Since the 18th century, there have been several editions of the Book of Common Prayer produced and revised for use by Unitarians. Several versions descend from an unpublished manuscript of alterations to the Church of England's 1662 Book of Common Prayer originally produced by English philosopher and clergyman Samuel Clarke in 1724, with descendant liturgical books remaining in use today.
Clarke, a Semi-Arian and Subordinationist, viewed the doctrine of the Trinity as theologically unsound and saw the 1662 prayer book's inclusion of elements like the Athanasian Creed as perpetuating these errors. Clarke's manuscript alterations emphasized the excision of Trinitarian references in favor of prayers directed toward God the Father. Theophilus Lindsey would build upon Clarke's work after receiving a copy of the changes, publishing his own series of Unitarian prayer books from 1774 onward. Lindsey's Essex Street Chapel in London, the first Unitarian church in England, utilized these prayer books for worship. When an Essex Street Chapel congregant introduced James Freeman of King's Chapel in Boston to Lindsey's prayer book, Freeman further edited its liturgies and convinced his congregation to adopt his revision in 1785.
These Unitarian forms were among a trend of Nonconformist efforts to revise the 1662 prayer book through the 18th and 19th centuries; the Anglican prayer book remained the primary basis for English Unitarian worship literature until 1861. The Unitarian revisions influenced other prayer book revision efforts, including John Wesley's The Sunday Service of the Methodists and the American Episcopal Church's first attempted prayer book revision. The King's Chapel prayer book, currently in its ninth edition as first published in 1986, remains that congregation's standard liturgical text.
History
Layman Edward Stephens published a book in 1696 that spurred a movement of suggested revisions to the Church of England's legally mandated liturgy, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The movement's proposals generally sought to "shorten and unify the service". Inspired by Stephens, William Whiston forwarded his own more unorthodox revisions in 1713, part of a trend that saw such proposals increasingly alter the Anglican prayer book in accordance with Arian and Unitarian theologies. However, these early revisions ultimately had little influence on later Nonconformist liturgies. However, a set of Unitarian prayer book revisions by Samuel Clarke which were edited and published after his death by Theophilus Lindsey would heavily influence over a third of all English Dissenters liturgies for 80 years.
Clarke, the Church of England rector of St James's Church, Piccadilly, privately created an altered version of the 1662 prayer book in 1724. He was a Semi-Arian and, like early Unitarians in Transylvania and what was then the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a subordinationist who held that God the Father was supreme and, unlike God the Son, alone worthy of worship.; Clarke had previously published a study of 1,250 Bible verses, The Scriptural Doctrine of the Trinity, in 1712. This book contained Clarke's theology and prescribed a new rule for prayer based on the notion Jesus Christ derives his powers as savior from the Father.; In Clarke's view, the theology of the Trinity had developed as a result of poor metaphysics and the inclusion of the Athanasian Creed in the 1662 prayer book perpetuated this inaccurate theology. He had seen and liked Whiston's Liturgy of the Church of England reduced before its 1713 publication. However, Clarke deviated from Whiston's embrace of the Apostolic Constitutions and favoured changes that did not substantially alter the prayer book's patterns while still expressing an Arian theology.
In his 1724 manuscript of alterations to the 1662 prayer book, Clarke rewrote prayers to redirect them exclusively towards God the Father.; Clarke was a friend of Caroline of Ansbach, who later became queen consort of King George II. After Caroline became queen in 1727, Clarke intended to request she push his nomination as a bishop, a position that would allow him to formally revise the prayer book. Had he not declined to sign the Thirty-nine Articles and encountered protests from William Wake, the incumbent Archbishop of Canterbury, over this heterodoxy, historian A. Elliot Peaston believed Clarke might have become the Archbishop of Canterbury.; Unable to secure official support for his views, Clarke's altered prayer book went unpublished. However, copies were made and the original manuscript alterations were given to the British Library following his death.
Clarke's alterations would eventually inspire several revised prayers books for Presbyterian-influenced congregations and become the basis for what historian G. J. Cuming deemed the most influential unofficial revision to the 1662 prayer book.; Theophilus Lindsey, then a Presbyterian-minded Church of England vicar at the Church of St Anne, Catterick, acquired a copy of Clarke's altered prayer book made by his brother-in-law and fellow clergyman John Disney.; ; Therein, Lindsey found Clarke's many revisions, including references to the Trinity "slashed out with violent strokes". Lindsey was so impressed with Clarke's work that he intended to introduce the changes to his congregation at Catterick, but ultimately decided against such action as he believed they would in violation of his vows to the Church of England. However, following his resignation from the church and with influence by John Jones's 1749 Free and Candid Disquisitions, Lindsey added further Unitarian alterations to Clarke's work and published them in 1774 as The Book of Common Prayer reformed according to the plan of the late Dr Samuel Clarke.; ; An enlarged edition was published in 1775. While Lindsey used Clarke's name, liturgist Ronald Jasper later argued that little was borrowed from the 1724 alterations in producing the 1774 prayer book and that Lindsey's liturgy was more radical, with influence by William Whiston.
