The Bible Rearranged—How the Rites of the 1979 American Book of Common Prayer Use the Bible as a Source

A common trope in Anglicanism is to refer to the Book of Common Prayer as “the Bible rearranged for public service.” This paper unpacks the complex and varied ways in which the 1979 American Book of Common Prayer uses and appropriates Scripture in the text of its liturgies. Relying on an earlier essay in Studia Liturgica where the author proposed a taxonomy to describe the various ways that any liturgical rite can use Scripture as a source within the text of the rite, he applies that taxonomy to the English and American Prayer Book tradition more generally and the current American BCP more specifically. He demonstrates not only that this taxonomy is just as applicable to modern liturgical texts as it is to ancient ones, but also that it provides a means to describe accurately the range of ways in which this particular BCP can rightly be said to be scriptural.