If you want to understand some Christian denominations or churches, you will likely be pointed to a systematic theology or a confession or catechism. In short, you will be given a set of propositions to compare with other systems.

Anglicanism has propositions, to be sure, but to really understand it, you have to understand the history, the unfolding of the actual, dramatic experience of the Church of England.

The Anglican Formularies—The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion; The Book of Common Prayer; The Ordinal; and The Books of Homilies—are the result of this inherited, embodied, historical, approach to theology.

C. Jay and Jared are back for another episode of Canterbury Trails, and today it’s the uniquely historical and national approach to Christian faith and life, as laid out in the Formularies, that they’ll be discussing, as the conclusion to their three-part series on Anglicanism 101.

Anglicanism is unique in that it is a national church tradition. The goal was to keep England together in a difficult time. The Formularies was not the result of a few theologians in an ivory tower hammering out fine points of doctrine. It was a project to publish a worship book and a statement of faith that declared, “this is how we worship, here in England, in these isles, and here is what we believe.”

The Book of Common Prayer, for instance, has a lot of theology, but it’s not just a statement of beliefs—it’s a course of action. And this is where Anglicanism’s historical expression of the Faith meets Christians today. For in reading through the Scriptures at home each day, and by engaging in Morning and Evening prayer, we learn that it is the rhythms of life we get into, and the things we pray for, that most shape us.

Image of Anglo-Saxon map by Hel-hama - Own work using:InkscapeSource: England and Wales at the time of the Treaty of Chippenham (AD 878). From the Atlas of European History, Earle W Dowe (d. 1946), G Bell and Sons, London, 1910 (see: File:England-878ad.jpg), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19885072