THE old jibe that the Church of England was nothing more than the Conservative Party on its knees in prayer (for the Church militant presumably) can be matched by the modern jibe that the Church now is nothing more than an insignificant part of the Labour Party which has fallen flat on its face murmuring the Magnificat (verses 68). Jibes of disaffected partisans often disclose bits of truth. In a sense that exceeds the grasp of mockery and party allegiance, the Book of Common Prayer for centuries has been an index as well as an instrument of English political life.

That is not surprising. The Book of Common Prayer was conceived, born and reborn amid councils, committees, compromises and latenight decisions. Under its smooth and stately surface still work the prejudices and denials, the political passions and commitments of Church and assemblies, Parliaments and people. In any great constitutional change or shift in national sentiment, such as the Restoration or the reaction to the Reform Act, it emerged as a focus of national selfconcern and as an issue in fundamental debate. It surfaced on many other parliamentary occasions, some of which seem trivial to us. When the Feathers' Tavern Association presented its petition to the House of Commons in 1772, seeking to relax the requirement of subscription to the thirtynine articles for certain professional people, Burke's speech indicated how directly the standing of the Prayer Book was involved and how many issues concerning the Prayer Book intimately touched the identity of the nation as a whole.

Almost unsuspected the Prayer Book lies very close to the innermost political realities, such as the monarchy, the ultimate authority of the law, or the recognition of civil freedom; and such things are real even if they remain mysterious-yet mysterious only in the sense that their complex modes of operation would be exceedingly difficult to define. In revealing many of the assumptions of English political life the Book of Common Prayer has had the character of a manifesto.

To the young Gladstone the discovery of this inner meaning of the Prayer Book came with the force of a spiritual revelation:

On Sunday May 13 [1832, in Rome] , something I know not what, set me on examining the occasional offices of the church in the prayer book. They made a strong impression upon me on that very day, and the impression has never been effaced. . . . It presented to me Christianity under an aspect in which I had not yet known it . . . as a sublime construction, based throughout upon historic fact, uplifting the idea of the community in which we live, and of the access which it enjoys through the new and living way to the presence of the Most High.

Gladstone acquired on that day and retained all his life a sense of the identity and of the inner disposition of England. Without such a sense it is impossible for a politician to pursue party politics with consistency and purpose.

Something like that has been and still is the experience of many people familiar with the Book of Common Prayer. Of course many people, perhaps the majority nowadays, are very unfamiliar with it; but still no document better expresses their vague but tenacious understanding of what moral, social, public life in England should be, and what should be the temper of English politics.

The Parliamentary debates of 1927 and 1928 and their outcome in matters of Church discipline have not reduced the relevance of the old Prayer Book nearly as drastically as many anti-establishmentarians would have wished. To understand the Prayer Book was never to learn rigidity. A main theme of its Prefatory Matter is the need for constant readaptation and change according to the 'various exigencies of times and occasions'.

In our days the questions now are: How and what changes should be made? Adequate answers require political decisions of the deepest kind. The changes to be made in a common prayer book should not excommunicate the nation; should not foolishly anticipate an unknown future; should substantiate an apprehended reality. Political realities, such as the old Prayer Book has kept in touch with over centuries, do not change much in a week, or for that matter over many generations.

Have we changed much over the last hundred and fifty years? We may seem to live in ecclesiastical and liturgical confusion now, and we may observe that some people like to live like that, feeding on a thin unnourishing soup of faith and practice. But our superficial estimates of our present condition may tell us more about ourselves than about the inadequacy of the Book of Common Prayer or the advantages of a completely new one. One way in which the old Prayer Book has continued to enter English life may be remarked by watching how the temporary esteem and status of the Book has reflected changes in secular morale.

In the days of Empire, and that was not so long ago, the incomparable liturgy could be regarded, as H. B. Swete wrote, as a new and triumphant order of services:

It heads a new liturgical family, and one which already has taken root . . . wherever the English tongue is spoken. . . . It would have been a great misfortune if the great English race had been tied for all time to customs and forms ... of an Italian Church. While we are far from claiming either perfection or finality for the present English liturgy, we regard it with the loyal affection due to a national rite which has commended itself to the conscience of devout Englishmen for more than three hundred years, and which is destined, as we believe, to surpass even the Roman Mass in the extent of its influence upon mankind.

Here is a tissue of political sentiment in which few modern Anglicans would enwrap themselves nowadays. But the present competing banners of confusion, of the common market, of regionalism, of double standards, ecumenicism, congregationalism and multi-culturalism look still more perishable and flimsy. The Book of Common Prayer is not in its politics imperialist, nor Liberal, nor Socialist nor Conservative. It strikes deeper. Ideally it should stabilise a sense of identity: it should in Gladstone's phrase uplift 'the idea of the community in which we live'.

If we wanted to make a brand new prayer book, slim, portable, enclosed within two covers, which would characterise a nation and point its destiny, we should not at this moment know how to do it. It may really be true that the expensive package on offer to the General Synod with all its two thousand and 57 varieties of ordering Holy Communion is the very best that can be done at present. In that case it can be wondered whether it was ever worth doing. It might be wiser to acknowledge the maturer political wisdom contained in the 1662 Book and recognise the elasticity of its forms until an idea of our modern community is worth uplifting once again. This country has lost an Empire and has not found a role. It seems an entirely inappropriate time to obliterate the Book of Common Prayer by endless nervous variations and forfeit utterly any way of saying our public prayers in unison.