A New Zealand Prayer Book He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa (NZPBHKMA). The 2024 edition by that name will be abbreviated here to NZPBHKMA2024. I recently purchased this 2024 book – here are some of my reflections about it.
Size of NZPBHKMA2024: 20cm x 14cm x 5cm
Approximately 2, 000 pages (has someone counted them? There’s a lot of page numbers that look like “S420”, “723ac” – there’s two of these!, “A19”, “B2”,…)
This Prayer Book is also found online (click this link to the left)
The NZPBHKMA was first published in 1989 after having been gone through line by line at a special meeting of General Synod, then each diocese went through it, and finally it went back to General Synod for confirmation, after which there was a year’s wait for any appeal. This is the process in our Church for making agreed, binding formularies.
This 1989 Prayer Book was greeted with much enthusiasm here and internationally: gender-inclusive in language about God (the Psalms, for example, used the pronoun “you” rather than “he” in relation to God), with material in Te Reo Māori, Fijian, Tongan, etc.
You can read my history (free) here: The Anglican Eucharist in New Zealand 1814-1989.
There was a reprint in that same year, 1989, and new editions in 1997, 2002, and 2005.
In 2011 there was the intention to print a new edition, without going through the above-described formulary process (which had been followed to produce new editions from 1989-2005). But this didn’t proceed (see here).
A huge new edition (about twice the size of the 2005 book) was published in 2020. Although there was much in it that I thought was, in many ways, maybe the book that many might have hoped for in 1989, like the failed 2011 edition, this 2020 Prayer Book had not gone through General Synod Te Hīnota Whānui (GSTHW). There is a lot on this site about the 2020 book; one might start here.
This 2024 edition is a slight revision of the 2020 book. NZPBHKMA2024 has a new Introduction, new suggested collect endings (pp 548-9), a broadening of Great Thanksgiving Prayers allowed with A Form for Ordering the Eucharist, and adding the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (page 13).
Seeking a new Introduction to the Prayer Book originated at the 2022 Christchurch Diocesan Synod (Motion 12). This was also passed at General Synod Te Hinota Whanui 2022 (Motion 9). The new (uncredited/anonymous) Introduction begins with a direct quote (in quotation marks) from the 1989-2020 NZPBHKMA Introduction. I was surprised that this new Introduction is solely in English rather than also being in Te Reo Māori.
I understand, and agree with, Tikanga Māori, not simply wanting to translate pakeha/English texts (I have heard there was a motion passed to this effect, but I cannot, as yet, find the wording of this motion).
This new Introduction has a section entitled “Equal partnership between women and men”. Firstly (with the exception proving the rule), the 1989-2005 NZPBHKMA did not use male pronouns for God. NZPBHKMA2020 added well over 50 male pronouns for God into the text. This section states that, “In this area of gender justice there is always more work to be done and this book highlights the first steps in an ongoing journey.” At the same time, the steps, in the 2020/2024 editions are walking in the opposite direction!
Furthermore, the context (that the Introduction speaks of) has shifted significantly. In the 1980s, stressing equality between two genders was important: “male and female you created us” (page 421) was preaching to the congregation (more than to God). Nowadays, this preachiness is found to be particularly unhelpful and inappropriate in many, many contexts. In four decades, it has moved from being forward looking to being unprogressive in a context where gender is regularly not seen as binary. Many clergy simply drop the sentence, but this also highlights the issue – especially for those who either know this text by heart or (as Anglicans are want to do) are following the libretto during the prayer! A better way forward is to use the (agreed formulary) revision, Alternative Great Thanksgiving A (in the preparation of which I had some part with Rev’d Ken Booth). The sentence doesn’t need to be there. It is not present in all other Great Thanksgivings of our Church. Without the sentence, those who hold to a binary understanding of gender can do so, and those who hold to a non-binary approach are equally included.
