Dear Sir,
Much ink has been spilt by people wishing to explain the spiritual declension seen in our nation. At the risk of sounding controversial, I suspect much of the blame may be attributed to the widespread abandonment of the use of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) among Anglican evangelicals.
The point is that the BCP services contain a great emphasis on the holiness of God and the sinfulness of sin (and therefore on the gospel as God’s answer to sin). This can be seen right from the start of the BCP Morning or Evening Prayer, with the sentences from Scripture and the Exhortation. Although the newer services are not without some emphasis on sin and repentance, this is never put as emphatically as it is in the BCP. Hence we have a situation across the whole nation in which people are no longer as strongly confronted with the need for repentance as was the case when the BCP was more widely used.
