Episcopal Press and News
SPBCP Membership Exceeds 17,000
Diocesan Press Service. April 30, 1973 [73111]
Isabel Baumgartner
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- "Two years ago, there were just twelve of us, gathered in Bill Ralston's living room in Sewanee. Now we number more than 17,000 people from every domestic Episcopal diocese, Alaska, Hawaii, and some overseas dioceses too. "
Professor Walter Sullivan of Nashville, Tennessee, feels very encouraged by the spectacular growth of the Society for the Preservation of the Book of Common Prayer, which he heads.
"When we began," Sullivan says, "we thought our move might prove to be little more than a last gasp. Now, we're not so sure that's so. "
In the spring of 1971 the Society founders rented a post office box and mailed a statement of purpose and membership invitation to as wide a list of persons as they could draw up. Periodic newsletters, tracts of their own composition, and reprints of views of like-minded Episcopalians followed.
In last winter 1972, Society membership passed the 2,000 mark; by that spring, as one enthusiast recruited another to the cause, it reached 6,000.
This month five full-time and two part-time employees staff the SPBCP's five- room Nashville office, handling phone calls and the letters, cards, and checks that arrive in increasing numbers at Box 12206, Acklen Station, Nashville 37212. Volunteers pitch in every two or three weeks to help prepare a new outgoing mailing for the post office.
The Society's address list today is more than 13,000 strong -- counting the Mr. and Mrs. names, an estimated 17,500 members. "We've gained a thousand people in the last three weeks," Sullivan says, "mainly from direct mailings to parish lists sent us by our members." In some places where support is strong, diocesan and local SPBCP chapters have burgeoned.
"We have no problems financially," Sullivan says, "despite the fact that our largest single donation has been $2,500. We've had several checks of $1,000 to $2,000 and a tremendous number of $5 to $10 donations. Some members send a small check every month. Several people of means stand ready to add significantly to our treasury, should the need arise, but it hasn't yet. "
SPBCP literature includes as preface or postscript Richard Hooker's words: " Though for no other cause, yet for this; that posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream. "
Its letter to prospective members reads: "Our design is not to prevent any change whatsoever in the 1928 rite but to defeat the Trial Liturgies now before us in 'the green book,' because we consider them to be poorly written, ill-conceived, and in some particulars contrary to the Faith . . Our primary aim is to represent those churchmen who feel that the proposed revisions, if adopted, would be disastrous for the life of the Church, and to make that representation as forcefully as we can to the Bishops severally and also to both Houses at the 1973 General Convention. "
SPBCP mail stresses the importance of working within the system. It has alerted its members to places (Maine, Western Michigan) where diocesans' directives regarding Trial Use amount, in the Society's view, to "outlawing the Book of Common Prayer," an action they deem clearly unconstitutional. The Society issued a bulletin captioned "Flash! The Mission's Not Impossible! " when a member sent word that "your publicity and that of the American Church Union has brought changes to the Diocese of Maine! Effective the beginning of October (1972) the Bishop has ALLOWED our priests to use the Book of Common Prayer every Tuesday morning and two Sundays during any month. "
Sullivan says, "Though we're not against Prayer Book revision per se, we do want to save the Church from hasty and injudicious revision. " One SPBCP Prayer Book Paper puts it this way: "Deadwood is found in the Church; dead spots exist in the Book of Common Prayer. Nothing forbids the pious desire to change some words, rewrite a prayer here and there, re-arrange a sequence of liturgical actions, for all of which the Prayer Book might be even better than it is. It appears, though, that the Services for Trial Use respond not so much to pin-pointed needs to remove this or that weak spot as to a desire for sweeping change considered as good in itself. "
The first dozen champions of the SPBCP cause were priests, college professors, and students. Some opponents have termed them "intellectual and literary snobs." A Society newsletter says, "Our objections are not raised on aesthetic or literary grounds alone. Words give substance to thought. When words are changed, meanings are damaged, and we feel that these changes of word and meaning must be made with the greatest care."
