Litany’s Deprecations in the 1928

This year calamities of biblical proportion has visited these United States, certainly California. For our family, the Prayer Book’s litany has become a regular and important devotion, altering from a liturgy said basically seasonally to one read multiple times a week (1). As troubles unfold, we find certain petitions speaking explicitly regarding our plight, so the last couple weeks the 1928 BCP’s deprecations loomed large. The following hopes to underline their imminence, and discuss this portion of the liturgy’s design.

The deprecations in are found on pages 54 & 55 in the 1928 American Prayer Book, spanning between the first suffrage , “Remember not, Lord, our offenses” to the last type, “From all sedition, privy conspiracy, etc.” [generally accompanied by the response, “Good Lord, deliver us”]. The Rev. Brownwell views deprecations as elaborations of the Lord’s Prayer well-known petition “Deliver us from evil”. I also appreciate Brownwell’s explanation of psychology in prayer. He writes,

A few other historical comments shall be given here, mainly how the American petitions differ from the English. The version adopted in 1789 differed almost no respect from the older colonial book despite alterations proposed in 1689. The 1689 commission, mentioned in the American preface (both 1785/89), added two supplications. These likely were chiefmost concerns for 18th-century moral Reformation societies in London and thereabouts, compelling the following addition:

 

The revision 1785/89 apparently replaced the 1662 BCP’s “fornication and all other deadly sin” for the more generic “all inordinate and sinful affections“. But it may as well comprehend the vices mentioned in the 1689 revision notes, namely popular ills of liquor and cursing, as well as, at least, evils attending ‘fornication’ as well as related ‘deceits of the flesh’. Those jealous of patriotism might want to compare the first prayer, “Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers” to its probably counterpart, outside the deprecations and toward the conclusion of the liturgy, on page 58, “O God, we have heard with our ears, and our fathers have declared unto us, the noble works that thou didst in their days”.

The final difference with the English, in this section, is the insertion of “earthquake, fire and flood”. Massey Shepherd attributes the addition to the example of the Canadian Book’s 1922 revision. Armitage’s history of this review explains the prudential rational for adding ‘fire’. Knowing much about California, our sympathy easily lends itself to New Brunswick. Indeed, California has lost much natural as well as native settler heritage to recent fires. But California has also been notorious for earthquakes. The mention of ‘fire’ in recent days have made the litany far more imminent for us even on the Pacific Coast. Anyway, Armitage explains,

 

Clearing these particulars, Shepherd goes on to admit the genius of design within the deprecations. The first group evidently deals with “those spiritual forces of evil in the invisible world (cf. Eph. 6.12), whose warfare against us and against God’s purposes for us is unremitting“. From petition to petition, we go on from foul tempers, induced by manifold invisible temptations, that give way to grosser, scandalous transgression. The second part, them moves onto the judgments or punishments spurred by such evil inner-workings. More simply, Rev. Sparrow divides the deprecations “we must pray against sin, then against punishment” (p. 61, A Rational Illustration). Another twist might be the first part dealing with torments of the inward soul while second belongs to pains that are merely bodily and outward. Bishop Nicholls admirably describes such, “Nor do we only pray against spiritual evils, by which our souls may be offended, but we likewise beseech thee to deliver us from temporal ones, which may prove prejudicial to our bodies: therefore, by the dreadful consequences by which storms and tempests are followed… From the tumultuous distractions of faction and sedition”.

Regarding natural peril, as found in the fifth deprecation, not only is fire an obvious danger (given the extent of its devastation in my own state of California with its numerous evacuations and abandonment of property), but the unexpected stroke of sudden death might also pounce, with great tragedy and eternal lamentation, the unprepared Christian. Wheatly seems to deal with this question best, reminding we may ‘have no time to fit our souls for our great account‘. But, even worst (at least in the collective sense), according to Wheatly (page 170), are those that ‘portend to ruin the church‘, namely, hardened atheism which ‘neither private nor public calamities will reform’. He says,

While both the first and second parts of the deprecation strike me as astonishingly prescient given current fires, common sickness, and civil unrest in California, if not the nation, a certain take away for me is that Christians may plea bodily preservation midst larger judgement. Not everything is heavenly, or otherworldly, with Christians. Especially for the latter-day eschatology would have a heaven descending upon the earth. In times of pressing danger, the Christian has a right to keep bodies apart from harm, or even a ‘right of flight’. And, as someone who leans to the pacifist side of things, this is most attractive whether before ravages of fire or rising tyranny. Christianity is not the same as Greek Philosophy– an escape from Creation. Rather, heaven is merely an intermediate state, readily at hand, with wider implications by both the incarnation and resurrection of Messiah. Perhaps our mandate for bodily & temporal preservation is found here, in the fifth and sixth deprecations. Also, the Prayer In Time of War and Tumults, found on page 41 in the American book, which says “Save and deliver us, we humbly beseech thee, from the hands of our enemies; that we, being armed with thy defense, may be preserved evermore from all perils, to glorify thee” Curiously, the same sentiment is found in the second-to-last collect, concluding the Litany, page 58, see below:

 

Fini.

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(1) The English rubric plainly directs, for frequency, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. The Rev. Charles Wheatly adds the following advice, “The word Litany, as it is explained by our present liturgy, signifies a general supplication, and so ‘it is used by the most ancient heathens, viz’ for an earnest ‘supplication to the gods made in time of adverse fortune;  and in the same sense it is used in the christian church, viz. for a supplication and common intercession to God, when his wrath lies heavy upon us”. (p. 166, A Rational Illustration, 5th ed)