A Prayer Book for the Twenty-First Century

John McQuiston II has eloquently rewritten time-honored prayers and psalms in language expressing the kind of deep, pervading love that all true mystics demonstrate. McQuiston's prayers dispense with outmoded patriarchal language, preferring instead non-gendered terms for God and all things spiritual. In this small gem of a book there is no struggle to insert feminist terms, just a remarkably lucent use of words to point to the inexpressible as well as possible. This book honors the presence of God in all creation from galaxy to atom and expresses, I imagine, many people's experience of finding the holy in everything. If someone you know and care about is searching for a prayer book that speaks their language while maintaining a sense of wonder and awe, this is the one.

The image of God as an all-powerful father figure goes back thousands of years, yet in the contemporary world today (especially with respect to the West), traditionally standard prayers and worship language have fallen out of favor, while a spiritual yearning to know and communicated with the Sacred continues to remain a strong and compelling aspiration. In A Prayer Book For The 21st Century, John McQuiston II (an attorney and active lay leader in his Memphis, Tennessee congregation) provides morning and evening devotions for a two week span, plus complete Morning and Evening Prayer services, along with a Service of Commemoration for Our Union. McQuiston employs a language for and about God that reflects contemporary understanding of the nature of God and His actions in the universe. A pocket-sized devotional, A Prayer Book For The 21st Century is especially commended to the attention of individuals and congregations yearning to worship and express themselves to God in a manner that is appropriate to contemporary realities and Christian theology.