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Anglican Communion

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Origin 1534 to 1867

The worldwide fellowship of over forty autonomous national and regional churches descended from the Church of England, rooted in the sixteenth century English Reformation and formally organized from 1867, when the first Lambeth Conference was convened. It has no single doctrinal authority; cohesion rests on four Instruments of Communion, and recent decades have seen real strain over gender and sexuality that has left some member provinces in impaired or broken communion with others.

Facts
Belief
Defining Doctrinal Position
Trinitarian: one God in three persons 1
Its own record names it descended from the Church of England, matching Anglicanism, already carried as trinitarian.
Defining Doctrinal Position
Chalcedonian: two natures in the one person of Christ (Chalcedon, 451) 1
Its own record names it descended from the Church of England, matching Anglicanism, already carried as chalcedonian.
Confessional StandardSourced to the subject's own account
The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, adopted at Lambeth in 1888, which is a basis for reunion rather than a confession and binds no province to more than its four articles 3
Position on JustificationSourced to the subject's own account
No Communion Wide Standard 3
Position on the Eucharist
No Communion Wide Definition 1
Position on Predestination
Unsettled 1
Position on Marriage
No single uniform teaching on marriage's terms holds across the body 4
The Lambeth Conference's own 2022 Call on Human Dignity acknowledges there is no consensus across the Anglican Communion's forty-two provinces on the legitimacy of blessings and marriage rites for same-sex couples, with some provinces continuing to hold that only a marriage between a man and a woman is recognized and others having moved to bless or perform a same-sex marriage after their own process of theological reflection. This fact is scoped to the same-sex marriage question specifically, the question the Call itself addresses; it does not assert that the Communion's provinces also disagree on the terms of an opposite-sex marriage.
Marriage Position Detail
Episcopal News Service reported 26 July 2022 that the revised Lambeth Call on Human Dignity acknowledges there is no consensus across all forty-two of the Anglican Communion's provinces on the legitimacy of blessings and marriage rites for same-sex couples, a majority of provinces continuing to hold that same-gender marriage is not permissible while other provinces have blessed or welcomed a same-sex union or marriage after their own careful theological reflection and process of reception. 4
Position on Sexuality
The body holds no single settled position; the question is actively and openly contested within it 4
In July 2022, drafters of the Lambeth Conference's Call on Human Dignity revised the document, moving away from language seeking a reaffirmation of the 1998 Lambeth Resolution I.10 against same-sex marriage, toward language acknowledging there is no consensus across the Anglican Communion's forty-two provinces on the legitimacy of same-sex blessings and marriage. The revised Call still affirms that all baptized, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ, and the bishops stated they remain committed to listening and walking together despite deep disagreement.
Sexuality Position Detail
The revised Lambeth Call on Human Dignity, reported 26 July 2022, moved away from seeking a reaffirmation of the 1998 Lambeth Resolution I.10, which had declared homosexual practice incompatible with Scripture, toward language stating there is no consensus across all forty-two of the Anglican Communion's provinces on the legitimacy of blessings and marriage rites for same-sex couples. The Call states all baptized, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ, while the bishops stated they remain committed to listening and walking together to the maximum possible degree, despite their deep disagreement on these issues. 4