General Synod Te Hīnota Whānui Response
to the 2020 and 2024 Prayer Book
The most startling thing about NZPBHKMA2020 &2024 is what happened at this year’s meeting of General Synod Te Hinota Whanui. As I’ve made clear, about a third of the 2020 and 2024 book has not previously gone through the GSTHW and Church’s formularies process that other services and service resources in the Prayer Books have gone through since the beginning of liturgical renewal in the 1960s.
Bill Number 13 this year was the first step on making the new set of Sentences Prayers and Readings for the Church’s Year agreed formularies of our Church. I have been informed (the minutes are not out yet, and there has not yet been any reporting on liturgical decisions) that this bill did not pass because the Synod did not have the confidence that the collects and readings proposed were a coherent and substantial revision that would be “safe”. In fact, I have already pointed out, they are in breach of an earlier decision.
There is more: whilst in our Church, there is no requirement to use a collect (say, at the Eucharist), and different places to use a collect (or even collects) within the service if you do use one, from the 1989-2005 Prayer Books, three different collects are given as options to choose from for each Sunday, etc. But, in the 2020 and 2024 Prayer Books (and mirrored in the annual Lectionary booklet), only one is provided! So if the collect provided in the 2020/2024 Prayer Book is particularly naff (and, yes, there are good examples of terrible collects), you can hunt out another one from somewhere else (or produce one yourself), but the ease-of-use tendency regularly results in the using of the naff one!
So now we have two editions (2020 and 2024) of NZPBHKMA where about a third of it has been rejected by GSTHW as not being up to the standard expected in our Church. Even more bizarrely, on the online version of NZPBHKMA2024, the third of the Prayer Book that GSTHW rejected is in the main online body and the actual agreed formularies are presented in a section termed
Historical Content
NZPBHKMA2024
The content in this section is from the 1989 Prayer Book and while remaining authorised for use has since been replaced.
Ten years ago, General Synod Te Hinota Whanui acknowledged that our experimental/trial services were inconsistent with the 1928 Act of Parliament and lacked fundamental authorisation in the first place! With a third of A New Zealand Prayer Book He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa 2020/2024 not being an agreed formulary (in fact voting against beginning to make this such!) NZ Anglicanism effectively has re-created experimental/trial services, and furthermore bound them into a book with the title of A New Zealand Prayer Book He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa. And these “experimental” resources are, in this book, indistinguishable from the material that we have agreed to via our formularies process.
I contend that the majority of clergy couldn’t tell you what are now our agreed formularies, especially with the low ebb of worship training, study, and formation in our Church. Picking up our NZPBHKMA 2020 or 2024, most would not be able to outline the status of the different parts of that book: what is required, what is allowed, and what is forbidden.
There is mention in our Church Constitution of A New Zealand Prayer Book He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa as being binding on us in terms of doctrine and practice. Clearly, that cannot refer to the 2020 or 2024 Prayer Book. GSTHW has begun the process for changing that part of the Constitution. But that really is a post for another day.
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Thank you for that it is very helpful. There is much confusion here in CoE. Liturgy teaching is at an all time low. The Liturgical Commission is slow and often diverted into the doctrine commission.
There is a fundamental distinction for us between alternative to BCP 1662 needing full authorization, and things not alternative only needing commendation. the texts in our liturgies do not clarify what is authorized and what is commended. So people argue over commended material saying it is a straightjacket and don’t realize their freedom. However, most folk now have never seen a BCP and have little idea what is in it and can’t work out the difference. So we are increasingly controlled by a book that is not in the consciousness of the church.
Fascinating, thanks, Phillip.
I particularly note your parallel to here in teaching on liturgy. I wonder how low teaching there compares to low teaching here?
It would be an interesting study to look at (Anglican) liturgical life area by area around the world. Where I was in Australia last year, clergy simply prayed daily from their Australian Prayer Book, and at Sunday liturgy, that Prayer Book is what was encountered in church. Blessings.