Prayers for the dead in Anglicanism

As with most things Anglican, you'll probably get a range of answers.

My (Protestant-inflected) answer would be that the dead are beyond our prayers; and that prayers of commendation and the like are more for the living, that we can feel that we have handed our loved one over to God and trust in God's goodness and mercy etc (particularly close to the death when grief is fresh).

Generally I tend more to thanking God for the lives of the departed, than praying for their afterlives.

I think @Shane R would be a good person to answer this; coincidentally I just realized I am using the same icon as he (Andrei Rublev’s The Trinity). But we are in Trinity term as they call it in Britain, so it feels appropriate, also given the green coloring I am using in my signature.

Also by the way CS Lewis did write on this subject from a fairly high church Anglican perspective. He and his brother would rise early to drive to a parish church about an hour from Oxford on Sunday mornings for a 7:30 AM Said Eucharist, then leave immediately after partaking, not waiting for the Benediction or Recessional etc, and drive back. CS Lewis also did not like changes to the services, so one can get a good sense as to his churchmanship from his writings.

As an Anglican, I have little trouble with the idea of praying for those who have died, as I believe that in dying and rising Jesus conquered the ancient adversary, death itself, as John Donne wrote Death be not proud ... death thou shalt die. As much as I can pray for the living, and I do, I feel that to suggest that I cannot pray for the departed calls into question how much I believe in the resurrection.

That having been said, I see no sense in which I would expect my prayers to offer some kind of change in the eternal outcome, for that surely is above my pay grade. The task of prayer is to align ourselves with the almighty, not to tell God what to do. Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly.

So it is, my accustomed ending when leading intercessions:

RileyG said:

I understand you completely reject Purgatory and an intermediate state after death.

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As far as I know, Anglicans do not reject an intermediate state after death. The following review of the subject of prayer of the dead is informative:

Prayer for the dead - Wikipedia

My impression is that in early Anglicanism many Reformed views were adopted including views against prayer for the dead. Some people still uphold these views while others have adopted Wesley's 18th-century corrections. Thus the Methodist view as well as that of the ELCA are relevant. The latter are in full communion with the Anglican Church of Canada, and probably other Anglican churches.

To some extent, all petitionary prayer is theologically funny. We're trying to persuade a perfectly good God to be good.

But sometimes I pray anyway. I am not a 100% logically consistent person.

The dead are beyond my help, but I think and desperately hope that the dead are not beyond God's help. So I pray for God to be good to those who have died, to love them and forgive them and heal them, and to deliver them from all pain except what is absolutely necessary for their healing. Probably I don't have to do this, because I can trust our perfectly good God to be good, but just in case, I pray.

I don't reject an intermediate state. In a sense that has been lost to popular Evangelical teaching, Heaven is an intermediate state. The Revelation portrays the reconstruction of the Paradise garden as God's intent for mankind's wellbeing.

Shane R said:

I don't reject an intermediate state. In a sense that has been lost to popular Evangelical teaching, Heaven is an intermediate state. The Revelation portrays the reconstruction of the Paradise garden as God's intent for mankind's wellbeing.

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This. I'm honestly not 100% sure I even believe in heaven tbh, but if it exists, it's not the final stage. At best it's a holding space until Jesus comes back and the restoration of creation and the general resurrection.

I think the point is, however we might understand where the dead are now, it's not "purgatory."

God is a God of mercy, prayers for the dead remind us of that.