Alternative Service Book - The Book

The Book

The book was very variable in the degree to which it departed from the Book of Common Prayer. The Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer provided alternative canticles and all were now ecumenically approved translations, the so-called ICET texts (English Language Liturgical Consultation), but the form was conservative. In addition, a shorter order was provided for weekdays.

There were two forms of the Holy Communion, Rite A and Rite B. Rite A allowed for the Confession to come at the beginning of the service, following Roman practice; it gave space for extempore prayers in the intercessions and introduced the rubric 'or other suitable words' which were to become normative in modern liturgical books, allowing as it did, a departure from the form set down. The prayer of Humble Access was removed to a place before the Offertory - styled 'the Preparation of the Gifts' and the Four Action Shape was on its way. There were four Eucharistic prayers, a new departure, one of which derived from Cranmer's form, two from the earlier experiments and one from work done between two scholars, one Evangelical and one Catholic, during the progress of the debates; it owed much to a prayer from the Ordo Missae of the Roman Catholic Church. All were heavily dependent on scholarly acceptance of the primacy of a third century work called the Apostolic Tradition written by the Egyptian bishop Hippolytus, and which had been published only in 1900. (This work was hugely influential on the Liturgical Movement, both Roman Catholic and Anglican.) Rite B retained a version of Elizabethan language and prayers from the BCP such as the Prayer for the Church Militant (for which an alternative was allowed), and the first Eucharistic Prayer. The word 'Offertory' (though without indication of any actions) survived after the Peace. The Prayer of Oblation, a bowdlerised version of the first Prayer of Thanksgiving in the BCP, was added to it to conform to the modern pattern. (That prayer had its origin in the 1549 Prayer book, had been moved in 1552 to a position after the Communion, and was now moved back without the words, held to be offensive for the reasons set out above, 'we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice', which was the main point of the prayer). However, Rite A (but not, oddly, Rite B) was permitted to be said following the order of the Book of Common Prayer, a concession to those who valued Cranmer's insertion of the Administration of the Communion within the Canon.

A new rite for Thanksgiving after Adoption preceded the revision of the Old 'Churching of Women' service. Baptism could now be incorporated into the main Sunday service, the result of other influences intended to bring it back into the mainstream of worship. The Baptism of those able to answer for themselves was much more prominent, a result of the influence of those who questioned infant baptism in a post-Christian society. The questions, however, now addressed to the godparents or the person baptised directly, no longer required the renunciation of the devil or 'the vain pomp and glory of the world' or 'the carnal desires of the flesh' but instead a turning to Christ, a repentance from sin and a renunciation of evil. Likewise the ancient Apostles Creed was replaced by three tritheistic questions, which were criticised (by, among others, John Habgood, sometime Archbishop of York) as being unknown to the credal discussions of the Church, Eastern or Western, modern or ancient.

The Marriage rite followed the 1928 book in no longer suggesting that men might be 'like brute beasts that have no understanding' and allowed readings and a sermon (which the BCP had not). It added words for the giving and receiving of the ring and made provision for a communion.

The Funeral service officially allowed the coffin into Church, though Church funerals - or in a crematorium - had not ceased with Cranmer. It no longer excluded suicides or the unbaptised: the rubric was simply omitted. The deceased was not to be addressed directly, as had been the case before the Reformation, but a form of committal was now included: the deceased was 'entrust to ' merciful keeping'.

A two year cycle of Readings was provided, to which thematic titles were given. These proved not very hardwearing - they did not always adequately reflect the readings and were considered too narrow in their scope; It was not long before priests, if not parishioners, noticed that in spite of the huge increase in the amount of Scripture heard - there were now three readings, Old Testament, New Testament and Gospel, much was missed out. When the reading aloud of the Bible at home and Scripture as the basis of Religious Education were the rule, this may not have mattered; people's general knowledge of the Bible was broader. Now that both had disappeared it did. Moreover, the readings jumped from book to book week by week following the themes. It was not therefore possible to follow the thought of a particular biblical writer, something that was noted by the Liturgical Commission and was corrected in the ASB's successor, Common Worship. The book was also the high point of Tractarian influence: apart from retaining something of the Four Action Shape of Gregory Dix, there were set lections for the Blessing of An Abbot, for Those Taking Vows and for Vocations to Religious Communities. These were to disappear in 2000. The same applied to the Saints who would no longer be distinguished as to whether they were Martyrs, Teachers or Confessors. There was a good range of Prefaces to the Eucharistic Prayers, including one for St. Michael and All Angels (for which festival there is now no such provision).

The Sunday Lectionary originated in the work of the Joint Liturgical Group, an English ecumenical grouping. The Weekday lectionary which, for the first time provided Eucharistic Readings for every day of the year, originated with the Weekday Missal of the Roman Catholic Church.