Last year we celebrated 400th anniversary of the King James Bible and the 350th anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer, but yesterday marked another significant milestone for the Anglican Church.
While the confirmation of Justin Welby as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury was important and well covered by the press, no one seems to have noticed that it was the 450th anniversary of the bishops' subscription to their newly amended version of Cranmer's doctrinal articles. That is, it was 450 years since they approved the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.
There were a few minor tweaks in the years that followed: Article 20 was given a new opening sentence, Article 29 was dropped for around eight years before being re-included in 1571, at which time a couple of extra books were also added to the list of the Apocrypha in Article 6 and all the titles and numbers were standardised... But - what we have now was essentially finalised 450 years and one day ago.
I should have posted this yesterday, but despite the fact that I've been working closely on the history of the Articles for the past few weeks, it didn't click until just now! I guess we could re-mark the occasion in 2021 which will be 450 years since the 1571 Convocation re-subscribed to the very final version. Meantime, praise God for four and a half centuries of solid Anglican doctrine!
Thoughts on Theology-in-Practice for Anglicans and Episcopalians - plus some other stuff.
Indeed, praise God for them. It's as good as it gets for Anglicans in terms of defining our common beliefs.
ReplyDeleteI believe TEC refers to them as the 39 Irrelevancies. There's probably a PhD in looking at how they were adopted or otherwise in other branches of the Communion.