Anglican doctrine

Anglican doctrine (also called Episcopal doctrine in some countries) is the body of Christian teachings used to guide the religious and moral practices of Anglicanism.

Thomas Cranmer, the guiding Reformer that led to the development of Anglicanism as a distinct tradition under the English Reformation, compiled the original Book of Common Prayer, which forms the basis of Anglican worship and practice. By 1571 it included the Thirty-nine Articles, the historic doctrinal statement of the Church of England. The Books of Homilies explicates the foundational teachings of Anglican Christianity, also compiled under the auspices of Archbishop Cranmer. Richard Hooker and the Caroline divines later developed Anglican doctrine of religious authority as being derived from scripture, tradition, and "redeemed" reason; Anglicans affirmed the primacy of scriptural revelation (prima scriptura), informed by the Church Fathers, the historic Nicene, Apostles and Athanasian creeds, and a latitudinarian interpretation of scholasticism. Charles Simeon espoused and popularised evangelical Reformed positions in the 18th and 19th centuries, while the Oxford Movement re-introduced monasticism, religious orders and various other pre-Reformation practices and beliefs in the 19th century.

Anglicanism historically developed as via media between two branches of Protestantism—Lutheranism and Calvinism—though closer to the latter than the former. Its identity has affirmed to be Reformed and Catholic.

Over time, the tension between catholicity and Puritanism resulted in a latitudinarian or "broad church" mainstream, within a low church to high church spectrum of sanctioned approaches to ritual and tolerance of the associated beliefs. Evangelicals (low church) and Anglo Catholics (high church) represent the far ends of this spectrum, with most Anglicans falling somewhere in between. Theologically, the Anglican Communion includes Reformed Anglicanism, with a smaller number of Arminian Anglicans.