The Book of Common Prayaer guides worship in The Episcopal Church. It helps us avoid passing fads and popular impulses in our response to the eternal God. It is the red book in the pews where you sit. In our worship bulletins, it is abbreviated, "BCP."

The first prayer book emerged through England's struggle to reform the worship of the church in the 16th century. It captures the Protestant insight of how God works in Jesus to restore human dignity by grace. But it also preserves what was good and wholesome in the worship of the old Roman Catholic Church.

Thus worship in the Episcopal Church as "both catholic and protestant." People from Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist and Pentecostal traditions appreciate our proclamation of the Word and how we call people to faith in God's grace. People from the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions value our emphasis on the community gathered around the Eucharistic meal (communion).

The Book of Common Prayer preserves this middle way between the protestant and catholic traditions.