Is the Church of England Still Legitimate?
The contemporary Church of England, as it exists under the oversight of the Archbishop of Canterbury, raises serious questions concerning continuity with the historic and legally established Church of England. This issue does not turn on preference or sentiment but on the objective relationship between the Church and its own foundational constitutional documents.
The Thirty–Nine Articles are not optional statements of opinion. They are the Church of England’s doctrinal standard, historically binding on its ministers and defining its confession of faith. If it can be demonstrated that the Church of England rejects even one Article by refusing to teach it or by adopting doctrines and practices incompatible with it, then the Church departs from its own legal and theological basis.
A review of contemporary teaching and practice suggests that this departure has already occurred. One example is sufficient to illustrate the principle. Consider Article XX:
THE Church hath power to decree rites or ceremonies and authority in controversies of faith; and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything contrary to God’s word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ: yet, as it ought not to decree anything against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce anything to be believed for necessity of salvation.
Article XX affirms two principles. First, the Church may order its worship and settle disputes of doctrine. Second, and decisively, its authority is limited by Scripture. It may not teach anything contrary to the written Word of God, nor may it interpret one text in a manner that contradicts another.
To apply this principle clearly, one need not enter complex doctrinal debates. Scripture contains explicit and unambiguous teaching on certain matters of sexual ethics. For example:
Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
These passages identify same–sex sexual activity as contrary to God’s design. Article XX therefore requires that the Church, which has no authority to contradict Scripture, must not bless or affirm what Scripture forbids.
The modern Church of England has chosen a different course. By instituting services of blessing for male–male unions and by refraining from teaching that such unions fall within the category of sin that Scripture calls its people to repent of, the Church has placed its own innovations in opposition to the plain teaching of Holy Writ. This action is inconsistent with the doctrinal limits imposed by Article XX and therefore inconsistent with the Church of England’s own constitutional framework.
That the Church continues to function institutionally does not resolve this inconsistency. It simply reflects the absence, at present, of any legal or ecclesiastical challenge willing to bring the matter to formal scrutiny.
For Anglicans who hold to the authority of Scripture and who desire faithfulness to the historic doctrine of the Church of England as expressed in the Thirty–Nine Articles, these developments require careful reflection. If the established Church no longer teaches or upholds its own Articles, then it is reasonable for those who value confessional integrity to consider uniting with bodies that continue to maintain the historic Anglican confession, such as the Church of England Continuing.
This is not a matter of preference but of conscience. The Articles demand adherence to Scripture, and the Scriptures identify the boundaries within which the Church must teach. Where those boundaries are set aside, the question of ecclesial allegiance becomes unavoidable for those who seek to remain faithful to the teaching that the Church of England itself once required and defended.
Archbishop Cranmer was, under God, the architect of the Reformation of the English Church in the sixteenth century. He bequeathed to it a Scriptural catholicity. Catholic truth, he declared, is Scriptural truth. On that principle he fashioned the doctrine and worship of the Church of England. It is enshrined in the 39 Articles and the Book of Common Prayer.
1. Doctrine: The doctrine of the Continuing Church shall be that of the 39 Articles of Religion understood in their original, natural and intended sense.
The contemporary Church of England, as it exists under the oversight of the Archbishop of Canterbury, raises serious questions concerning continuity with the historic and legally established Church of England. This issue does not turn on preference or sentiment but on the objective relationship between the Church and its own foundational constitutional documents.