I've already discussed the Cathedral in an earlier post, but to summarize , the Cathedral was designed in the Norman Style before being converted to Gothic Style. The building was begun in 1133, completed in 1400, and has been in use ever since.
Exeter Cathedral is an Anglican Church, which meant that I was in for a smiliar yet different experience from what I'm normally used to. The Episcopal Church began as the American branch of the Anglican Church, however, after the American Revolution the leaders and members of the Church thought that it would be rather weird to pray for the King of England and refer to themselves as his subjects in prayer, since the country had just fought an 8 year war to prove that he couldn't control them. Thus the Episcopal Church shares many similarities with the Anglican Church, but they do diverge on quite a few things.
As I mentioned above, one of the chief differences between Anglicans and Episcopalians is that the Anglican service includes several prayers dedicated to the English monarch. Elizabeth II is considered the head of the English Church, so it makes sense that there would be prayers dedicated to her, just as Episcopalians pray for their Bishops and Catholics pray for the Pope. Furthermore, Elizabeth is also Head of State, so a prayer that she governs justly is the equivelant of when Episcopalians pray for "the President and Government of the United States."
Another difference is that Anglican services either use the 1662 version of the Book of Common Prayer or Common Worship, while Episcopalians use the 1979 version of the Book of Common Prayer (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). As such, I found that I knew the general message of most of the prayers, but was thrown off by some of the phrasing. Some of the differences were slight ('I believe in one God' rather than "We believe in one God" in the Nicene Creed), while others were quite significant (the Confession of Sin was completely different from the one I'm used to saying). Another difference was that, aside from the sermon, the Reverend delivered the service while facing the alter rather than the congregation. This was actually standard in the Episcopal Church for much of its history, but was changed sometime in the last 40 years(at St. Paul's in Philadelphia, we occasionally have nostalgia days where the Reverendwould also recite the service to the alter). Another difference, which might not apply to all Anglican services, was that the Reverend simply read his sermon rather than fully delivering it. In St. Paul's and Bruton I always got the sense that the Reverend was engaging with the Congregation and delivering a speech, rather than simply reading what they wrote. Again, this might just been that Reverend's personal way of delivering the sermon rather than a denominational thing, but it was an interesting nonetheless.
I very much enjoyed the service. It was quite amazing to be in a Cathedral roughly five times the size of the churches I'm used to worshiping in, and I was able to follow the service fairly well despite the differences between the English and the American Book of Common Prayer. The service I attended didn't have music, which I did miss especially considering it was Easter, but that was my choice, as attending the service with music would have meant that I would miss out on my flat's Easter Brunch. In addition, the Celebrant sounded just like Alan Rickman, with the same accent and manner of speaking as the acclaimed thespian (I keep hoping that he would saying something Harry Potter related, but sadly he did not). One thing that I wish they would have done would have been to provide a service sheet, with the page numbers of prayers or printouts of the text. This would have greatly helped me in following along with some of the prayers.
Anyway, so tomorrow I start my train journey around the UK. I'll be spending the day in London, then its off to Edinburgh for two days, Inverness for two days, and Glasgow for two days. From there I'll cross back into England to see Carlisle and Hadrian's Wall, and then to Stratford upon Avon to visit the birthplace of the world's greatest author. I'll conclude the trip by paying a visit to Oxford, and then it will be back to Exeter. I won't have my laptop with me, so I probably won't be uploading any posts during that time, but I'll be taking notes and pictures, and will have the blog posts up soon after I return.
Happy Easter!
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