Dark Beginnings
When I tell people I am Anglican, I usually get this question, which sums up about all people know of Anglicanism:
“Didn’t King Henry start that Church just to get a divorce?”
Yes. We’re those guys. But it didn’t stop there. There were scores of murders, martyrs, political corruption, intrigue, and lots of other messy things that helped form Anglicanism (many of which continue to this day), but all these things helped give Anglicanism a unique outlook to the faith.
Defining Anglicanism is much like nailing Jello to a tree.
Anglican Theology is much harder to define than other Protestant Churches because our theology is much more of a practice than an actual declaration of belief. Central to the Anglican faith is the “Book of Common Prayer” (link on the right) which is about the closest thing to a confession we have. This illustrates a very important fact: our theology is what we do, not what we subscribe to. There are a wide range of “theologies” in the Communion; Orthodox, Catholic, Evangelical, Charismatic, Calvinist, Wesleyan, ect.., but we are all Anglican in that we come together and worship God. The Worship of God comes first to us, all else is secondary.
For the most part, we all agree that the Bible, Old and New Testaments, are the sacred word of God; we uphold the three Creeds of the faith (Apostles, Nicaean, and Athenian); and we uphold the Ecumenical Councils of the Church, as well as the Historic Episcopate routed in the See of Canterbury.
That is just a very overview of the faith, in closing Id like to quote a former Archbishop of Canterbury:
“The Anglican Communion has no peculiar thought, practice, creed or confession of its own. It has only the Catholic Faith of the ancient Catholic Church, as preserved in the Catholic Creeds and maintained in the Catholic and Apostolic constitution of Christ’s Church from the beginning.”
- Rt. Hon And Rt. Rev Geoffrey Fisher, Former Archbishop of Canterbury
God Bless
+Alex Resurgent
Feast of St. Martha
