WHAT IS THE ANGLICAN CHURCH?

A HISTORIC CHURCH

School history books tend to say that the Anglican Church was invented by Henry VIII in order to legitimize his divorce. However, it does have to be said that that Henry VIII’s involvement in the life of the Anglican Church consisted of freeing it from Roman legislation. The Church was in a process of reform which would culminate in the third king after Henry.
Christianity has such a long history in Great Britain that some traditions claim that its founder was Joseph of Arimathea, and there are even others who suggest that Anglicanism came out of one of St Paul’s missionary journeys. Whatever the truth may be, the first historical fact that we can cite is the definite presence of three English bishops at the Council of Arles, in AD 313.

A REFORMED CHURCH

The rediscovery of the doctrine of justification by faith by Luther set off a process of the reformation of the antiquated medieval church, burdened with penances, pilgrimages, fasts, absolutions, austerity, masses, relics, indulgencies and many other activities which had the aim of gaining salvation by human works.

John Wycliff having already translated the Bible into English, the English Church was a fertile field for receiving this rediscovery, which brought a joyful spiritual freedom which could not be contained by the medieval means. The law which negated the papal supremacy, and which was presented by the king to Parliament in 1534, started off the Reformation of the Church in England.

A BIBLICAL CHURCH

The only advance made during the time of Henry VIII was the provision of Bibles in English for each church. The main reformatory impetus came under Edward VI’s reign, a period during which the Archbishop of Canterbury – Thomas Cranmer – wrote “The Book of Common Prayer”, the origin and purpose of which was the search for, and establishment of, the biblical truth in the life of the church and of believers. This book, and its subsequent editions, have given Anglicanism its distinctive character.

A COMPREHENSIVE CHURCH

The sufferings that came with the process of reform encouraged Queen Elizabeth I to infuse the church with a comprehensive and tolerant character, “not enquiring too much into consciences”. The 39 Articles of Religion, approved in 1562, defined the limits of this comprehensive policy, with the Church being ready to subject its theology and practice to permanent revision in the light of the Holy Scriptures.

The expansion of the Anglican Church throughout the world, penetrating into the most varied of cultures, has been possible thanks to this comprehensive spirituality which, trusting in the authority of the Holy Spirit, avoids forcing its members into absolute conformity.

A CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT CHURCH

The Anglican Church considers itself to be a genuine part of the true church, the universal church, which at all times and in all places has confessed Jesus as Lord and Saviour, never forgetting that the ecclesiastical tradition is secondary to the apostolic tradition contained in the Scriptures. And it is precisely this point that explains its protestantism: not in opposition to the original catholicism but as its safeguard, since conserving the authoritarian value of the apostolic tradition is the very objective of the protestant Reformation.