| abstract | - The term Anglican (from Anglia, the Latin name for England) describes the people and churches that follow the religious traditions developed by the established Church of England. The Anglican Communion codifies the Anglican relationship to the Church of England as a theologically broad and often diverging community of churches, which holds the English church as its mother institution. Adherents of Anglicanism within the Anglican Communion (that is in communion with the See of Canterbury) worldwide number around 70 million but there are numerous denominations which consider themselves Anglican but which are out of the Communion. The issue of Catholic and Protestant affiliation is often confusing. Whilst many Anglicans regard themselves as being within the Protestant tradition, many other Anglicans, especially Anglo-Catholics, do not consider themselves as Protestants. The Church of England claims explicitly that the Church "upholds the catholic faith." (The Athanasian Creed states "And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the persons, nor dividing the substance." The phrase "catholic church" by definition means the universal Christian Church but also holds the sense of the "church in its fullness" ). Ultimately, the Anglican Church considers itself as being both catholic (stressing its continuity with the ancient Church), and Reformed / Protestant (noting that the Church does not accept the universal infallible authority of the Pope). The conduct of eucharistically-centred worship services is in keeping with the catholic liturgical tradition and the Communion emphasises its status of full communion with the Old-Catholic Utrecht Union — a small community of churches which split from the Roman Catholic Church in 1870 over the doctrine of papal infallibility. On the other hand, the development of Anglicanism as a distinctive theological tradition is also deeply connected with the Protestant Reformation. As with the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches (but unlike most Protestant churches), Anglicans claim authority within the church through apostolic succession from the first followers of Jesus. The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Consultation actually reached agreement on the doctrine of the ministry in their Elucidation of 1979 [1], but the Roman Catholic Church continues to hold that Anglican Orders are not "valid." In contrast, Anglican Orders are recognized as valid by the Old-Catholics and Lutherans, communions which also consider themselves "the catholic Church." Anglicans traditionally date their church back at least to its first Archbishop of Canterbury, Saint Augustine of Canterbury, in the 6th century and even centuries earlier to the Roman occupation. Many Anglicans point out that Christian missionaries existed in the British lands from the 1st century, with bishops established at Glastonbury by commission from the Apostle Philip. They consider Celtic Christianity a prefix of their faith, since many Celtic elements remained, even after the Synod of Whitby conformed to Roman customs (well after the establishment of the Canterbury See). They also point out that bishops from the British Isles participated in the early Ecumenical Councils - most significantly Pelagius, the monk who was almost successful in stopping Original Sin from becoming an official Church doctrine.
- Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English Church. Adherents of Anglicanism are called Anglicans. The great majority of Anglicans are members of churches which are part of the international Anglican Communion. Following the American Revolution, Anglican congregations in the United States and Canada were each reconstituted into autonomous churches with their own bishops and self-governing structures. This was adopted as the model for many newly formed churches. Today, all 38 member churches of the Anglican Communion are fully autonomous, each with its own primate and governing structure. Not all member churches of the Anglican Communion use the word "Anglican" in their name. For example, the mainline Anglican church in the United States is called the Episcopal Church, and its members are referred to as Episcopalians.
- Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. Anglicanism forms one of the principal traditions of Christianity, together with Protestantism, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 meaning the English Church. Adherents of Anglicanism are called Anglicans. The great majority of Anglicans are members of churches which are part of the international Anglican Communion. There are, however, a small number of churches outside of the Anglican Communion which also consider themselves to be in the Anglican tradition, most notably those referred to as Continuing Anglican churches. The faith of Anglicans is founded in the scriptures, the traditions of the apostolic church, the apostolic succession – "historic episcopate" and the early Church Fathers. Anglicanism forms one of the branches of Western Christianity; having definitively declared its independence from the Roman pontiff at the time of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, in what has been otherwise termed the British monachism. The earliest Anglican formularies corresponded closely to those of contemporary Reformed Protestantism; but by the end of the 16th century, the retention in Anglicanism of many traditional liturgical forms and of the episcopate was already seen as unacceptable by those promoting the most developed Protestant principles. In the first half of the 17th century the Church of England and associated episcopal churches in Ireland and in England's American colonies were presented by some Anglican divines as comprising a distinct Christian tradition, with theologies, structures and forms of worship representing a middle ground, or via media, between Reformed Protestantism and Roman Catholicism; a perspective that came to be highly influential in later theories of Anglican identity. Following the American Revolution, Anglican congregations in the United States and Canada were each reconstituted into an independent church with their own bishops and self-governing structures; which, through the expansion of the British Empire and the activity of Christian missions, was adopted as the model for many newly formed churches, especially in Africa, Australasia and the regions of the Pacific. In the 19th century the term Anglicanism was coined to describe the common religious tradition of these churches; as also that of the Scottish Episcopal Church, which, though originating earlier within the Church of Scotland, had come to be recognised as sharing this common identity. The degree of distinction between Reformed and western Catholic tendencies within the Anglican tradition is routinely a matter of debate both within specific Anglican churches and throughout the Anglican Communion. Unique to Anglicanism is the Book of Common Prayer, the collection of services that worshippers in most Anglican churches used for centuries. While it has since undergone many revisions and Anglican churches in different countries have developed other service books, the Prayer Book is still acknowledged as one of the ties that bind the Anglican Communion together. There is no single Anglican Church with universal juridical authority, since each national or regional church has full autonomy. As the name suggests, the Anglican Communion is an association of those churches in full communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. With over eighty million members the Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion in the world, after the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
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