Statement on Popery

June 2025

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND (CONTINUING) OFFICIAL STATEMENT JUNE 2025

CHRIST ALONE IS THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH.

Article XXXVII Of the Civil Magistrates states that ‘the Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England’. This Article dates from 1563. It sums up the truth taught in holy Scripture, the light of which God shed on the minds of some of the greatest Christian theologians the world has ever seen. It denies the claims of the papacy, claims denied in our nation prior to the Protestant Reformation in England.

In 1379 John Wycliffe published “The Power of the papacy”. In it he argued that the papacy is an office instituted by man, not God; that no pope’s authority could extend to secular government; that any pope who does not follow the Lord Jesus Christ is anti-Christ. Wycliffe proclaimed that “Christ alone is the Head of the Church.”

In 1556 the Protestant Reformer and Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was martyred for affirming the one true faith. Before his death he said: “And as for the pope, I refuse him as Christ’s enemy, and Antichrist, with all his false doctrine.”

These faithful, eminent, godly men made these statements because the pope assumes the titles “Vicar of Jesus Christ” and “Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church.” They mean that he acts as the Lord Jesus Christ’s representative, ruling as the supreme head of the church on earth. In fact, the Lord Jesus Christ the sinless Son of God incarnate is revealed to us in Colossians 1:18 as, “the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the pre-eminence”.

The Lord Jesus Christ warned that “false Christs, and false prophets” would come (Matthew 24:24). The apostle Paul identified one such prominent example in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4: “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God”.

We therefore affirm the XXXIX Articles of Religion including Article XXXVII and believe the same as Wycliffe and Cranmer on the false claims of the papacy. This is why we in the Church of England (Continuing) reject Pope Leo XIV and all his false claims.