Tuesday 3 November 2015

The Alternative Service Book Society

On this day in 1980, the ASB was born.

An exercise in the elimination of poetry, the ASB encapsulated modernity. That is, it was well-meaning but ugly, and soon obsolete.

We in the Alternative Service Book Society have the following Rule:

1. To use the ASB once a month, so we remember why we shouldn't.
2. To turn Anglican members of the ASBS in to the police, to remind them why religious establishment is a bad idea.
3. To wish it was still 1967.
4. To regret allowing that Anglo-Catholic Eucharistic Prayer in. It only encouraged them.

The Alternative Service Book Society (a sod-all-ity) meets fortnightly in a brutalist cubic church made from asbestos sheets and reinforced concrete, in the outskirts of Harlow.

We have no idea why.

It only gets us down.

3 comments :

  1. I actually bought my own copy of the ASB. God knows why.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I asked for the Series 3 booklets as a school prize winning gift. Mea culpa! (And indeed bought myself a copy of the NEB (with 'apocrypha').

    Series 2 though; now there was an order for Holy Communion!

    ReplyDelete
  3. A pity not to call it the Alternative Service Book Organization. ASBO has a certain ring, doesn't it?

    ReplyDelete

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