Site Map - Links to Information Contained Here
- The Gregorian Rite
- An adaptation of the American BCP for Orthodox Use
- Links to Western Rite Liturgies at Other Sites
- List of other web sites about the Orthodox faith.
Links to Western Rite (Orthodox) Liturgies
Available Outside this Site
- For a newer treatment of the Gregorian Rite, see the liturgy collection of The Society of Clerks Secular of St. Basil.
- For information about Celtic Rite Orthodoxy, please see the Celi De web site maintained by Ap (Abbot) Maelruain, Celi De.
An adaptation of the American BCP for Orthodox Use
As a point of interest, my first Bishop, who is now with the Lord, adapted the Communion service from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer for use in his Western Rite Orthodox Church. He removed some things, such as the reciting of the Ten Commandments, and he revised the Invocation, turning it into a somewhat more explicit Epiklesis. He also removed the filioque from the Creed. I do not know whether his changes reflected the influence of an older Anglican text.
The result is a somewhat shorter Liturgy quite accessible to modern-day Americans. He named it the "Salisbury Rite". Please do not be misled by this name, it is not a reconstruction of ancient texts from England. I have prepared a side-by-side comparison of the two liturgies viewable in Adobe Acrobat format.
Whether doing this is a good idea has been the subject of debate. For some thoughtful questions by the highly-respected Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia, see Some thoughts on the "Western Rite" in Orthodoxy.
The text of the Liturgy as unformatted ASCII text (25KB).
The rest of the files are in PDF format. To view or print
them you will need the Adobe
Acrobat Reader version 3.0 or later, which is available from
Adobe's Web Site. Adobe
and Acrobat Reader are registered trademarks of Adobe Systems
Incorporated.
The PDF files are given in four formats:
- Reading Order
- Presented as single pages in natural reading order.
- Printing Order
- Arranged for double-sided printing on 8.5" by 11" paper, then folding the results in half to make a folded booklet.
- Cover
- Contains a single cover page, held separate so the booklet covers can be printed on different paper if desired.
- Large Print
For reference, here are links to two other web sites (not produced by me) containing texts of the American 1928 Book of Common Prayer, which is in the Anglican/Episcopal tradition: