Daily Office (Anglican)

The Daily Office in Anglican churches refers to the traditional canonical hours of daily services, including Morning Prayer (also called Matins, especially when chanted) and Evening Prayer (called Evensong, especially when celebrated chorally). These services usually follow the Book of Common Prayer. As in other Christian traditions, either clergy or laity can lead the daily office. Most Anglican clergy are required to pray Morning and Evening Prayer daily.

The Anglican practice of saying daily morning and evening prayer derives from the pre-Reformation canonical hours, of which eight were required to be said in churches and by clergy daily: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. This practice derived from the earliest centuries of Christianity, and ultimately from the pre-Christian Jewish practice of reciting the Shema prayer in the morning and evening as well as a remembrance of the daily sacrifices in the Temple.

The first Book of Common Prayer of 1549 radically simplified this arrangement, combining the first three services of the day into a single service called Mattins and the latter two into a single service called Evensong (which, before the Reformation, was the English name for Vespers). The rest were abolished. The second edition of the Book of Common Prayer (1552) renamed these services to Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, respectively, and also made some minor alterations, setting the pattern of daily Anglican worship which has been essentially unchanged in most cathedrals and other large churches ever since, continuing to the current edition of the Church of England's 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

In most Anglican provinces, ordained ministers are required to say Morning and Evening Prayer daily; devout lay Anglicans also often make this a part of their spiritual practice. Historically, Anglican religious communities have made the Daily Office a central part of their communal spiritual life, beginning with the Little Gidding community of the 17th century. Regular use of Morning and Evening Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer was also a part of the "method" promoted by John Wesley and the early Methodist movement.

Since the Oxford (Tractarian) and ritualist movements of the 19th century, interest in the pre-Reformation practice of praying the office eight times a day has revived. Before his conversion to Roman Catholicism, the Tractarian priest John Henry Newman wrote in Tracts for the Times number 75 of the Roman Breviary's relation to the Church of England's daily prayer practices, encouraging its adoption by Anglican priests. The praying of "little hours", especially Compline but also a mid-day prayer office sometimes called Diurnum, in addition to the major services of Morning and Evening Prayer, has become particularly common, and is provided for by the current service books of the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Church of England.

Traditional Anglican worship of the Daily Office follows the patterns first set down in 1549 and 1552. Since the 20th-century liturgical movement, however, some Anglican churches have introduced new forms which are not based on this historic practice. This section will describe the traditional form, which is still widely used throughout the Anglican Communion.

The Book of Common Prayer has been described as "the Bible re-arranged for public worship": the core of the Anglican Daily Office services is almost entirely based on praying using the words of the Bible itself, and hearing readings from it.

According to the traditional editions of the Book of Common Prayer since 1552, both Morning and Evening Prayer open with a lengthy prayer of confession and absolution, but many Anglican provinces including the Church of England and the American Episcopal Church now no longer require this even at services according to the traditional forms.