Anglican Communion

General Information

The Anglican Communion is a worldwide fellowship of independent churches derived from the Church of England. The communion has 70 provinces, located on every continent, with some 430 dioceses, and approximately 27 million members. Although independent, the member churches acknowledge a common heritage including the Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty Nine Articles, and the threefold ministry of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. The bishops meet every ten years, at the invitation of the archbishop of Canterbury, in the Lambeth Conference. Cooperation between the member churches is facilitated by the Anglican Consultative Council, with its secretary general and with the archbishop of Canterbury as president. Regional councils link provinces within specific geographical regions.

The Anglican Communion is committed to the reunion of all Christian churches. In 1888 the Lambeth Conference adopted as its basis for reunion a Quadrilateral, by which it defined those things essential to any church:

1. "The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as 'containing all things necessary to salvation,' and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith";
2. "The Apostles' Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith";
3. "The two Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself - Baptism and the Supper of the Lord - ministered with unfailing use of Christ's words of Institution, and of the elements ordained by Him";
4. "The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church."

John E Booty

Bibliography
M Marshall, The Anglican Church Today and Tomorrow (1984); S Neill, Anglicanism (1977).

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Anglican Communion

General Information

The Anglican Communion is a worldwide fellowship of national and regional churches in communion with the Church of England and the archbishop of Canterbury. With about 385 dioceses throughout the world, the total membership of the churches, including the Episcopal church in the United States, is approximately 73 million. Intended to promote mutual understanding and cooperation in common tasks, the Communion unites churches that share a common heritage and subscribe to the Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1884. The Quadrilateral, a statement of the doctrines considered essential from the Anglican standpoint, upholds the catholic and apostolic faith and order of the Christian church as found in Scripture, the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, the Apostles' Creed and Nicene Creed, and episcopal government (see Bishop). All the churches use the Book of Common Prayer, reformed and adapted to the needs of the times and of particular locales.

Although the Anglican Communion has existed since the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Church of England established foreign missions, its effective function as a communion of independent churches began in 1867. In that year, the first Lambeth Conference, an assembly of the bishops of the whole Anglican Communion under the presidency of the archbishop of Canterbury, was held at Lambeth Palace, London. A conference has met there about every ten years since then to deal with doctrinal, disciplinary, and ecumenical matters, as well as missionary responsibilities. Much of the agenda has concerned the unity of the church. In 1948, the Lambeth Conference heralded the birth of the Church of South India, which united certain Anglican dioceses with non-Anglican churches in that area. The Lambeth Conference of 1968 established the Anglican Consultative Council under the presidency of the archbishop of Canterbury. The council, composed of 60 representatives from every part of the Anglican Communion who meet every two to three years, is intended to supply guidance on policy matters of importance to the Communion, to forward ecumenical relations, and to provide cooperation in missionary work. Regional councils are also active in South America, East Asia, the South Pacific, and North America, with more to be established. These councils were created to promote better communication among the churches of a given area and to advance cooperative planning efforts.

John Everitt Booty

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Anglican Communion

Advanced Information

The Anglican Communion is a worldwide fellowship of churches in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury (England) and whose bishops are invited each decade (except during wartime) to the Lambeth Conference held in London since 1867. Anglicans hold that theirs is the church of NT times and the early church, reformed in the sixteenth century and waiting for the reunion of all Christians.

Bishops are the chief officers of Anglican churches, with arch - bishops or presiding bishops functioning as "first among equals" with national or provincial responsibilities and administrative authority. Only bishops may ordain clergy and consecrate other bishops. Some dioceses have assistant bishops called coadjutor or suffragan bishops. The latter does not automatically succeed the diocesan bishop, whereas the coadjutor does.

The basic unit in the church is the parish with its congregation and rector. A mission may be a congregation dependent upon a parish (or diocese). The diocese is that group of parishes and missions under a bishop whose representatives meet each year for a diocesan convention (or council). Each parish and mission is represented by laity as well as clergy, and laity are represented on all the significant governing committees. Bishops are elected at these conventions or councils in most Anglican churches, but some bishops are still appointed, as in the case of the Church of England and many mission dioceses.

The Book of Common Prayer, in one of its many derived forms, is used by all Anglican churches. It is regarded as the distinctive embodiment of Anglican doctrine following the principle of "the rule of prayer is the rule of belief" (lex orandi, lex credendi). The section of the Prayer Book called the Ordinal, by which clergy are ordained following their vows, is especially crucial for doctrinal standards. The Holy Scripture is declared to be the Word of God and to contain all that is necessary to salvation. The Nicene and Apostles' Creeds are accepted as confessing the faith of Scripture and classical Christianity.

The Thirty nine Articles, dating from the Elizabethan settlement in the sixteenth century, are not required for explicit assent in most of the communion, but they are generally bound with the Prayer Book and regarded as an important historical statement and document. These articles explicitly reject the doctrine of transubstantiation and affirm the doctrines of justification by faith, the Trinity, and the person of Christ as "very God and very Man."

The worship in Anglican churches varies widely but is characterized by an attempt to follow the liturgical year; that is, to read the prescribed lessons designed to emphasize that portion of revelation from advent and the nativity (Christmas) through the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles (Epiphany), Lent, Easter, and Pentecost. Worship is decisively biblical in that readings from both testaments are required at all normal services. The Prayer Book is saturated with Scripture in the phrases of the prayers, the versicles and responses, the canticles, and the Psalter (book of Psalms).

The Lord's Supper, or Holy Eucharist, is generally regarded as the central service, and gradually over the last century has come to be held with increasing frequency. The norm for the public worship is to stand to sing, sit to listen, and kneel to pray. In recent revisions the Prayer Book has seen its most substantial changes from the sixteenth century work of Thomas Cranmer. The chief characteristics of the new books are flexibility, with options ranging from forms virtually identical to the traditional books to others which are exceedingly informal, replacing "thou" with "you" in addressing God, and giving modern synonyms for more obscure terms. In addition, the new revisions attempt to include more lay and congregational participation than was possible in the sixteenth century, when a literate congregation could not be assumed. The revisions have, however, met with considerable resistance on the part of many who feel the language to be inferior to Cranmer's and that some of the changes have unfortunate doctrinal implications.

The overall practical effect of this growing diversity among the Prayer Books will likely lead to more emphasis on Anglican identity being drawn from the pan Anglican communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury than on the use of a common Prayer Book as has been the case in the past.

The basic intention of Anglican worship is expressed in the Prayer Book: "to render thanks for the great benefits that we have received at his hands, to set forth his most worthy praise, to hear his most holy word, and to ask those things which are requisite and necessary, as well as for the body as the soul." This is sought to be done with all the majesty, solemnity, and aesthetic quality possible, while at the same time making the mystery and awe as accessible and relevant as can be done to any and all conditions.

The wide diversity within Anglicanism is reflected by the astonishing growth and evangelical character of the church in East Africa, the highly sacramental and Anglo Catholic tradition of the Province of South Africa, the liberal spirit and discomfort with classical expressions of orthodoxy on the part of the authors of The Myth of God Incarnate, and the conservative evangelicals who retain an unyielding loyalty to Scripture and the Thirty nine Articles.

C F Allison
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)

Bibliography
P C Hughes, The Anglican Reformers; S Neill, Anglicanism; More and Cross, Anglicanism; W Temple, Doctrine in the Church of England.

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