You know that rubric about how stuff in the BCP that’s only in Rite II language can be rendered in Rite I language? Hear me out. What if, when we eventually revise the BCP, we use that model more extensively.

Offer every prayer and service in three registers of language - Rite I/RSV language, Rite II/NRSV language, and EOW/CEB language. Identical content and theology. Same content, available in all three registers of English.

In addition, italicize instances where language for God can be done in different ways without substantial theological danger. (Father to Mother or Creator or Source, pronouns referring to the whole triune Godhead not needing to be “he/him,” etc.)

Fewer prayers in terms of core content, but more options about how to contextually render that prayer in ways that don’t essentially change the theology, but do change how people in different contexts are able to enter into and access that content.

Expanding rubrical permission to alter linguistic register and, in authorized places, gendered language for God will actually make our prayer *more* common, because people won’t have to depart from the book to get the register or kind of gendered language that facilitates worship

It’s possible to have common prayer and contextual liturgical theology. It’s possible to have both.

We don’t have to have an endless supply of supplemental books, isolating certain modes of prayer to a second tier, or tying certain theologies to certain linguistic registers

Rite III can stay! But with options for the words of institution that aren’t weird, and with the ability to make it gender neutral. The ability to do Rite III in Cranmerian idiom.

If we did it this way, we wouldn’t make individual parishes try to figure out how to translate from contemporary idiom to Rite I idiom - we’d just go ahead and create versions of all of it in all three registers! Easy!

Long story short, I would like to use Mother language for God in a liturgy taking place in Rite I language.

This also leaves space for congregations whose worship of God is not best facilitated by expansive language for God to continue in common prayer with the whole. We can open up space for new ways of worshipping without saying “pray to God in this way or get out.”

We don’t have to pit expansive and contextual liturgy against common prayer. We can have them both, but only if we actually prioritize having them both.