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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. Books containing mainly orders of religious services, or readings for them are termed "service books" or "liturgical books", and are thus not prayer-books in the strictest sense, but the term is often used very loosely. A religion's scriptures might also be considered prayer books as well.
In Judaism, the Siddur is a prayer book "containing the three daily prayers; also the prayers for Shabbat, Rosh-Chodesh and the festivals."[1]
The Agpeya and Shehimo are breviaries used in Oriental Orthodox Christianity to pray the canonical hours at seven fixed prayer times of the day in the eastward direction.[2][3]
Breviaries
Breviaries are prayer books used in many Christian denominations by believers to pray at fixed prayer times the canonical hours seven times a day, a practice that has its roots in Psalm 119:164.[4]
Daily devotional
Throughout the year, and especially during certain seasons of the Christian liturgical kalendar such as Advent and Lent, many Christians pray a daily devotional, which contains a prayer for each day along with a reflection on a passage from the Christian Bible.
Notable prayer books
The following are among the many books to which the term may loosely refer in various churches, 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 last group below:
- Actual prayer books
General
- Daily Watchwords (Moravian Christian)
- Christenpflicht (Anabaptist Christian)
- Raccolta (Catholic Christian)
- Saint Augustine's Prayer Book (Anglican Christian)
- Vatican Croatian Prayer Book (Catholic Christian)
Breviaries
- Agpeya (Coptic Orthodox Christianity)
- Anglican Breviary (Anglican Christianity)
- For All the Saints (Lutheran Christianity)
- Roman Breviary (Roman Catholic Christianity)
- Shehimo (Indian Orthodox Christianity)
- Take Our Moments and Our Days: An Anabaptist Prayer Book (Mennonite Christianity)[5]
- The Brotherhood Prayer Book (Lutheran Christianity)
- Book of Hours, a prayer book that contains the canonical hours in various branches of Christianity
- Common Worship: Daily Prayer The first prayer book published since the Reformation by the Church of England containing the complete round of services of the Word for every day of the year: Morning Prayer, Prayer During the Day, Evening Prayer and Night Prayer, also called Compline.
- Service & liturgical books
- Lutheran Service Book, in Lutheranism
- Book of Common Prayer (BCP), first published in 1549 for the Church of England and has considerable literary influence in the English language
- Roman 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
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