Anabaptist Prayer Books

Some readers of this blog will be aware that I wrote a liberal Christian prayer book with an American Unitarian minister called John Morgan. It is called Daybreak and Eventide (you can also get this book direct from the Unitarian Christian Association) and was influenced by prayer patterns developed by the Anabaptists. (You can download it here). The early Unitarians (the Polish Brethren) being a unique mix of late Renaissance Italian humanism and ideas shared with many Anabaptists. In the Polish Brethren's case this mix resulted in the development of a sort of rational mysticism.

Anyway, in a recent search for prayer resources I stumbled across two recent Anabaptist volumes that were for a time available in pdf form to help the editors hone them. Both have now been published and I recommend them. I think they are both excellent.


The editors' website is to be found here:

http://www.ambs.edu/prayerbook/


[Additional note, August 2012: Since this post I, along with a German Lutheran pastor, colleague and friend used this book every week for a time of shared prayer, very much in the spirit of the books' old German epigraph: "Allen und jeden Christen welcher Religion sie seyen unpartheyisch fast nützlich." Since the time of this post I have also used these volumes daily in my own prayers.]

Another useful source of prayers and readings people might find helpful can be accessed by signing up to an email distribution list of Daily Texts from the Moravian Church.