The reason why I joined the Episcopal Church was deep admiration for my friend and colleague Fr. Stephen, who retired; I wanted to be there for his last two years of service. After he left, I moved, on, but while I was there, I fell in love with the BCP and Anglican liturgy and was thus persuaded by another Anglican friend to join the public domain liturgical compilation-producing group I am a member of, where much of my work has been on their planned alternative to the 2019 BCP and a related project started by a Methodist elder in 2014 to make an updated version of John Wesley’s recension 1786 of the BCP, the Sunday Service Book for Methodists in North America (in which he scrupulously obtained and digitized and downloaded where available copies of an extremely vast library of Anglican and Methodist liturgical texts not limited, in the case of Anglicanism, to official BCP editions, and organized all of this, which has made the work extremely easy; because we have the texts, including a rare edition of the 1549 BCP in modern spelling and punctuation, compiling is just copy+paste, so we have spent most of our time debating what to include, or rather, what not to include, and also on typographics and also typography design (which has been my area of work, using Adobe In Design, since I am an admirer of elegant books).
Ans to this end the most beautiful liturgical books ever published were the 1892 and 1928 Standard Book editions sold to 500 subscribers and sponsored by JP Morgan, if I remember correctly, of the Episcopalian BCP; the reference copies each diosese received were printed on vellum and are priceless, and I have never seen a copy of a Standard Edition, particularly the Art Nouveau decorated version of the 1892 Standard Edition, in person or for sale, although there are scans of a few of the pages online, and scans of the simpler version sold to most of the 500 subscribers, and the 1928 version. I have looked on ebay for these and not seen them; I imagine since only a thousand of either exist, these books are the sort of thing that would be auctioned at Christie’s or Sotheby’s. The Arrion Books prospectus for a Standard Book version of the 1979 BCP was exquisite, and it is a shame the Episcopal Church didn’t buy it, and I was equally disappointed the ACNA didn’t hire Arrion, which is still in business, or another boutique printer, to do a Standard Edition of the 2019 BCP; I would have subscribed. Of course, we cannot hope to match that; if our typography is remotely as good as the main print runs of the 1928 or 1979 Episcopal books, I will be euphoric. I am not John Updike, or even a professional graphics designer, merely a dilettante.
The other two favorite liturgical books of mine, typographically speaking, are Series Two and Series Three of the Trial Eucharist Services printed in late 60s and early 70s by the Church of England. Series Three has a cover design which now looks kind of “disco” as they say, but as an example of 70s graphics design it is excellent, however, the typography of the interiors of both books, and the cover design from series 2, I view as timeless. Series 2 in particular had the liturgical text in a Serif font and “Bluebrics” as I call them in Univers Medium, the exquiste sans serif font, or something close to it.
You can download these, and also fascimiles and scans of the 1892 Standard Book, the 1928 Standard Book, both by Updike, and the Prospectus for the planned 1979 Standard Book by Arrion Press,
from this wonderful website.
So i guess what I love most about Anglicanism is the commitment to liturgical beauty, even among low church Anglicans who simply have a different interpretation of it from Anglo Catholics, and also most especially, the symbols of Anglicanism and that commitment to pious worship, like the Book of Common Prayer and the Church Flag used by Anglicans and Episcopalians in the United States, which I think is one of the three most gorgeous Ecclesiastical flags in existence (the others being the Christian Flag, inspired by the American flag and the flag of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, which is a black Doppeladler, or two headed Eagle, on a yellow background, based on the historic insignia of the Byzantine Empire).
With all due respect to my Roman Catholic friends, I have to confess I find the flag of the Holy See a little boring in comparison (although the flag of the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta, which is still a thing, a charity under the control of the RCC which issues its own passports and has its own diplomatic corps, and used to be the government of Malta, is exquisite however). But of all these flags, I think the Church Flag used by Eposcopalian and American Anglican churches is the best.
I should also add that my love for Anglicanism is such that I think there is a great probability I will be a member of an Anglican denomination at some point in the future; indeed I would be a member now were it not for the work I am doing.