The Anglican Communion
The Anglican Communion is a world-wide affiliation of Anglican Churches. 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 these churches in full communion with the Church of England (which may be regarded as the "mother church" of the worldwide communion), and specifically with its primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Is the third largest Christian Church
With over seventy
million members, the Anglican Communion is the third largest communion in the
world, after the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. It is
estimated that there are approximately forty million non-Canterbury Anglicans
worldwide as against seventy million members of the Anglican Communion.
Ordains Women as Bishops, Deacons & Priests
The majority of
Anglican provinces ordain women as both deacons and priests; however, only a few
provinces have consecrated women as Bishops (although the number of provinces
where women bishops are canonically possible is much greater). Some provinces
within the Anglican Communion, such as the Episcopal Church in the United States
of America (ECUSA), the Anglican Church of New Zealand, and the Anglican Church
of Canada, ordain women as deacons, priests and bishops.
Recognizes the Elohim (God as S/He)
New guidelines for bishops and priests reportedly warn the clergy to reconsider
the language they use in sermons and ensure the hymns they sing don't foster the
oppression of women. Church leaders have been told to think twice before
referring to God as "He" because of dangers it could lead to domestic violence.
The guidelines, entitled Responding to Domestic Abuse, advised that Biblical
violence "in combination with uncritical use of masculine imagery, can validate
overbearing and ultimately violent patterns of behavior". Plymouth vicar Rod
Thomas, a spokesman for the Church, said according to The Bible, God had female
and male characteristics, but it was not inhibited about referring to God as
male. Church guidelines - Responding to Domestic Abuse -say that centuries of
Christian teaching have led to questionable assumptions about the Bible and
moral teaching. Domestic abuse is fundamentally an abuse of power, and many
conceptions of God derived from the Bible and the Christian tradition have
portrayed divine power in unhealthy and potentially oppressive ways.
Anglican gender-neutral Bible: Whereas the earlier gender-neutral translations such as the New Century Version/International Children's Bible (1986/1987), the New Revised Standard Version (1990), or the Contemporary English Version (1995) went largely unnoticed or received only minor criticism, the situation changed in 1997 when it became clear that the publication of a gender-inclusive revision of the New International Version, the most widely used Bible translation, was imminent (a corresponding anglicized edition already being available in Great Britain).
The new guidelines and gender-neutral Bible are endorsed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Recognizes the Apocrypha
What are the Holy
Scriptures?
The Holy Scriptures, commonly called the Bible, are the books of the Old and New
Testaments; other books, called the Apocrypha, are often included in the Bible.
The Church of England and the Anglican communion, includes in its Old Testament
the Apocryphal books, but isolates them from the Hebrew books of the Old
Testament and collects them in a group of their own following the Hebrew books.
The Apocrypha is a collection of additional books written by people of the Old
Covenant, and used in the Christian Church.
Honors both Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene
Anglicans have a "higher" Mariology than do other non-Roman Catholics (with the exception of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches). Optional feast days such as the Assumption (August 15) are celebrated by some Anglicans. The Churches of the Anglican Communion celebrate the Purification of St. Mary the Virgin (February 2) and the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary (March 25) as principal feasts of the Church, and the Church of England requires that the Holy Communion be celebrated in every parish church on these two feasts. The Apostles' Creed and Nicene Creed both refer to Mary as "the Virgin Mary". This alludes to the belief that Mary conceived Jesus through the action of God and the Holy Spirit.
Mary Magdalene is one of the key apostles of the bible. In the East she is viewed as the person who first preached Jesus to the Roman Emperor and she’s the origin of their red Easter egg tradition. Her importance rests on her being the key witness to Jesus resurrection and her going out to spread the Good News that by his death and resurrection Jesus had over come death and evil.
Does not deny the marriage of Jesus
Jesus was very much a human being and will have been attracted to women like any other man. Many of the apostles were married and it would not have been wrong for Jesus to marry either.
Allows marriage in the Priesthood
There is also no
Biblical reason to compel someone to not marry. In fact the opposite is
stressed.
Priestly celibacy was abolished during the Reformation and each Anglican priest
is free to weigh up the pros and cons of marriage and family life.
