Interestingly, the church does not require individuals to agree with or accept all the statements of those creeds but encourages its members to join in the process of discovery. The Apostles’ Creed and Nicene Creed are authoritative declarations of belief for the Anglican Church and are typically recited in worship services.

The doctrine of the Anglican Church is an interesting mix of Catholicism and Protestant Reformation theology. The long history of English resistance laid the groundwork for Henry’s acts in the sixteenth century. In 664, King Oswey of Northumbria called the Synod of Whitby to merge the Saxon and Celtic churches nominally under the Roman Catholic Church. The various tribes of England had never fully submitted to Roman occupation, and when the Roman Legion was withdrawn, the Saxon church continued on an independent course. The Saxon church, founded by Saint Augustine in 597, was under papal direction, but not without resistance. There had been aspects of ecclesiastical independence throughout England’s history. The true English Reformation began during the short reign of Henry’s son Edward VI and was spearheaded by Cranmer. The English church didn’t assert total independence from Rome until Henry VIII’s reign, and Henry himself made little true reform in the church. The Act of Supremacy declared the king to be “the supreme head of the church in England,” thus giving Henry the same legal authority over the English church that the Pope exercised over the Roman Catholic Church. In 1534, Henry led Parliament to pass a series of laws depriving the Roman Catholic Church of any authority in England. In 1532, Henry forced the national convocation to agree in The Submission of the Clergy that they would not promulgate any papal bull in England without the king’s consent. In 1531, Henry compelled the English clergy to accept him as head of the church in England. When Protestant Thomas Cranmer became Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry saw his chance to bypass the Pope’s authority and get what he wanted. Henry petitioned Pope Clement VII for an annulment of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon but was denied.

The events that led to the formation of the state Anglican Church are a curious mix of ecclesiastical, political, and personal rivalries. The roots of the Anglican, or English, Church go back as far as the 2nd century, but the church traces its current structure and status back to the reign of King Henry VIII, who ruled from 1509 to 1547.

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