One of the curious features of the first edition of the Book of Common Prayer is its approach to the event of the Reformation. Of course the text is a Reformation document, its key liturgical achievement. The forms of worship laid down in 1549 helped define the new English Protestantism. But what does the BCP say about the Reformation itself? The answer, as the historian of Protestantism, Alec Ryrie, points out, is nothing at all.
The event of Henry VIII’s break from Rome, with all its cultural, personal and ecclesiastical tumult, was too raw to mention even in the prayer book created by it. And this silence continued almost without exception throughout the next 120 years, becoming more and more deafening. As time passed, different editions of the BCP reflected different theological viewpoints but made no explicit reference to Henry VIII’s break or Edward VI’s severe Protestantism and Mary Tudor’s efforts to reverse the Reformation.
