Concerned to give liturgical expression to the gender-inclusiveness of Christian faith, some priests now alter or amend various parts of the services in the Book of Common Prayer. Eucharistic Prayer C of Rite II is one place where such unauthorized changes are frequently made. After the address to "Lord God of our Fathers, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," many now add "God of our Mothers, God of Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel." However well intentioned, this practice should be discouraged, and those who find it necessary or appropriate so to amend the prayer should be urged to discontinue the practice, or to avoid using Prayer C altogether.

One great value of the present BCP is its provision of variety, options, and alternatives appropriate to the several seasons of the church year, or to the style and sensibility of priest and parish. One of these options is not, however, to change, alter, or amend the liturgies without authorization by General Convention. Every congregation rightly expects its priest to conform its worship to the rubrics of the BCP, or to those alternatives that may be authorized from time to time by the ordinary or by General Convention.

That having been said, however, we do well to recognize the important dynamic of this and other similar changes which some are making. Amendments of this sort witness to the dialectical relationship of faith and worship, of theology and liturgy. Liturgical modifications lead over time to doctrinal change, and a shift in theological emphasis or a deepening of doctrinal understanding might then eventually find expression in liturgical change. For example:

1. The rubrics of the 1928 BCP specify that the Prayer of Humble Access is to be said by the priest: "Then shall the Priest ... say, in the name of all those who shall receive the Communion, this Prayer..." During the latter years of its use, many priests invited the congregation to join audibly in that prayer. That informal modification has been regularized in the 1979 BCP order for Rite I: "The following prayer may be said. The People may join in saying this prayer."

2. The restoration of the plural "We believe" to the Nicene Creed underscores the same communal sense of worship.

3. In a similar way, but in more ancient times, prayers with clear scriptural warrant to God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit led eventually to the formalization of the doctrine of the Trinity, which in turn led to more developed trinitarian language in the liturgy.

4. Recall the difficulty many colonial clergy faced at the time of the American Revolution, when there was pressure to drop the prayer for the king.

5. Imagine the difficulty some of us might face were a new prayer book to remove the filioque from the Nicene Creed. We should, consequently, have no difficulty in acknowledging the reciprocal relation in which doctrine and liturgy stand. Those who change Prayer C in this way could be regarded as contributing to the process for change which the next prayer book could incorporate, thus giving sanction to this presently unauthorized deviation from the 1979 prayer book.

The next prayer book undoubtedly will include revisions to give more explicit expression of the gender-inclusiveness of Christian faith. It would be a mistake, however, to incorporate the change in Prayer C which some are now introducing.

This judgment is based on the recognition that the inclusion of Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel in Prayer C reinforces the patriarchal and heterosexist weight of the Old Testament, while appearing on the surface to be doing just the opposite. Although naming some women where none has been named before may be a small gain, these three women are named primarily because of their relation to their husbands. And given the polygamous character of ancient Hebrew culture, they are, except presumably in the case of Rachel, but one of their husbands' several wives. What is to be said of Hagar, Keturah, of Leah, Bilhah and Zilpah? While Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel played important supporting roles in the careers of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and occasionally acted on their own initiative in important, although not unambiguous ways, none of them has an identity in the biblical narratives apart from their relationship to a significant male. Thus their inclusion here supports the very patriarchal ethos which those who add them to Prayer C seek to mollify. Consequently, adding matriarchs to the listing of patriarchs is of little help in the project of proclaiming a more inclusive picture of the community of faith and its biblical foundation.

Prayer C, as it now stands, however, functions in quite different ways. It links Jesus to his ancient forebears, thus making a genealogical statement. It also announces that the God of the New Covenant is identical with the God of the Old Covenant. One cannot gainsay the importance of these considerations, and it is unlikely that those who are now amending Prayer C dissent from these claims. Including the matriarchs in Prayer C does not significantly enhance the ability of the prayer to fulfill these tasks, except, perhaps by giving a fuller, less patriarchal genealogical picture.

If, however, the motive of those who are amending Prayer C is to highlight symbolically the gender-inclusiveness of the community of faith that is true to the dynamic of the developing biblical narrative, then they might well turn to other names. For there are women in the Old Testament who provide more effective models of faith than these wives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

It is widely recognized that the patriarchal and heterosexist ethos of ancient Palestine and its surrounding societies heavily influenced the writing, redaction and transmission of the texts eventually included in the canon. It is not so widely recognized, however, that these same texts also include voices that are critical of these cultural presuppositions.

One of the ways in which these different voices can be heard is by attending to those narratives in which strong, courageous women act decisively on behalf of the community. Naming some of them in Prayer C could help to affirm a more egalitarian, less patriarchal vision:

Think of Miriam, who was the first to sing of God's glorious triumph at the Sea of Reeds.

Think of Deborah, who roused the men to lift the heavy hand of the oppressor.

Think of Esther, who risked her life to save her people from destruction.

Think of Ruth, who ventured into a new future with the most radical trust of all.

None of these women is a matriarch in the traditional sense, but they are mothers and models of faith nonetheless. Their inclusion in Prayer C would upset its functional symmetry, but it would demonstrate in a small way that women as well as men are God's agents in the on going drama of redemption. Their inclusion would further illustrate the biblical picture of God that informs the church's liturgy, a God who is not witnessed to in a generic sense of the divine, but who is known in relationships to quite particular persons, both women and men. o

The Rev. Donald L. Berry is a retired priest who resides in Hamilton, N.Y.