Founders Day 2020 - Rector's Rambling for 7/26/2020

Today we are celebrating Founders’ Day.  We chose the last weekend in July for the celebration because it is a good time to break up the long green-vestment season in the summer, and a nice excuse for an ice cream social.

St. John’s was founded on December 27, 1858, which is the Feast Day of St. John the Evangelist.  But two days after Christmas is a hard time to get people together for a parish celebration of our founding!

Today we are using the first American Book of Common Prayer, from 1789.  Before the American Revolution, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer from the Church of England was in use in those parishes that would become the Episcopal Church after our Independence.  For a while that book continued in use until we put together our own, with clergy crossing out the name of King George and praying for the leaders of our new self-government.

The 1789 Book of Common Prayer was based on the English 1662 BCP, with the Scottish Prayer Book’s Eucharistic Prayer.  The English Book has the prayer invoking the Holy Spirit over the gifts before the words of Jesus “this is my Body”, “this is my Blood”.  This follows the Western Christian (Roman Catholic) form.  The Scottish Church (and our Prayer Book) has it after our Lord’s words, like the Eastern Orthodox tradition.

The use of the Scottish Canon was in thanksgiving for their being willing to share with the new Church in America the apostolic succession to have our own bishops.  The English Church refused at first, but relented when they realized the Scottish were going to help us anyway.  And by the way, if you are a fan of the play Hamilton, it was that same Samuel Seabury in the play who later changed sides and became the first American bishop.

You will notice that although some of the printing/spelling has changed (only one year did I call us miferable finners), and there are a few changes in the ordering of the prayers, overall, the 1789 Book of Common Prayer, up to the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, contains prayer that is recognizably Anglican Christian.  And, by God’s grace, St. John’s has not deviated in the prayer and theology of the Church as the Episcopal Church received it from England, which received it from Palestine, were where the first generation of the Church received their teaching from Jesus and his apostles.