Whether or not this is a book you might pick up and read likely depends a good deal on how interested you are in the Book of Common Prayer. And your interest in the Book of Common Prayer might depend on how Anglican you are. The Book of Common Prayer outlines services, prayers, and Bible readings for the entire Church year, a liturgy that is still followed closely in many churches around the world. It’s a small book but it contains a lot. Even if you are a regularly attendee in an Anglican Church, you might be intimidated by this little book and how to use it in your personal life.
Here Julie Lane-Gay delves into many of the elements of the Book of Common Prayer – Compline, the Psalms, the Catechism, to name a few – and why they are still so crucial and relevant for Christians today. The Book of Common Prayer is very much based on the Bible and features scripture heavily. While a common complaint may be its repetitious nature, Lane-Gay argues that this is also a strength, as it is a book that brings us into scripture and to prayer even when we don’t feel like it or know where to start.
I grew up attending an Anglican Church but I didn’t grow up in an Anglican family. Which means I had a Sunday morning familiarity with the Book of Common Prayer but no experience of it in personal life. As a teenager, I often found Anglican service repetitive and I was drawn to the more dramatic, emotion-filled Evangelical services. I haven’t been regular attendee of an Anglican Church since I left Vancouver but during the Covid years when Peter and I made the choice to leave our current church, I found myself returning to the liturgical traditions of the Book of Common Prayer. (This is, I’ll admit, somewhat due to my brother’s influence. He is an Anglican minister now and he and his wife gave me this book as a gift. Lane-Gay attends the church we grew up going to and although I knew her only by name, my brother’s family knows her much better.)
I have come to appreciate the routines and rhythms that the Book of Common Prayers offers. Using the scripture readings to read through the Bible, following the Church calendar to celebrate and recognize the seasons of joy and sorrow, finding a collect to pray for any occasion. While attending an Anglican Church doesn’t fit for us in the season of our current lives, I do deeply miss its traditions. If I could choose any denomination to be in, this would probably be the one. Reading The Riches of Your Grace has inspired me to dig back into my own copy of the Book of Common Prayer.
Karissa Reads Books 
Interestingly, the emphasis on routine and repetition sounds very, very Catholic to me.
In many ways, the Anglican Church is only one or two steps removed from Catholicism. I bet you’d find some familiar things in an Anglican service.
This sounds really interesting! Other than a couple of years during my childhood, I’ve never been part of an Anglican church, but I do really like some of their liturgical traditions. I agree with the point about the value of repetition. Part of the reason I am not an Anglican is that to be an Anglican in England means belonging to the Church of England, when at heart I am a disestablishmentarian. But if I lived elsewhere in the world, I would probably be an Anglican.
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