Episode #152

The Beauty of the Book of Common Prayer

Matthew Barrett · July 31, 2025

Show Notes

To this day, the Book of Common Prayer has been unsurpassed. For five hundred years now its biblical beauty has penetrated the hearts of Christians. Some say the prayer book is simply scripture rearranged for worship. For this reason, the Anglican way of worship is immersed in scripture. But there’s something else: while so many evangelical churches approach worship as a performance, the prayerbook summons each soul to participation. Rather than the man on the stage with a band, the prayerbook provides a liturgy in which the whole church participates in the story of the Bible, even partaking of the body and blood of Christ. In this long overdue two part series, Matthew Barrett sits down with Drew Keane, author of the the new book, How to Use the Book of Common Prayer (IVP). With no little insight to the prayerbook’s history, Drew explains why the prayerbook has been so transformative for the church.

You can now listen to part 2 of the Credo podcast on the prayerbook’s sacramental theology.

Drew N. Keane is a lecturer in the Department of Writing and Linguistics at Georgia Southern University. From 2012 to 2018, he served on the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music for the Episcopal Church. Among the volumes he contributed to was Lesser Feasts and Fasts.

Matthew Barrett is the editor-in-chief of Credo Magazine, director of the Center for Classical Theology, and host of the Credo podcast. He is Research Professor of Theology at Trinity Anglican Seminary, and the author of several books, including Simply Trinity, which won the Christianity Today Book of the Year Award in Theology/Ethics. His new book is called The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. He is currently writing a Systematic Theology with Baker Academic.

Image credit: Anglican Compass