Was created by Celtic Missionaries
Did Christianity
reach the British Isles before the Roman mission of 600 A.D.? According to the
Roman Catholic Church the answer is no, but according to several credible
historical sources Christianity reached the British Isles within a decade of
Christ’s death. The Eastern Orthodox Church says Christianity reached the isles
by 42 A.D from missionaries from the Church in Ephesus. The early Celtic church
was close to the Church in Ephesus and kept Easter at Passover as taught by St.
John of Ephesus.
With the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70 AD. Christians in Jerusalem
migrated to Antioch and Ephesus and it was from those cities missionaries
continued to migrate from. Sometime around 75 or 80 AD the first missionaries
from John’s church in Ephesus came into the northern Brittanic Isles and began
building churches. The Church in Ephesus became an important influence to the
established churches in northern Britain and Scotland. The Church traces its
faith and succession to that historic apostolic Church which, according to
tradition, sent St. Joseph of Arimathea to carry the faith to the "land of the
Celt." In A.D. 36, only a few short years after Our Lord's death and
Resurrection, on land given to him by the pagan king, Ariviragus, St. Joseph
built a little chapel of twisted wattles and daub on the hills of Glastonbury in
southern England. After Pentecost and fleeing persecution Joseph left Jerusalem
with a team of missionaries led by St. Phillip. The team reached Gaul in Western
Europe in what is now France. Phillip and others in the group stayed in the
vicinity of Marseilles where they founded a church. The other group crossed the
channel and landed on the Somerset coast. In nearby Glastonbury they established
a Christian mission. In 600 A.D. when Augustine came to Britain to
establish a mission from Rome he was greeted by Christians from St. Martin’s
Celtic Church. The Celtic Church was known to the Reformers and much of the
liturgy in the Anglican Church was modeled after the Celtic Liturgy. The
Orthodox Church recognizes the validity of Anglican Orders in part because
several post reformation Anglican bishops were assisted in their ordination by
Celtic bishops. The Anglican Archbishop James Ussher wrote in the 17th century:
“The British National Church was founded A.D. 36, 160 years before Rome
confessed Christianity. The Mother Church of the British Isles is the Church in
Insula Avallonia, called by the Saxons, Glaston”.
Was the Church of Camelot
Christian Glastonbury
began with the arrival of Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph arrived in Glastonbury on
a mission after Christ's crucifixion. At this time, the swamps existed and
Joseph made Avalon home. It is from Joseph that the Glastonbury Thorn tree
arrived on the scene. According to legend, Joseph planted his staff in the
ground on Wearyall Hill one night and it had taken root overnight. Joseph built
the first Christian church in England. The ancient church was constructed, in
63CE, of wattles, timber poles interlaced with twigs and branches and then
surfaced with clay to form walls. Surrounded mostly by water, a defensive wall
known as Ponter's Ball was erected to the East and protected Glastonbury from
the mainland. A bridge, known as the Pomparles or as Perilous Bridge, was the
only dry access point to the south. Pomparles is thought to be the place where
Bedwyr, from the Arthurian legend, returned the sword Excalibur to the Lady Of
The Lake after the Battle of Camlann. Medieval Glastonbury played a part in the
making of the legends of Arthur. Joseph of Arimathea, or a companion of his, was
said to have brought the Holy Grail, the wonder-working vessel of the Last
Supper, to Britain., From a first Avalonian resting-place, it had been removed
to a mysterious castle, and, four hundred years later, many of Arthur's knights
rode out in quest of it.
Was home to famous Mystics
In England, many
people, lay and ordained, clergy and monastics, contributed to a large body of
literature devoted to prayer, contemplation, and mysticism. The greatest of
these writings still speak to us today. Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, the
anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Dame Julian of Norwich, and Margery
Kempe.
Did not support the
Inquisition
'Treating Conflict as
an Anglican.' The broad mainstream of Anglicanism as it was formed in the
Reformation, the one that was shaped in the 16th and 17th centuries, in contrast
to the other two types of Christianity that believed to know well the mind of
God, one the Roman Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation, the other the
tradition of Geneva, whose main representatives were the Puritans. Mainstream
Anglicans differentiate ourselves from both, and particularly from their
presumption that they know in detail the mind of God." Beware of those two
concepts. Orthodoxy and fundamentalism have been the theoretical base of great
evils such as the inquisition, crusades, the holocaust, and more recently the
propaganda of terrorism."