WHAT WE BELIEVE

ADAPTED AND EXCERPTED FROM THE ACNA WEBSITE:

All Souls is a member of the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA), uniting over 1,000 congregations across the United States and Canada.

As a global communion (around 80 million members), Anglican worship is diverse. To understand what and how Anglicans pray is to understand what they believe. The Prayer Book, described as the Scriptures arranged for worship, provides helpful resources for everything from personal daily devotions to large public gatherings of worship.

From the Preface, The Book of Common Prayer:

The Book of Common Prayer (2019) is a form of prayers and praises that is thoroughly Biblical, catholic in the manner of the early centuries, highly participatory in delivery, peculiarly Anglican and English in its roots, culturally adaptive and missional in a most remarkable way, utterly accessible to the people, and whose repetitions are intended to form the faithful catechetically and to give them doxological voice.

To be an Anglican, then, is not to embrace a distinct version of Christianity, but a distinct way of being a “Mere Christian,” at the same time evangelical, apostolic, catholic, reformed, and Spirit-filled.

THE SEVEN CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ANGLICAN WAY

  • Holy Scripture

    We confess the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God, containing all things necessary for salvation, and to be the final authority and unchangeable standard for Christian faith and life.

  • The Sacraments

    We confess Baptism and the Supper of the Lord to be Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself in the Gospel, and thus to be ministered with unfailing use of His words of institution and of the elements ordained by Him.

  • The Historic Episcopate

    We confess the godly historic Episcopate as an inherent part of the apostolic faith and practice, and therefore as integral to the fullness and unity of the Body of Christ.

  • The Creeds

    We confess as proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture the historic faith of the undivided church as declared in the three Catholic Creeds: the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian.

  • The Church Councils

    Concerning the seven Councils of the undivided Church, we affirm the teaching of the first four Councils and the Christological clarifications of the fifth, sixth and seventh Councils, in so far as they are agreeable to the Holy Scriptures.

  • The Book of Common Prayer

    We receive The Book of Common Prayer as set forth by the Church of England in 1662, together with the Ordinal attached to the same, as a standard for Anglican doctrine and discipline, and, with the Books which preceded it, as the standard for the Anglican tradition of worship.

  • The 39 Articles

    We receive the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, taken in their literal and grammatical sense, as expressing the Anglican response to certain doctrinal issues controverted at that time, and as expressing the fundamental principles of authentic Anglican belief.

“Contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.”

JUDE 3

Vincent of Lérins

(circa 445)

“All possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all.”

Lancelot Andrewes

(1555-1626)

“One canon … two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that period – the centuries that is, before Constantine, and two after, determine the boundary of our faith.”