Being a lover and somewhat wanna be student of liturgy, I have a few things I occasionally look through or use for private prayer etc. Amongst them are "Pray Without Ceasing, Celebrating Common Prayer, and A Manuel of Anglo-Catholic Devotions. Having been brought up originally Lutheran, I have a variety of Lutheran resources, which are probably a little more numerous than the Anglican stuff due to the unfortunate splintering of Lutherans along various lines here in North America.
I have an ELS hymnal/prayer book. I consider the ELS book to be the best of the Lutheran books and I have seen many of them.
The ELS one is nice. I've been checking out some of the differant Lutheran church's occasionally from differant Synods in my search for a new home Church. The ELCA has become just to progressive for me, and I had a problem when they signed pulpit exchange agreements with Presbyterians and Reformed, which have a differant view of the Eucherist than either the Lutheran or Anglican churchs. At any rate, I've found that some Churchs., both Lutheran and one ACNA are using hymns that sound like they're from the Hillsong tradition, which I'm not nuts on.
You mean the Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary of 1996? I haven’t seen it personally, but I might seek out a copy. I do have a copy of the current WELS hymnal and service book (used by some of their parishes; others use the indefatigable 1941 Lutheran Hymnal, which one can still buy from vendors like Cokesbury), and found it rather disappointing compared with most everything else except for the dreadful 2006 ELCA book (the old “Green Book”, the Lutheran Book of Worship, which was developed partially in tandem with the 1979 BCP, is much better, but the newer Lutheran Service Book, or the older 1959 Lutheran Hymnal and Service Book, which was the first edition I’ve found that implements the Eastern Orthodox Litany of Peace, albeit in traditional language and without the LSB’s silly directive for the pastor or deacon to sing “let us pray to the lord” with the congregation singing the response “lord have mercy” so the two instances of the word “Lord” overlap, something you never hear in an Orthodox parish, in part because even where the response is “Lord have mercy,” the music assumes a response of “Kyrie eleison” or “Gospodi pomului”, so it really is not all that impressive; that along with the retention of the phrase “and also with you” are my only major gripes with the Lutheran Service Book, and I suppose an individual LCMS congregation could override them). Again, if you both are referring to the Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary of 1996, I’d better get one. To me it seems miraculous the ELS survived and avoided merger with the ELCA. My godfather was a priest in the Augustana Synod, which was not so lucky. By the way, I have a copy of their final hymnal and service book, from the early 20th century, and rather like it; it has multiple settings of prayer services, which calls to mind one of my favourite Protestant liturgical books, the BCP-influenced Devotional Liturgies, composed by Reverend John Hunter, the pastor of the King’s Weigh House in the City of London in the 19th and early 20th century, which was converted to a Congregational parish when His Majesty no longer required a customs house in the Square Mile. I believe it was destroyed in one of the wars; today a beautiful Ukrainian Catholic church occupies the site. But I wish more people were aware of Rev. Hunter’s exquisite liturgical compositions; his BCP-inspired Holy Communion service I think is more moving, and better composed, than the service attributed to Archbishop Cranmer, which is saying a lot, given the exquisite nature of the Prayer of Humble Access and other parts of the classic Anglican communion service. Alas, if only Hunter’s Eucharist had been put in the 1979 BCP instead of Eucharistic Prayer A, B, C or D.
We might enjoy in another thread comparing our liturgical libraries. By the way, a must have for any enthusiast of the BCP is the Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer, which, while written from the dreary liberal-modernist perspective, contains a wealth of information (and alas, most useful recent books on the liturgy are modernistic, the exception being the very excellent works of Fr. Robert Taft SJ, memory eternal, whose books A Short History of the Byzantine Rite, and The Liturgy of the Hours (which is full of praise for my favorite parts of the BCP, Mattins and Evensong), are simply exquisite. The latter book correctly credits the Church of England for reviving the public celebration of the Divine Office as an integral part of parish life in Europe, where it had apprently already largely vanished due to parish priests, then as now, reading the Breviary privately, so one would, before the BCP, reliably find a conventual Divine Office service only in monasteries in Western Europe. This point also represents one of those superb intersections of traditional Anglicanism and the Eastern churches, which continue to maintain the Divine Office as a central part of parish life, even today (and most of the 20 or so hymnals and service books you need to follow Byzantine Rite services, or the five books required to follow the Coptic Rite, and so on for the Syriac Rites, and the Armenian, Ethiopian, et cetera, relate to the Divine Office, as the liturgy is relatively static in content by Western standards, especially when compared to Gallican liturgies such as the Mozarabic Rite).
I have that one! That's been my daily driver for the last few years . I did go ahead and order the deluxe version of the ACNA 2019 BCP for myself . (A liturgical library thread might be nice, indeed.)
Yes. Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary 1996. I like it so much I've obtained it twice. As for one's liturgical library, mine was largely wiped out a couple of years ago (hence why I had to get a second copy of the ELS book). We moved from TX back to VA and somewhere, the Navy's contracted moving company got stupid and put one of the crates of household goods on a boat to Ghana!
Most amusing. I used to work in Ghana, although I can assure you I did not obtain the kernel of my liturgical library from your former library.
I have ordered the 2019 BCP from the ACNA, i am very interested to see what it’s like. I use the 1662 BCP myself but have the Canadian BCP, US 1928 BCP, our proposed 1928 BCP and would like the Australian and NZ versions. Got to say I’m a big fan of Anglican liturgy.
I am going to order the ACNA, I just can't make up my mind whether to get the leather edition or not. So nice looking, but of course, more expensive.
I’ve bought the basic edition as I want it for my collection and don’t think I’ll be abandoning the 1662, I’ve too much love for.
The NZ book is available online in full. The ACNA liturgies are also online if you want a sneak peek of what your book will contain.
Many thanks, I’ve had a look at some of the liturgy online before buying it. I’ll have to look for the NZ.
Apparently A Prayer Book for Australia is the only major edition that is not online, but having seen bits and pieces of it, I don’t think we are missing all that much.
I'm going for the leatherbound edition; wasn't even a question in my mind. But then again, I'm a priest and my diocese uses this liturgy, so it could be "my book" for most of the rest of my life.