President Sullivan and fellow founders Dr. Harold L. Weatherby, John V. Glass, Jr., and Dr. John M. Aden are members of Vanderbilt University's English faculty. Sullivan teaches modern American and British fiction and fiction writing; he's published two novels, a collection of short stories, and a 1972 volume of literary criticism, and is now taping a series of broadcasts for the Southern Education Association's television network. Dr. Aden has authored a book on Dryden and one on Pope; Dr. Weatherby, a book on Cardinal Newman.
Among priest founders are the Rev. James Law, rector of St. Martin's, Chattanooga, and University of the South professors the Rev. Messrs. William Ralston and J. Howard Rhys. The distinguished novelist and editor of The Sewanee Review, Andrew Lytle, also shared in the founding.
Four Bishops have topped the Society's list of 15 sponsors: Robert E. Gribbin, retired Bishop of Western North Carolina; Wallace E. Conkling, retired Bishop of Chicago; the recently deceased John Pinckney of Upper South Carolina; and William R. Moody, retired Bishop of Lexington. "Several other incumbent Bishops, " says a SPBCP news release, "are among our most ardent supporters but, for reasons of diplomacy, prefer to remain behind the scenes for the present."
Other widely known sponsors: Professor Cleanth Brooks of Yale, Professor Gerhart Niemeyer of Notre Dame, and the Rev. Frederick M. Morris, for some 20 years rector of New York City's St. Thomas' parish; Washington, D.C., journalist Dorothy Mills Parker; writer/lecturer Gert Behanna.
Sullivan can't estimate how much time Nashville officers give to "this continual preoccupation." They work together at the office "each Wednesday from 5:30 until 10 or 11 o'clock at night, setting policy and distributing jobs for the coming week. We carry cassette recorders and dictate correspondence whenever we can. Every Sunday afternoon and evening, at my house, is given to this and to preparing new mailings."
The Society's Prayer Book Papers (Number 12 is due soon) bear such titles as Traditional or Contemporary? -- Forbidden Prayers -- and Holy Communion: Trial I or Error?
Sample quote: "What does the First Service do for Morning Prayer? Well, it trades its majesty for a tissue of fuss and dullness. But more than that, it diminishes, in behalf of an irrelevant and presumptuous humanism, the importance of God in the act and conscience of Christian worship."
And from another: "It will not save the situation to give the old words to those who prefer them and give the contemporary to those who like it. Such a course would simply renew the old partisan rancour in a new idiom. Shall we divide layman against layman, congregation against congregation, priest against priest, diocese against diocese? What shall I do when I go to church to join in the Eucharist but find myself so infuriated by the casual pattern of the language that I cannot pray ? "
The threat of major disruption within the Church, should the present Services for Trial Use be adopted, gives SPBCP leaders grave concern.
"Our incoming mail was amiable, at first," Sullivan recalls. "When we used such a mild word as 'opposition,' people wrote urging us to find some nicer term. Then last fall, following the House of Bishops' vote on the ordination of women, the whole tone of our mail seemed to change. People began writing ugly letters, apparently from desperation -- 'If this is the kind of church they want, they can have it; we'll leave, and take the church with us. '"
The Society takes no position on any issue except Prayer Book revision, Sullivan made clear. "We intend to stick to our single effort, and forward this one cause as best we can at Louisville and beyond. The crucial General Convention may be the one after that.
"We've been in correspondence with Dr. Massey Shepherd and Father Leo Malania, and they respond to our letters very graciously. But neither of these men, nor anyone else, for that matter, has answered the really crucial questions. If present proposals of the Standing Liturgical Commission do prevail, what kind of price are we willing to pay? How much agony are we willing to put the Church through? Finally, General Convention must answer these questions. "
In the Society's view, "If the Trial Rites now being agitated by the few are permitted to displace or compete with the Book of Common Prayer, the Church cannot survive the shock of such schism as is almost certain to follow. "
![[thumbnail: Leaders of the Society fo...]](/ENS/photographs/thumbnails/73111_thb.jpg) |
