Having grown up in the Episcopal Church, I’ve been using The Book of Common Prayer for quite a number of years, having first started with the 1928 BCP. I’m also someone who enjoys working with and using the latest in electronic devices so now that I’m fully engaged in iPhones and iPads, I thought it only appropriate to try out an app for The Book of Common Prayer. Here’s my review of iBCP developed by Alexander Orozco and available on iTunes.
App Description
The Book of Common Prayer is a liturgical resource used by members of the Episcopal Church (Anglican Church) in the United States.
The full title of the Book of Common Prayer is “The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church.” As it sounds, the BCP includes the common liturgies for all the various rites and practices of the church, including the Morning and Evening Offices, the Eucharist, Ministration to the Sick, Reconciliation of a Penitent, and many others.
The original Book of Common Prayer is one of the major works of English Literature. Since its introduction in the sixteenth century it has had an enormous influence on everything written in English. It has gone through a number of revisions, both in England and in the other countries of the Anglican Communion. This application is based on The Episcopal Church’s 1979 BCP.reNote that this electronic version is NOT approved by the Custodian of the Standard Book of Common Prayer. Also note that this application is in no way officially associated with the The Episcopal Church or the Church Publishing Corporation. It is a private transcription of the 1979 BCP taken from PUBLIC DOMAIN text.
My Review
Overall, this is a useful app but more so from the standpoint that it is just nice to be able to have the BCP available on my iPad. Now I’m able to see the text clearly with the bright backlight of the iPad so when you’re in a situation where the lighting is not ideal, the iPad makes up for it. Plus iBCP provides the ability to enlarge or reduce the font size so I’m not pulling out my reading glasses.
The negatives I found to the app are that it doesn’t provide for each page changing like you find today with Kindle Books and it really does need to have a search feature added. The other negative is the app is priced at $4.99 which is a bit high but would be justified if the developer would continue to add some of the most requested features.
Here are some screenshots of various pages.
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