Lindsey's prayer book was utilized by the Dissenter congregation he founded at Essex Street Chapel—the first formally Unitarian church in England—from its first service on 17 April 1774 onward.; Lindsey was part of a network of like-minded churchmen, including Joseph Priestley, that had influenced Lindsey's aversion to the unmodified 1662 prayer book before his resignation from the Church of England. Priestley would write in support of Unitarian liturgical worship in his 1783 Forms of Prayer. While Lindsey seems to have approved of Priestley's efforts to produce a paraphrased Bible, Lindsey retained the King James Version and 1662 prayer book's psalter for his revised prayer book on the premise that he was preserving the 1662 prayer book's scriptural foundations while replacing its theology. Lindsey's prayer book, which was repeatedly revised, proved popular with Presbyterians and helped cement the address of all prayers to God the Father as "one of the most tenacious characteristics of Unitarian worship".
English Unitarian attempts to revise the Anglican prayer book continued into the 19th century. Lindsey's editions in particular remained a dominant influence in English Unitarian service books. However, some Unitarian liturgies including John Prior Estlin's 1814 General Prayer-Book were derived from the 1662 prayer book independent of Lindsey's work. Despite their departure from Trinitarian orthodoxy, English Unitarian revisions often featured only conservative changes in hopes of limiting division between Unitarians and the Church of England. In 1861, Thomas Sadler and James Martineau published Common Prayer for Christian Worship, initiating a departure from utilizing the Anglican prayer book as the basis of English Unitarian worship. However, some Anglican influences survived within Sadler and Martineau's text and five of the 40 English Unitarian liturgical books published from 1861 until the middle of the next century were derived from the Anglican prayer book.
Freeman and the King's Chapel liturgy
In 1784, Essex Street Chapel congregant William Hazlitt provided a copy of Lindsey's prayer book to his friend James Freeman of King's Chapel in Boston, spurring a Unitarian revision of the prayer book that remains in use there today.; Founded in 1686, King's Chapel was the oldest Anglican church in Boston.; As the American Revolutionary War escalated, King's Chapel's Loyalist Anglican minister and much of its congregation fled with the British Army when it evacuated Boston in 1776. The Anglicans who remained permitted members of the Old South Church congregation to use King's Chapel, with the two groups celebrating separately at alternating times in the day. Under this scheme, Freeman—a Harvard graduate and Congregationalist—was invited to serve as a lay reader at King's Chapel in 1782.; The congregation's proprietors chose Freeman as pastor on 21 April 1783.
Freeman was initially content with using the 1662 prayer book as modified at Trinity Church. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, there was broad support for both a new American Anglican church and a local revision to the 1662 prayer book. Simultaneously, there was a rise of Unitarian sentiment across New England congregations, including at King's Chapel. Already, King's Chapel had ceased praying the 1662 prayer book's prescribed prayer for the king and royal family, instead substituting prayers for the president and Congress. Additionally, Freeman's position enabled him to say the Athanasian Creed at his discretion.; Hazlitt, who had arrived in Boston from England in search of a preaching position, informed Freeman of Lindsey's prayer book and convinced Freeman and "several respectable ministers" to abandon the ubiquitous Trinitarian doxology.
At age 24, Freeman pressed King's Chapel to adopt a revised prayer book. On 20 February 1785, the proprietors voted to create a committee composed of seven men to report on Freeman's alterations. Drawing upon Clarke and Lindsey's work, Freeman worked with Hazlitt on a prayer book which was then put to a vote by the proprietor's of King's Chapel.; Freeman wrote to his father before the vote, saying that he was optimistic that he had the necessary support but would resign from his position as pastor should the prayer book vote fail. On 19 June, Freeman's prayer book was adopted by a 20–7 majority. "Thus," Francis William Pitt Greenwood said in his sermon at Freeman's funeral, "the first Episcopal church in New England became the first Unitarian church in the New World."
The 1785 prayer book's preface held that "no Christian, it is supposed, can take offence at, or find his conscience wounded" by the King's Chapel liturgy, and that "the Trinitarian, the Unitarian, the Calvinist, and the Arminian will read nothing in it which can give him any reasonable umbrage." Despite this, there was dissent and controversy over the liturgy's publication. With Freeman still not ordained, he applied for ordination in the new Anglican Episcopal Church in 1786. This application was rejected by Bishops Samuel Seabury and Samuel Provoost after Freeman refused to assent to the Episcopalians' own prayer book and the Trinitarian theology within it.
The congregation decided to ordain Freeman themselves, devising and performing their own "solemn and appropriate form" in November 1787, with the senior churchwarden performing the laying on of hands on Freeman. This event ended King's Chapel's association with the Episcopal Church. Samuel J. May wrote that Freeman was isolated during his early ministry through his exclusion from the Episcopal Church and poor integration with nearby Congregationalist ministers who were "embarrassed" by Freeman's use of a prayer book and liturgies. Freeman retired from ministry in 1826.