Status
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 5
A living worldwide fellowship of over forty member churches
Attributions
Church Family
Anglican 1
Origins
Origin Period
1534 to 1867 1
Place of Origin
England, spread worldwide through colonial and missionary expansion 1
Founder
No single founder. Formed as a communion from 1867 at the first Lambeth Conference, gathering churches descended from the Church of England. 2
The Communion is a fellowship of churches rather than a body founded by one person; its own record dates the organising conference.
Origin of the Name
Anglican from Anglicana ecclesia, the Church of England; Communion for the fellowship of autonomous member churches 1
Practice
Liturgical Language
The vernacular 2
Principle of Worship
Normative 1
Sacraments RecognisedSourced to the subject's own account
Two 3
Finances
Institutional Wealth or Finances
The Church Commissioners for England, the historic endowment fund that supports the Church of England's ministry (the Anglican Communion's mother church, though not a treasury for the wider Communion), was valued at GBP 11.1 billion at the end of 2024, after a 10.3 percent investment return during the year. 6
Figure covers the Church of England's own Church Commissioners fund, not the wider 42 province Anglican Communion, which has no single global treasury.
Basis of the Wealth Figure
Audited Annual Report 6
Financial Disclosure RegimeSourced to the subject's own account
The Church Commissioners for England publish an audited annual report and accounts each year under UK charity law. The wider Anglican Communion is an association of 42 self governing national and regional member churches with no single global treasury or consolidated financial disclosure of its own. 7
Wealth Figure As Of Year
2024 6
Trajectory
Membership Over Time
By 2015, the same World Christian Database put worldwide Anglican Communion membership at 90.771 million, nearly double the 1970 total, even as the Episcopal Church in the United States roughly halved over the same period. The Communion's center of gravity shifted decisively toward Africa, which grew from 7.718 million in 1970 to 56.947 million in 2015, while combined North American Anglican membership (the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada) fell from 4.373 million to 2.537 million. 9
Membership Over Time
The World Christian Database, compiled by Gina Zurlo and Todd Johnson of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, puts worldwide Anglican Communion membership at 47.394 million in 1970, as reported in David Goodhew's 2022 analysis for Covenant. The Anglican Communion Office's own website states an aggregate current figure (variously 80 to 110 million across different pages) but names no reference year or counting method for it, so it does not itself provide a dated series; the academic World Christian Database data is used here instead. 9
Membership Figure As Of
1970-01-01 9
Membership Figure As Of
2015-01-01 9
Basis of the Membership Figure
Scholarly or Demographic Estimate 9
History
Separation or Divergence
The Church of England's sixteenth century separation from Rome during the English Reformation; the Communion itself was formally organised as a fellowship of the resulting churches from 1867. 2
The Communion's own separation-adjacent history is the Reformation that produced its founding member church, restated from its own already-cited text.
Organisation
Governance
A federation of autonomous member organisations 1
A federation of autonomous national and regional member churches held together by four non-binding Instruments of Communion
Ordination
Varies between provinces or member bodies 1
Varies by province. Some member churches ordain women to all three orders, some to none, and the disagreement has left parts of the Communion in impaired communion with each other.
Relation to the State
Varies by Province 5
The Anglican Communion's forty plus member provinces carry no common legal status: the Church of England remains established by law in England while the constitutionally identical Church in Wales was disestablished in 1920 and the Church of Ireland was disestablished in 1871 by the Irish Church Act, and the great majority of Anglican provinces founded through colonial expansion, including the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada, have never been established at all.
Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern Use
Disagreements over the ordination of women and over gay clergy and same sex unions have led some provinces to declare impaired or broken communion with others 1
Giving
Standing Giving ExpectationSourced to the subject's own account
The Anglican Communion itself sets no single member-giving rule: it "has no official legal existence nor any governing structure that might exercise authority over the member churches," and even its own Lambeth Conference resolutions "have no legal effect on the autonomous provinces of the communion." Each of the Communion's 42 autonomous provinces sets its own teaching on member giving under its own canon law and its own local primate; there is no Communion-wide tithe, percentage or due binding an ordinary member anywhere in the Communion, distinct from the tithe-as-aspiration teaching already recorded on the Church of England-led Anglicanism fact on this axis. What the Communion's own history carries instead is a call to mutual giving between churches rather than a rule for individual members: the 1963 Toronto Anglican Congress's "Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ," drafted with delegates from nearly every diocese in the Communion, asked member churches to commit to sharing resources with one another, explicitly declining to create "a new central fund" and leaving "each church to determine its own need to share in the life of other churches." This is a documented structural absence rather than an unresearched gap: the Communion's own governing description of itself, not merely a lack of evidence, is why no single member rate exists at this level. 7 8
How the Expectation Is EnforcedSourced to the subject's own account
Customary Norm 7
Disputed
Standing of Holy Orders
Historic Episcopate Locally Adapted 3
Sourced to the subject's own accountThe claim is disputed from both sides. Leo XIII held Anglican orders absolutely null and utterly void in Apostolicae Curae in 1896 and the archbishops of Canterbury and York answered in Saepius Officio in 1897. Since provinces began ordaining women, some Anglican provinces no longer recognise each other's orders either.
In Other Languages (56 names)
  • الاتحاد الأنجليكي
  • Anglikanische Gemeinschaft
  • Αγγλικανική Κοινωνία
  • Comunión anglicana
  • عشای انگلیکان
  • Communion anglicane
  • הכנסייה האנגליקנית העולמית
  • आंग्लिकाई ऐक्य
  • Persekutuan Anglikan
  • Comunione anglicana
  • アングリカン・コミュニオン
  • 세계 성공회 공동체
  • Anglicaanse Gemeenschap
  • Wspólnota anglikańska
  • Comunhão Anglicana
  • Англиканское сообщество
  • Anglikanska kyrkogemenskapen
  • ஆங்கிலிக்க ஒன்றியம்
  • แองกลิคันคอมมิวเนียน
  • Anglikan Komünyonu
  • Англіканська спільнота
  • انگلیکان کمیونین
  • Khối hiệp thông Anh giáo
  • 普世聖公宗
  • Anglikaanse Gemeenskap
  • Англиканско съобщество
  • Iliz anglikan
  • Anglikanska zajednica
  • Comunió anglicana
  • Anglikánský svaz církví
  • Y Cymundeb Anglicanaidd
  • Den anglikanske kirke
  • Anglikana Komunio
  • Anglikaani kirik
  • Anglikaaninen kirkkoyhteisö
  • Anglikanska Kirkjan
  • Anglikán Közösség
  • Communion Anglican
  • Gréja Anglikan
  • Communio Anglicana
  • Comunia Anglican
  • Anglikāņu sadraudzība
  • Fiombonambe Anglikana
  • Англиканска заедница
  • ആംഗ്ലിക്കൻ സഭാ കൂട്ടായ്മ
  • Golongan Anglikan
  • Den anglikanske kyrkja
  • C'meunnion Anglyicanne
  • Comuniunea Anglicană
  • Anglikánsky zväz cirkví
  • Англиканска заједница
  • Kereke ea Chache
  • Jumuiya Anglikana
  • Komunyong Anglikano
  • Comunyon Anglicano
  • 普世圣公宗
Learn More
From the English Reformation to a Worldwide Communion

The Anglican Communion's roots lie in the sixteenth century English Reformation, when Henry VIII's 1534 break with Rome, prompted by the papacy's refusal to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, made the English monarch rather than the Pope the head of the church in England. The Elizabethan Settlement of 1559 fixed the enduring character of the resulting church as a distinctive middle way, retaining much traditional liturgy and church structure, bishops included, while adopting Reformed theology on many points, an ambiguity that has shaped Anglican identity ever since.

English colonial and missionary expansion from the seventeenth century onward carried this church far beyond England, planting churches across North America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and Australasia that gradually became self-governing national or regional provinces rather than remaining administratively part of the Church of England itself. By the nineteenth century these daughter churches, doctrinally related but organizationally independent, needed some means of maintaining a shared identity without a single governing authority.

That means arrived in 1867, when Archbishop of Canterbury Charles Longley convened the first Lambeth Conference at the request of Canadian bishops seeking a forum to discuss shared concerns, establishing the consultative, non-binding pattern of connection that still defines the Anglican Communion today.

Structure and Strain

The Anglican Communion has no single doctrinal authority comparable to the Pope in Roman Catholicism or an Ecumenical Patriarch in Eastern Orthodoxy. Its cohesion instead rests on four Instruments of Communion: the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose recognition has traditionally signaled membership; the Lambeth Conference of bishops, held roughly once a decade; the Anglican Consultative Council, a body of bishops, clergy and laity; and the Primates' Meeting, gathering the senior bishops of each member province. None of these bodies can compel a member church's compliance, a design that reflects the Communion's origin as a voluntary fellowship of already independent churches rather than a single hierarchical institution.

That looseness has come under real strain in recent decades. Disagreements over the ordination of women, and more sharply over the ordination of partnered gay clergy and the blessing of same sex unions, have led some provinces, particularly in parts of Africa and Asia, to declare impaired or broken communion with others, notably the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada, and to form parallel conservative structures such as the Global Anglican Future Conference. Whether the Communion holds together as a single body or continues to fragment along these lines remains an open and actively contested question within Anglicanism itself.

Denominations of Anglican Communion
Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Anglican Communion directly: "is not itself a member province of the Anglican Communion, while maintaining full communion with several Anglican Global South primates."

Source Anglican Church in North America (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Anglican Communion directly: "Wikipedia's article on the Anglican Communion, describing it as forty-two autonomous, self-governing provinces with no central legal or doctrinal authority binding them and no legal effect to its..."

Source Anglican Communion (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

A focus of unity rather than a head of the Communion. The Archbishop of Canterbury holds no jurisdiction in any province outside England: each province is self-governing, and Canterbury's place among the Instruments of Communion is one of precedence and convening, not of command.

Source The Study of AnglicanismStephen Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight (eds.)

This source names Anglican Communion directly: "ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Communion, fifty six years after the 1888 Lambeth Conference adopted the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, already recorded here, and sixty five years before..."

The Anglican Communion is the empire's most durable religious institution, and its membership is now overwhelmingly outside Britain.

This source names Anglican Communion directly: "charismatic spirituality across the Anglican Communion and into other mainline Protestant and eventually Catholic churches for two decades."

This source names Anglican Communion directly: "Twelve years after the Anglican Communion began forming through colonial expansion in 1787, and sixty eight years before the Archbishop of Canterbury convened the first Lambeth Conference in 1867..."

This source names Anglican Communion directly: "women were ordained priest in the Anglican Communion."

This source names Anglican Communion directly: "Baker, the first province of the Anglican Communion to formally and permanently authorise the ordination of women to the priesthood, when Jane Hwang Hsien-yuen and Joyce Bennett were ordained, years..."

This source names Anglican Communion directly: "document her recognition across the Anglican Communion as its first woman priest, her ministry in China and later in Canada, and the Church's own account of her significance in convincing the wider..."

This source names Anglican Communion directly: "as a symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion."

This source names Anglican Communion directly: "Between 27 July and 7 August 2022, the Anglican Communion held the fifteenth Lambeth Conference, the once a decade gathering of its bishops, in Canterbury, England, its first meeting since 2008..."

This source names Anglican Communion directly: "The meeting was the first time bishops of the young Anglican Communion had gathered as a single family for mutual counsel, and it began the pattern of roughly decennial Lambeth Conferences that has..."

This source names Anglican Communion directly: "for a reset of authority within the Anglican Communion."

Source The Kigali CommitmentGlobal Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON IV)the holders' own account

This source names Anglican Communion directly: "The Anglican Communion Office's own description of the Lambeth Conference as an institution, the once a decade gathering of the Communion's bishops convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and of..."

This source names Anglican Communion directly: "it is not evidence for how the modern Anglican Communion currently applies or interprets them, which is a separate and evolving question."

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account

This source names Anglican Communion directly: "a member province of the worldwide Anglican Communion, but it belongs to GAFCON and holds full communion with several Anglican Global South primates."

Source Anglican Church in North America (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Belongs to Tradition

Branch Of

The organized international fellowship that gives the wider Anglican tradition its institutional form.

Source The Study of AnglicanismStephen Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight (eds.)

Contains

A member province of the Anglican Communion.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

A member province of the Anglican Communion.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Critiqued

Eucharistic adoration, Practices

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Article XXVIII holds that the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was not by Christ's ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.

None (Ninth Hour), Practices

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. None was not carried into the Prayer Book, for the same stated reason.

Prime, Practices

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Prime was not carried into the Prayer Book. The Preface Concerning the Service of the Church says plainly that the ancient orders had become so altered and broken that they were put aside for one book with two daily services.

Seven Sacraments, Practices

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Article XXV holds that there are two sacraments ordained of Christ in the Gospel, and that the other five are not to be counted for sacraments of the Gospel.

Sext, Practices

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Sext was not carried into the Prayer Book, for the same stated reason.

Terce, Practices

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Terce was not carried into the Prayer Book, for the same stated reason.

Veneration of icons, Practices

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Article XXII names the worshipping and adoration of images and of relics among the things it calls a fond thing vainly invented and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture.

Veneration of saints and Mary, Practices

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Article XXII names the invocation of saints in the same sentence, and the Prayer Book addresses no prayer to any saint.

Rejected Here

Papal primacy and infallibility, Doctrines

No province accepts the universal jurisdiction of the see of Rome or the papal infallibility defined in 1870. The Quadrilateral locates continuity in the episcopate as a whole and names no see, and the Communion's own cohesion rests on four instruments that consult rather than command.

Source The Study of AnglicanismStephen Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight (eds.)
Humanae Vitae, Religious Legal Instruments

The Lambeth Conference of 1930 accepted the use of contraception within marriage where there was a moral obligation to limit parenthood, and the Communion has not withdrawn that.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Holds Element

Carried wherever the English cathedral tradition went, and one of the few things the provinces of the communion sing in common.

The seat of the archbishop of Canterbury, whose office is one of the four instruments through which the communion holds together.

The provinces of the Communion outside England are not established and are not governed by the English statute, though the Communion's origin runs through it.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Walsingham, Sacred Sites

The Anglican shrine draws pilgrims from provinces across the communion and has become a focus for the catholic strand within it.

Held Differently

1 Esdras, Scriptures & Texts

Named in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571, among the books the Church reads for example of life and instruction of manners but does not apply to establish any doctrine. Printed and appointed to be read, at a status deliberately short of the canon affirmed at Trent in 1546.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account
2 Esdras, Scriptures & Texts

Named in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571, among the books the Church reads for example of life and instruction of manners but does not apply to establish any doctrine. Printed and appointed to be read, at a status deliberately short of the canon affirmed at Trent in 1546.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account
Additions to Daniel, Scriptures & Texts

Named in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571, among the books the Church reads for example of life and instruction of manners but does not apply to establish any doctrine. Printed and appointed to be read, at a status deliberately short of the canon affirmed at Trent in 1546.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account
Additions to Esther, Scriptures & Texts

Named in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571, among the books the Church reads for example of life and instruction of manners but does not apply to establish any doctrine. Printed and appointed to be read, at a status deliberately short of the canon affirmed at Trent in 1546.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account
Book of Baruch, Scriptures & Texts

Named in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571, among the books the Church reads for example of life and instruction of manners but does not apply to establish any doctrine. Printed and appointed to be read, at a status deliberately short of the canon affirmed at Trent in 1546.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account
Book of Judith, Scriptures & Texts

Named in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571, among the books the Church reads for example of life and instruction of manners but does not apply to establish any doctrine. Printed and appointed to be read, at a status deliberately short of the canon affirmed at Trent in 1546.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account
Book of Tobit, Scriptures & Texts

Named in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571, among the books the Church reads for example of life and instruction of manners but does not apply to establish any doctrine. Printed and appointed to be read, at a status deliberately short of the canon affirmed at Trent in 1546.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account
Books of the Maccabees, Scriptures & Texts

Named in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571, among the books the Church reads for example of life and instruction of manners but does not apply to establish any doctrine. Printed and appointed to be read, at a status deliberately short of the canon affirmed at Trent in 1546.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account
Open and Closed Communion, Doctrines

Why this is disputed. The Anglican Communion holds no single settled position across its more than forty member churches. The Book of Common Prayer historically required confirmation, and by extension instruction in the faith, before admission to communion, a restrictive practice; many contemporary Anglican parishes worldwide now practice open communion, admitting any baptised Christian and in some cases anyone present regardless of baptism. Both the historic and the contemporary practice can be found within the Communion today, which is why no single the Anglican position can be stated.

Source The Book of Common PrayerChurch of England; ed. Brian Cummings
Prayer of Manasseh, Scriptures & Texts

Named in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571, among the books the Church reads for example of life and instruction of manners but does not apply to establish any doctrine. Printed and appointed to be read, at a status deliberately short of the canon affirmed at Trent in 1546.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account

The Communion's 1998 Lambeth resolution upheld marriage between a man and a woman and could not advise blessing same sex unions, but the Communion has no single church government binding its forty two provinces to that resolution. The Scottish Episcopal Church has married same sex couples since 2017 and the Church in Wales has blessed same sex civil marriages since 2021, while other provinces hold the 1998 resolution as settled teaching, so the Communion holds a different account of the question altogether: that each province decides it for itself rather than the Communion deciding it once for all.

Source Lambeth Conference 1998, Resolution I.10: Human SexualityLambeth Conferencethe holders' own account
Additional Source With Same-Sex Marriage in the Spotlight, Where Does It Stand Across the Anglican Communion? (Episcopal News Service, 2022)Egan MillardThe 2022 province by province survey naming the Scottish Episcopal Church's 2017 and the Church in Wales's 2021 departures from the 1998 position
Wisdom of Sirach, Scriptures & Texts

Named in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571, among the books the Church reads for example of life and instruction of manners but does not apply to establish any doctrine. Printed and appointed to be read, at a status deliberately short of the canon affirmed at Trent in 1546.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account
Wisdom of Solomon, Scriptures & Texts

Named in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571, among the books the Church reads for example of life and instruction of manners but does not apply to establish any doctrine. Printed and appointed to be read, at a status deliberately short of the canon affirmed at Trent in 1546.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Agnus Dei, Prayers

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The offertory sentences of the communion service are a sustained instruction on giving to the poor, and the alms are collected at that point in the rite.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The Prayer Book provides for the visitation and the anointing of the sick, and the Articles decline to number it among the two sacraments of the gospel.

The fourth article of the Quadrilateral keeps the historic episcopate, but the clause allowing it to be locally adapted in the methods of its administration was put there on purpose. The Communion commits to the succession of bishops without committing to any one account of what that succession conveys.

Source The Chicago-Lambeth QuadrilateralThe Lambeth Conferencethe holders' own account
Baptism, Rituals

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Baptism is ordinarily by pouring, and the Articles call it a sign of regeneration by which the promises of forgiveness are visibly signed and sealed.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The baptismal covenant is the framework of the catechism and of the renewal of vows at Easter.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Religious orders were dissolved in the sixteenth century and refounded from 1841 onward, so that this church now has communities of monks and nuns under vows.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The Thanksgiving of Women after Child-birth, commonly called the Churching of Women, is a service of the Prayer Book.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion.

Compline, Practices

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Compline was not in the sixteenth-century books and was restored in the twentieth, and it is now in general use.

Confession, Practices

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Anglicanism keeps auricular confession available but not required, summarised in the maxim that all may, none must, some should; a general confession said by the whole congregation is the ordinary form.

Confirmation, Rituals

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Confirmation is conferred by a bishop at an age of discretion, and the Prayer Book requires the candidate to renew the promises made at baptism in person.

Source The Study of AnglicanismStephen Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight (eds.)
Ecumenism, Doctrines

The Quadrilateral was written as terms for reunion and the Communion has acted on them. The Porvoo Common Statement, agreed in 1993, brought British and Irish Anglican churches into communion with Nordic and Baltic Lutheran churches on the basis of a shared historic episcopate rather than an agreed confession.

Source Together in Mission and Ministry: The Porvoo Common StatementThe Porvoo Conversations between the British and Irish Anglican Churches and the Nordic and Baltic Lutheran Churches
Fasting, Practices

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The Prayer Book sets out a table of the fasts of the church: Ash Wednesday, the forty days of Lent, the ember days, the rogation days and the Fridays of the year.

Funeral Rites, Rituals

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The Order for the Burial of the Dead is in the Prayer Book, and the sixteenth-century books removed the prayers for the dead that the medieval rite had carried.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion.

Gloria Patri, Prayers

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion.

Holy Orders, Rituals

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The threefold order of bishops, priests and deacons was retained, and since the twentieth century women have been ordained to all three orders in most provinces, which is the sharpest present difference from Rome and the Orthodox churches.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The Articles direct that the baptism of young children is in any wise to be retained as most agreeable with the institution of Christ.

Intinction, Practices

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Intinction is widely used, and the church has argued about it, since the Prayer Book directs that the cup be given to each communicant.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The Roman sequence of colours was retained in use and was made explicit again in the modern service books.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The marriage service of the Prayer Book, with its vow to have and to hold, is the ancestor of the wedding words used across the English-speaking world, including by people of no religion.

Matins, Practices

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Morning Prayer is the surviving daily office, and it is Matins and Lauds combined into one service. The reduction of eight hours to two was deliberate and is the plainest liturgical difference between this church and Rome.

Monastic Vows, Rituals

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are made in the refounded religious communities of this church.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account
Nunc Dimittis, Prayers

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Sunday is kept as the Lord's Day with the duty of public worship, without the sabbatarian rigour the Reformed churches attached to it.

Pilgrimage, Practices

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Pilgrimage was suppressed at the Reformation and revived from the nineteenth century onward, most visibly at Walsingham.

Prayer, Practices

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Prayer is shaped by a single authorised book rather than by a devotional culture, so that a congregation anywhere says the same words on the same day.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion.

Sola Scriptura, Doctrines

Why this is disputed. Anglicanisms own Thirty Nine Articles affirm that scripture contains all things necessary to salvation, but Richard Hookers classical formulation of Anglican method reads that affirmation alongside reason and tradition as complementary sources of authority, rather than treating scripture as standing alone in the stricter sense the continental Reformers intended at Worms and in the Book of Concord. Historians of Anglican theology continue to debate whether this amounts to the same sola scriptura principle in a qualified form or to a genuinely different method sharing the same name.

Source The Study of AnglicanismStephen Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight (eds.)
The Anaphora, Rituals

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The Prayer of Consecration is the Anglican anaphora, and the arrangement of its parts differs between the English, Scottish and American books.

Source The Study of AnglicanismStephen Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight (eds.)

The four articles agreed at Lambeth in 1888 as the minimum basis for reunion: the holy scriptures, the Nicene and Apostles Creeds, baptism and the Lord's Supper, and the historic episcopate locally adapted. It is the nearest thing the Communion has to a common doctrinal instrument, and it was written as a floor for talks with other churches, not as a confession binding its own members.

Source The Chicago-Lambeth QuadrilateralThe Lambeth Conferencethe holders' own account
The Epiclesis, Rituals

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The invocation of the Spirit was in the 1549 book, removed in 1552, and restored in the Scottish and American books, from which it came back into the modern English ones.

The Fraction, Rituals

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The breaking of the bread is a distinct action of the rite and in the modern books has its own words.

The Grace, Prayers

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion.

Source The Chicago-Lambeth QuadrilateralThe Lambeth Conferencethe holders' own account
Source The Nicene-Constantinopolitan CreedFirst Council of Constantinoplethe holders' own account

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. Anglicans call it Holy Communion, the Eucharist or the Mass according to churchmanship, and the Thirty-Nine Articles reject transubstantiation while leaving the manner of Christ's presence deliberately undefined.

