Grouping Information

Book Cover Information

Hoopla Extract Information

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    [year] => 2013
    [artist] => Alan Jacobs
    [fiction] => 
    [coverImageUrl] => https://cover.hoopladigital.com/pup_9781400848027_270.jpeg
    [titleId] => 13281848
    [isbn] => 9781400848027
    [abridged] => 
    [language] => ENGLISH
    [profanity] => 
    [title] => The Book of Common Prayer
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    [pages] => 256
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    [synopsis] => Alan Jacobs is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Honors Program at Baylor University. He is the author of several books, including The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (Oxford) and Original Sin: A Cultural History (HarperOne), and he has edited W. H. Auden's long poems For the Time Being and The Age of Anxiety (both Princeton). 
	How The Book of Common Prayer became one of the most influential works in the English language

While many of us are familiar with such famous words as, "Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here. . ." or "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," we may not know that they originated with The Book of Common Prayer, which first appeared in 1549. Like the words of the King James Bible and Shakespeare, the language of this prayer book has saturated English culture and letters. Here Alan Jacobs tells its story. Jacobs shows how The Book of Common Prayer--from its beginnings as a means of social and political control in the England of Henry VIII to its worldwide presence today--became a venerable work whose cadences express the heart of religious life for many.

The book's chief maker, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, created it as the authoritative manual of Christian worship throughout England. But as Jacobs recounts, the book has had a variable and dramatic career in the complicated history of English church politics, and has been the focus of celebrations, protests, and even jail terms. As time passed, new forms of the book were made to suit the many English-speaking nations: first in Scotland, then in the new United States, and eventually wherever the British Empire extended its arm. Over time, Cranmer's book was adapted for different preferences and purposes. Jacobs vividly demonstrates how one book became many--and how it has shaped the devotional lives of men and women across the globe. "Mr. Jacobs has an obvious affinity for the prayer book, and doesn't seem to care much for recent attempts to 'modernize' worship. But his account is bereft of sentimental regret, and he is aware of the difficulties intrinsic to restricting religious expression to a set of prescribed texts. If only every archbishop had been so wise."---Barton Swaim, Wall Street Journal "[Readers] watch as the majesty of Cranmer's prose wins over generations of worshippers, spiritually nourished by its regal cadences and fiercely resistant to those who would revise it. Indeed, the repeated attempts to revise the Book--some successful--occasion tense drama, succinctly recounted here. Likewise chronicled are the international conflicts occasioned as the Book metamorphoses as the global empire Britain builds--then shrinks. This fascinating history, a strong entry in the Lives of Great Religious Books series, exposes the surprisingly taut life of a church-pew volume."---Bryce Christensen, Booklist "Alan Jacobs offers a handy introduction to the cultural and social effects that the presence and promotion of this book provided for centuries of English-speaking worshipers."---John L. Murphy, New York Journal of Books "[A] gem. With his usual elegance and wit, Jacobs describes Cranmer's political and religious aims, follows debates over the BCP between traditionalists who thought it too Protestant and Puritans who thought it too Catholic, and along the way explains the literary and liturgical qualities of the prayer book."---Peter J. Leithart, First Things "A fascinating, fast-paced account of the 464 years of 'life' that the Book of Common Prayer has both enjoyed and suffered. . . . General readers will enjoy the peregrinations of the Book of Common Prayer itself and will profit from Jacobs's cultural and religious insights and commentary. Anglophiles and students of ritual, literature, and religion will also gain appreciation of the paradoxical nature of human language and actions."---Carolyn Craft, Library Journal "Alan Jacobs' well-written book shows how embedded in history and everyday life the prayer bo
    [url] => https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/13281848
    [pa] => 
    [series] => Lives of Great Religious Books
    [subtitle] => A Biography
    [publisher] => Princeton University Press
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