[Episcopal News Service] In St. Luke’s Chapel at the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, Books of Common Prayer slump in chair pockets, their spinal integrity lost to decades of common worship. Every day, seminarians pray liturgies that connect them to Anglican and Episcopal tradition.
The Book of Common Prayer is the primary liturgical resource of The Episcopal Church. It was last revised in 1979, but supplements and trial liturgies have since been authorized. The prayer book’s preservation of church history, communication of Episcopal theology, and evolution as a symbol of unity draws Gen Z seekers interested in an inclusive Christian community grounded in tradition.
Joyce Cheng, a 23-year-old student at Harvard Divinity School, wandered into Grace Church in New York when she was in college at New York University. It was right by her dorm building.
“I remember being astounded by all the architecture and stained-glass windows, and then seeing the choir and the clergy process down the aisle,” Cheng said. “I was like, oh, there’s this woman here who has blue hair, and she’s a priest.”
Cheng grew up around evangelical Christians in Saratoga County, New York, and found the inclusion of women and LGBTQ+ people in leadership a primary reason for joining The Episcopal Church. The balance between inclusivity and the embrace of Anglican tradition through liturgy is what she said she believes keeps young people coming back each Sunday.
Collective identity is centered around the prayer book; Episcopalians pray the same words that have been prayed for centuries, she said.
“Tradition is important to people,” Cheng said. “The idea of believing in God and something bigger than yourself. Feeling like we’re not a singular point in the world.”
To encourage discussion on how the prayer book stewards tradition in modern contexts, Berkeley Dean Andrew McGowan invited James Turrell, dean of the School of Theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, and Tyler Sampson, a fellow at the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale, to speak to students earlier this month.
The April 20 talk was part of Berkeley’s colloquium series, wherein scholars and ministers from across the Anglican Communion share their expertise on a variety of topics.
Both Turrell and Sampson are members of The Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music.
The SCLM is made up of lay and ordained volunteers who manage the resources for common worship. Most of their time, the speakers said, is spent fulfilling work delegated to them by General Convention as it pertains to liturgical policy, revisions or the creation of new texts. They also publish trial-use liturgies and solicit feedback from the wider church.
Just after morning prayer, Turrell and Sampson discussed “the future” of the Book of Common Prayer. For over two hours, students peppered them with questions ranging from locating out-of-print hymnals to the theology of expansive language in Eucharistic prayers.
The future of the prayer book, Sampson said, is to respond to the worship needs of the entire church body. Specifically, he mentioned the need to expand Spanish translations to encompass the diversity of Spanish-speaking Episcopal communities. He and Turrell also mentioned the editing of hymn texts to remove racist language and said that revised or newly created inclusive texts become available online as they are produced.
The need for liturgies to evolve even as they maintain Episcopal tradition speaks to an outward-facing perspective that Turrell said the SCLM must have. He said liturgy happens, by nature, on the threshold of the church.
“So, if the question is, how do we create resources that draw people from outside the room into the room, that’s really about evangelism and mission,” he said.
Despite recent headlines suggesting young people are flocking to church, particularly young men turning toward the Roman Catholic Church, overall, church attendance among Gen Z, roughly defined as those born from 1997 to 2012, is declining. However, for those who become or remain Christian, Cheng said liturgical traditions, such as those of the Anglican Church, may appeal to youth who desire structure in a chaotic world. During her time in an Episcopal undergraduate campus ministry, she witnessed at least one student get baptized per year.
“It’s not completely unimaginable to me that there are people who are seeking this balance of tradition and liturgy and whatnot but feel excluded from more socially, theologically conservative spaces, and therefore end up in The Episcopal Church,” she said.
Stories like Cheng’s do, however, point toward liturgy as a key factor for Gen Zers who choose to stay in The Episcopal Church as their peers leave Christianity.
Sierra Chadwick is a 24-year-old who was raised and remains a Seventh-day Adventist and humorously identifies as a “Seventh-day Anglican.” Before beginning graduate school, she worked at Isle Royale National Park on a remote island in Lake Superior as an archaeological technician and was one of two known Christians attending worship at the chapel; the other was the Episcopal seminarian interning as a park chaplain. She said she fell in love with the Daily Office during that time, having previously explored Presbyterian and Episcopal Easter services.
Now, a student in the Yale School of the Environment, Chadwick frequents Berkeley services.
“I grew up in a very personal-relationship-with-Jesus type of setting,” Chadwick said. “I was having, and still have, personal worship every morning. I read a heck of a lot of Scripture.’”
The Book of Common Prayer comes in when she is tired, she said. Praying words that are already written and have become familiar relieves the pressure of structuring her own devotions every day. Yet, Chadwick said she is concerned that relying on the prayer book alone could damage her relationship with God.
On the other hand, Sam McDaniel, a 27-year-old assistant organist and choirmaster in the Diocese of West Tennessee, said he appreciates how Episcopal liturgy is less individualistic than his Baptist upbringing. He names the prayer book as a central aspect of why he became an Episcopalian in his early 20s.
“Where else would I go that’s going to have the same respect for tradition and that sort of thing while still also being open to listening to how God is speaking today to us?” McDaniel said.
– Logan Crews is a freelance reporter and seminarian at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale.