The Anglican tradition is both catholic and reformed. Our catholic heritage comes from Celtic and Roman missionaries to the British Isles, founding a distinct “Church of England.” This vibrant and mission-oriented church embraced biblical teachings and catholicity (universality). These Christians actively spread the Gospel by integrating into villages and cities and engaging with people in their daily lives. In the 16th century, Christian leaders reformed the Church of England. They embraced the gospel of grace and affirmed Scripture’s authority yet preserved the sacramental and liturgical worship and bishop-led church government in place since the first century. Our beliefs can be summed up in confessions like the 39 Articles of Religion (https://anglicancompass.com/the-thirty-nine-articles-of-religion/)of the 16th century or the 21st-century Jerusalem Declaration.(https://www.gafcon.org/about/jerusalem-declaration)

Our worship is structured by the Book of Common Prayer (https://anglicancompass.com/the-book-of-common-prayer-bcp-a-rookie-anglican-guide/)(BCP). First published by Archbishop Cranmer in 1549, the BCP collected the ancient liturgies of the church and reformed them according to the teachings of scripture. The BCP includes services for the whole of Christian life. There’s daily prayer, Sunday communion, and services for the sacraments and the stages of life, from baptism to burial.

On Sunday Morning, Anglicans celebrate communion, also called Holy Eucharist. What are the different elements of this service? It typically begins with a procession and singing. The clergy will be wearing vestments. People will bow, kneel, and make the sign of the cross. The congregation will confess sin, read scripture, hear a sermon, say the creed, walk forward to eat the bread and wine. We believe in multi-sensory, embodied worship, a tradition dating back to ancient Israel.

Anglicans, along with Christians of many other traditions, organize their year not by the secular calendar but by the Church Calendar. Over the centuries, the Church has sought to proclaim God’s message through its cycles of fasts and feasts, just as the ancient Hebrews did before us. Through these, we preach the gospel to ourselves and others by commemorating moments in Christ’s life, significant doctrines, and faithful saints and martyrs from church history. For each season and commemoration, we have an assigned color, so you will see green, purple, white, and red (and occasionally others) at various points in the year.

Anglicans have long valued art and beauty as reflective of our creative impulse from our creation in the Image of God. The full-bodied worship and intentional beauty of our worship spaces, liturgy, and music that resulted were essential in pointing to the transcendent truths of God. This intentionality has led many great writers such as Jane Austen and C.S. Lewis,(https://anglicancompass.com/c-s-lewis-and-the-fullness-of-joy/) poet-priests such as John Donne and George Herbert,(https://anglicancompass.com/tag/george-herbert/) hymnists such as John Newton and Charles Wesley, and composers such as George Frederich Handel to flourish within the Anglican tradition.