In 1860, however, an Episcopal priest decided to implement the first attempt at Anglican worship in Portuguese. Richard Holden, a Scotsman who immigrated as a youngster to the United States and read for orders at Bexley Hall, went to Brazil to work with the representative of the American Bible Society in Belém do Pará. As part of his preparation for Mission, he translated the 1789 American Book of Common Prayer. Despite his many attempts at distributing Bibles and BCPs throughout the Amazon, he was heavily persecuted by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Belém do Pará. 3 After a stint in Salvador, he settled for a few years in Rio, 4 where he joined the pastoral staff of the Igreja Evangélica Fluminense (a Congregationalist church). 5 He would then move to Lisbon, Portugal, where he joined the Darbist movement and died a few years later. Holden’s experiment, however, set the pattern for all BCPs in Portuguese. They were based on the American tradition of Common Prayer, and not on the 1662 Church of England BCP.

This means that it inherited the tradition of the “usages” of oblation with an explicit sacrificial language and invocation of the Holy Spirit (epiclesis) 6 found in the Scottish Communion Office 1764, and embraced by the 1789 US BCP. Other peculiarities inherited from these traditions are a Summary of the Law as a possible replacement for the Decalogue and the Gloria tibi appointed before the reading of the Gospel. 7 These found their way in every single revision of the BCP in Portuguese, including the current one.

In the 1880s, new and better organized initiatives of establishing an Episcopal Mission in Brazil took place, most notably among seminarians based at Virginia Theological Seminary.

The red prayer book pdf