G
GKC
Guest
Will I do?
Yes, seriously.
The Articles are history, a part of the Elizabethan Compromise, and are still laid on the ordinands of the Church of England, by act of Parliament, at Elizabeth I’s direction, in her capacity as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. And so they remain, theoretically, though no one takes much notice of them. THh CoE is an Erastian Church, and can do such things.
But the CoE, while the *fons et origo *of Anglicanism, does not exhaust the contemporary category. And no other of the 38 self-governing jurisdictions of the official Anglican Communion make the Articles normative (with one recent exception) Any Anglican is perfectly free to pick and chose from them, of course. And the extent to which the Articles are affirmed by an Anglican will serve to locate him on the spectrum of Anglican doctrine, from more reformed, around to more Anglo-Catholic (we will pass over the small cadre of Anglo-Papalists). So you will find Anglicans who affirm the Articles en toto, and those who cut them from the Prayer Book and use them to kindle the new fire at Easter.
The Episcopal Church brought out a new book of prayer in 1979, of which I am not very fond. But one or two things were then gotten right, among them that the Articles are placed in a section for historical documents. So they are, as some form of binding statementt.
Anglicanism is creedal, not confessional and, except as noted, no Anglican need, of necessity, know where the Articles might be found, to be read, if it were desired. Or, they may. Anglicans are like that.
GKC
Anglicanus Catholicus