Why this is disputed. The Anglican Communion has never itself defined the mode of Christs presence, and the range of belief within it spans the whole debate the doctrines own page describes. Anglo Catholic provinces and parishes hold positions close to the Catholic teaching of a real change in substance; the Thirty Nine Articles affirm a true, heavenly reception of Christ while deliberately declining to explain how; and Reformed leaning parts of the Communion hold positions closer to a memorial reading. All three coexist within one Communion, which is why no single account of the Anglican position is accurate.

Source The Study of AnglicanismStephen Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight (eds.)
Source The Nicene-Constantinopolitan CreedFirst Council of Constantinoplethe holders' own account

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The words of institution stand in the Prayer of Consecration, and the Articles deny that the sacrament was ordained to be gazed upon or carried about.

Trinity, Doctrines

The second article of the Quadrilateral takes the Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith, with the Apostles Creed as the baptismal symbol. The Communion's trinitarian commitment is creedal rather than confessional, which is why it survives provinces that share no other doctrinal standard.

Source The Chicago-Lambeth QuadrilateralThe Lambeth Conferencethe holders' own account

An Episcopal parish chartered in 1697, within the Anglican Communion.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

Twenty three of the executed converts were Anglican; the Anglican Communion commemorates them as its own martyrs on the same 3 June feast day it shares with the Catholic canonization.

Source Britannica, "Martyrs of Uganda"The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The book is Anglicanism's common thread in place of a magisterium, holding morning and evening prayer, communion, baptism, marriage and burial in one volume in the people's hands. Each province has its own version and modern-language rites are now more used, but the 1662 book remains legally established in England.

Vespers, Practices

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion.

An Episcopal cathedral, seat of the Bishop of Washington, within the Anglican Communion.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

Sung at the coronation of the sovereign who serves as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the Anglican Communion's own mother church, without exception since 1727.

Source Wikipedia, "Zadok the Priest"Wikipedia contributors
Sources
1. The Study of Anglicanism
Stephen Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight (eds.), SPCK / Fortress Press, 1998
2. The Book of Common Prayer
Church of England; ed. Brian Cummings, Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 2011View the Source
3. The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral
The Lambeth Conference, 1888Resolution 11 of 1888, the four articles in fullthe holders' own account
4. Lambeth Conference Planners Revise Calls Document, Acknowledging Differences on Same-Sex Marriage (Episcopal News Service)
Episcopal News Service, 2022the stated position on sexuality, the stated position on marriage and both their detailsView the Source
5. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
6. Church Commissioners for England Endowment Fund Delivers 10.3% Return in 2024
Church Commissioners for England, The Church of England, 2025View the Source
7. Anglican Communion (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, WikipediaView the Source
8. Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ
Anglican Congress, Toronto (hosted at anglicanhistory.org)
9. Is Anglicanism Growing or Dying? New Data
David Goodhew, Covenant, The Living Church, 2022View the Source
The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion
Church of England, 1571the holders' own accountView the Source
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source
Together in Mission and Ministry: The Porvoo Common Statement
The Porvoo Conversations between the British and Irish Anglican Churches and the Nordic and Baltic Lutheran Churches, 1993The agreement on the historic episcopate and the churches that signed it
Lambeth Conference 1998, Resolution I.10: Human Sexuality
Lambeth Conference, Anglican Communion Office, 1998Objects and Practices of This Tradition: The full inclusion of LGBTQ people in ordination and marriage, Resolution I.10, upholding traditional marriage as the Communion's 1998 conference positionthe holders' own accountView the Source
With Same-Sex Marriage in the Spotlight, Where Does It Stand Across the Anglican Communion? (Episcopal News Service, 2022)
Egan Millard, Episcopal News Service, 2022Objects and Practices of This Tradition: The full inclusion of LGBTQ people in ordination and marriage, The 2022 province by province survey naming the Scottish Episcopal Church's 2017 and the Church in Wales's 2021 departures from the 1998 positionView the Source

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