[Episcopal News Service] A quick Episcopal liturgical quiz: How many rites for Holy Eucharist are contained in the Book of Common Prayer?
If you said four, you’d be wrong – the prayer book offers the traditional Rite One, the contemporary Rite Two and a third liturgical order available for special circumstances – but a liturgy known as “Rite 4” does exist, if only at one congregation, St. Stephen & the Incarnation Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C.
Rite 4 is the name given by James Frazer, a parishioner at St. Stephen & the Incarnation, to a liturgical project he took on a few years ago. Frazer’s objective was to write a new liturgy for Holy Eucharist that blends some of the poetry he loves from Rite One with the more conversational phrasings of Rite Two. “I was trying to do something in the middle of that,” Frazer told Episcopal News Service in a phone interview.
“At first I called it Rite 1.5,” Frazer said. “It’s basically a personal obsession.” He also incorporated a wider range of descriptions of the divine, generally avoiding gendered language. With permission from Washington Bishop Mariann Budde, St. Stephen & the Incarnation tested out Frazer’s new liturgy in its Sunday services over the summer.
Although Frazer’s liturgy is still a long way from ever making it into the Book of Common Prayer, The Episcopal Church in recent years has encouraged liturgical experimentation by local congregations like St. Stephen & the Incarnation as part of the ongoing churchwide process of prayer book revision. Some of those experimental liturgies never make it to worship services beyond their originating congregations. Others, if there is wider interest, might be proposed for review and revision by the church’s Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music.
Ultimately, it is up to General Convention, the church’s primary governing body, to decide which liturgies will be accepted for churchwide use, whether as part of the prayer book or as an addition to the growing list of alternative and trial-use liturgies. The full list can be found at episcopalcommonprayer.org.
If a liturgy has not yet been authorized by General Convention, Episcopalians interested in trying it out must follow an essential rule: Ask the bishop first.
That rule underscores the importance of the church’s central liturgical text, the Book of Common Prayer. “It is the common worship experience for all Episcopal churches,” the Rev. Cynthia Black, chair of the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, told ENS. “When it is not used at the primary service on Sunday, it absolutely has to have the permission of the bishop.”
Black was not familiar with Frazer’s so-called “Rite 4” liturgy, but she said the church generally encourages such experimentation as long as it is locally authorized by the bishop and follows General Convention resolutions encouraging the development of new liturgical texts. She pointed to resolutions adopted in 2018 and 2022 that established “Principles to Guide the Development of Liturgical Texts.” General Convention also approved in 2022 “Guidelines for Expansive and Inclusive Language.”
“The way that the church considers new liturgies is for local communities to develop them within their context, and then at some point in time to commend them to the General Convention,” Black said. “At that point, it becomes the work of the General Convention and the SCLM and the House of Bishops and theology committees.”
Not all of those new liturgies can clear the procedural hurdles to be offered for churchwide use. Even those that receive authorization typically end up looking different from how they were first proposed, after undergoing rounds of scrutiny and further revision by churchwide bodies, Black said.
That said, the process originates with individuals and congregations interested in developing liturgies that speak to their local contexts. “Any congregation theoretically can do that,” Black said.
Frazer, a New Jersey native who grew up in the Presbyterian Church, said he was drawn to The Episcopal Church later in life partly by the beauty of its liturgy. He initially attended Rite One worship services at another church in Washington and later joined St. Stephen & the Incarnation, where he became familiar with the congregation’s Rite Two services.
After retiring from a career as a banking regulatory lawyer in 2019, he was inspired to take up liturgical revision after reading an article about General Convention’s call for local experimentation. He’s not a poet or a writer, he said, but “I can read closely and edit things.”
After several years of reading and editing the Book of Common Prayer’s liturgies for Holy Eucharist, he had produced a variation that blended the two primary rites while adding new language. He developed a modular structure with both a base text and contemporary text, so a liturgist can “mix and match” for the worship service.
“I realized you can’t really come up with a perfect comprise between contemporary language and traditional language because everybody draws the line at a different place,” Frazer said.
He presented the text to the Rev. Yoimel Gonzalez Hernandez, St. Stephen & the Incarnation’s rector, asking if the congregation would be open to trying the liturgy in its Sunday services. After offering feedback and reviewing further revisions, Hernandez sought authorization from the bishop to use the liturgy “for a season,” from Pentecost to the end of the summer.
“Just to see how the text passes the proof of being a liturgical text and to try it with the congregation,” Hernandez told ENS. “In general, the response has been good.”
Frazer also posted the liturgy online for others to review. A news release in June drove quite a bit of traffic to that website, Frazer said, though he has only received a few direct inquiries from Episcopalians interested in learning more about his “Rite 4” liturgy.
Black told ENS she had some concerns about calling the liturgy “Rite 4,” because it might create the false assumption that the liturgy has already been adopted into the Book of Common Prayer.
“Obviously, it hasn’t,” she said, but she welcomed the efforts of congregations and individuals to develop liturgies that respond to the needs of their communities, regardless of whether those liturgies ever rise to the level of prayer book authorization.
“It’s why community is so important,” Black said. “A community developing a liturgy that’s consistent with who they are is so important.”
And as always, don’t forget to ask the bishop.
– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.