A 'prayer book' is a book containing prayers and perhaps devotional readings, for private or communal use, or in some cases, outlining the liturgy of religious services. Strictly speaking books containing mainly orders of religious services, or readings for them are "service books" or "liturgical books" not prayer-books, but the term is often used very loosely. Prayer books may be Holy books, as well.
The following are among the many books to which the term may loosely refer in various churches or religions, although in strict usage a prayer book is likely to mean a miscellaneous book of prayers as opposed to the standard service books as listed in the second group below:
Actual prayer books:
- Saint Augustine's Prayer Book, in the Episcopal Church
- Vatican Croatian Prayer Book, a Croatian vernacular prayer book
- Book of Common Prayer (BCP), first published in 1549 for the Church of England
- Siddur, in Judaism
Service & liturgical books:
- Breviary or Missal, in Roman Catholicism
- Agenda (liturgy), in Lutheranism
- Common Worship, in Anglicanism
- Alternative Service Book (adopted in 1980), in the Church of England
- Directory of Public Worship, adopted in certain areas of the Church of England in the 17th century
- Book of Hours
Famous quotes containing the words prayer and/or book:
“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalms 90:10.
The Book of Common Prayer (1662)
“Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)