When people ask me what I do, I always get the same response: ‘Gosh, that is quite niche.’ I run a publishing company, and we publish bespoke hymn books and (very) bespoke diaries. ‘Diaries?’, they say. ‘Do people still use diaries?’ And then when I say that the diaries we publish are for churchwardens, they become even more amazed. ‘Churchwardens? Do people still go to church?’
So it might surprise you to know that, while specialising in the publication of such old school items as physical, paper diaries (yes, paper – with pages that turn), produced specifically for people who go to church (yes, church – with pews and everything), I found myself succumbing to the AI band wagon.
I have spent the last few years berating everything about Artificial Intelligence, and all that is stands for. But when a friend of mine told me not to be such a dinosaur, I decided to put AI to the test with a real project that I would have struggled to do on my own.
We all know which epistles and gospels we are expecting to hear at Holy Communion on any given Sunday, because – assuming we know which Sunday it is, or which Feast or Holy Day, they are printed in full in the book. But when it comes to Morning and Evening Prayer, things are a little more tricky. We open the book, and there we find not one but two possible schemes. If we allow our natural prejudice to reject, on principle, the 1922 Revised Table of Lessons, as being altogether too modern (not to say unauthorised), we are still left to struggle with the Proper Lessons, the Proper Psalms and the Calendar which we find at the front. Navigating this array of tables, with its mysterious blanks in certain rows, is not for the faint-hearted. Are we looking for the Lessons Proper for Sundays, are we looking at the Lessons Proper for Holy Days, or are we looking at the Calendar, with its table of lessons? And how do these relate to the Epistles and Gospels printed later on in the book, Sunday by Sunday, Holy Day by Holy Day? By the time you have worked it all out for the day in question the organist is striking up the opening bars of the final hymn.
And even then, we are not out of the soup (as Bertie Wooster would say). Far from it. Because this handy little spaghetti junction of Bible references are not even from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer at all. They are a Victorian construct, imposed upon the unsuspecting church-goers in 1871 by Act of Parliament. Those of you lucky enough to have a copy of the BCP which predates this rush of ecclesiastical blood to the head will find a different set of readings, readings which would have been familiar to Charles II, John Wesley, Gilbert White, Jane Austen, Keats, Shelley… and of course to Cranmer himself, who essentially devised them.
So – to return to my theme – what has this got to do with AI? Well, keen to produce a diary for 2027 which would lay out the liturgical calendar for the year, together with its Feast Days, Holy Days, commemorations and Bible readings for Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer and Holy Communion, I found myself enlisting the help of AI. I won’t advertise any particular platform in the pages of this august publication, but suffice it to say, my interactions with this beast tended to begin, ‘Good morning Chatty.’ I uploaded the original 1662 Kalendar and Proper Lessons, I uploaded the Epistles and Gospels for the various Sundays and Holy Days, and I uploaded the Order for How the Psalter and the rest of holy Scripture is to be read. My source for all this was Brian Cummings’ excellent edition of the texts of 1549, 1559 and 1662, which I cannot recommend too highly. I told Chatty to work through all the references, obey all the rules, and generate a file to be published without any intervention.
And the result? A diary, one which you can put in a pocket or leave on a table, which you can write in and refer to, and which guides you through the BCP year from Advent to Advent as was intended in 1662. And in plenty of time for Christmas!
Now if that is not a good use of Artificial Intelligence, I don’t know what is.
Nicholas Oulton
Editor, Churchwarden Publications Ltd
https:www.churchwardenbooks.co.uk
The article above was published in The Prayer Book Today, Michaelmas 2026
https://www.pbs.org.uk/