Anglican Articles of Religion

From some notes of mine from a decade or two ago, usually about other sources.  From The Articles of Religion in Victorian Web from December 2001.  The subheading is Agreed upon by the Archbishops, Bishops, and the whole clergy of the Provinces of Canterbury and York, London, 1562.

The 39 Articles form the basic summary of belief of the Church of England. They were drawn up by the Church in convocation in 1563 on the basis of the 42 Articles of 1553. Clergymen were ordered to subscribe to the 39 Articles by Act of Parliament in 1571. As part of the via media (middle way) of Elizabeth I, the Articles were deliberately latitudinarian but were not intended to provide a dogmatic definition of faith. It is clear that they are phrased very loosely to allow for a variety of interpretations. The Church of England still requires its ministers to publicly avow their faithfulness to these Articles.

The articles were based on the work of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury (1533-1556). Cranmer and his colleagues prepared several statements of faith during the reign of Henry VIII but it was not until the reign of Edward VI that the ecclesiastical reformers were able to make more thorough changes. Shortly before Edward's death, Cranmer presented a doctrinal statement consisting of forty-two points: this was the last of his major contributions to the development of Anglicanism.

Mary Tudor suppressed the 42 Articles when she returned England to the Catholic faith; however, Cranmer's work became the source of the 39 Articles which Elizabeth I established as the doctrinal foundations of the Church of England. There are two editions of the 39 Articles: those of 1563 are in Latin and those of 1571 are in English.