.” Dean Suter hopes that the American Prayer Book will soon “take on a new chapter, as an ancient house adds a new wing.” He would furnish the new wing with prayers on such subjects as those by the late Rev. Samuel McComb: “For a Person Who Cannot Pray,” “For a Person Suffering from Insomnia,” “For a Person Haunted with the Fear of Committing Suicide,” “For the Prosperous.”

For ordinary laymen, Dean Suter feels that the mellifluous lines of many of the Prayer Book’s collects are more air than prayer. “The Prayer Book,” he said, “should not be ashamed to mention things by name … It is charming and poetic to speak of ‘travelers by land or sea,’ but it might be better to refer frankly to automobile accidents and the horrifying toll of deaths . . . which occur on our highways on weekends and holidays . . .

“Somewhere in the middle of some prayer there should be a clause, ‘that he may never offer or accept a bribe.’ Words like these have more sting than ‘that our public servants may be incorruptible.’ “