# redirect Anglican Communion

The Anglican Communion is an international association of national and regional Anglican churches ( and a few other episcopal churches ) in full communion with the Church of England ( which is regarded as the mother church of the worldwide communion ) and specifically with its principal primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

With a membership currently estimated at over 85 million members worldwide, the Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion in the world, after the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

The Anglican Communion considers itself to be part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church and to be both Catholic and Reformed.

The Anglican Communion Office is headed by its Secretary General, the Reverend Canon Kenneth Kearon.

The Anglican Communion has no official legal existence nor any governing structure which might exercise authority over the member churches.

There is an Anglican Communion Office in London, under the aegis of the Archbishop of Canterbury, but it only serves a supporting and organisational role.

As mentioned above, the Anglican Communion has no international juridical organisation.

The Chair of St Augustine ( the episcopal throne in Canterbury Cathedral, Kent ), seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury in his role as head of the Anglican Communion

The body has a permanent secretariat, the Anglican Communion Office, of which the Archbishop of Canterbury is president.

In response, the American Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada answered that the actions had been undertaken after lengthy scriptural and theological reflection, legally in accordance with their own canons and constitutions and after extensive consultation with the provinces of the Communion.

All 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion are autonomous, each with its own primate and governing structure.

A world map showing the provinces of the Anglican Communion ( Blue ).

Also shown are the churches in full communion with the Anglican Communion: the Nordic Lutheran churches of the Porvoo Communion ( Green ) and the Old Catholic Church | Old Catholic churches of the Utrecht Union ( Red ).

In addition to other member churches, the churches of the Anglican Communion are in full communion with the Old Catholic churches of the Union of Utrecht and the Scandinavian Lutheran churches of the Porvoo Communion in Europe, the India-based Mar Thoma and Malabar Independent Syrian churches and the Philippine Independent Church, also known as the Aglipayan Church.

The Anglican Communion is a relatively recent concept.

Thus the only member churches of the present Anglican Communion existing by the mid-18th century were the Church of England, its closely linked sister church, the Church of Ireland ( which also separated from Roman Catholicism under Henry VIII ) and the Scottish Episcopal Church which for parts of the 17th and 18th centuries was partially underground ( it was suspected of Jacobite sympathies ).

The churches of the Anglican Communion have traditionally held that ordination in the historic episcopate is a core element in the validity of clerical ordinations.

More recently, disagreements over homosexuality have strained the unity of the Communion as well as its relationships with other Christian denominations, leading to another round of withdrawals from the Anglican Communion.

Some churches founded outside the Anglican Communion in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, largely in opposition to the ordination of openly homosexual bishops and other clergy are usually referred to as belonging to the Anglican realignment movement, or else as " orthodox " Anglicans.

The Roman Catholic Church does not recognise most Anglican orders ( see Apostolicae Curae ).

A Moravian minister was called to see her several times during her illness, suggesting her distress was caused, in part, by conflict with the local Anglican clergy.

Churches that claim some form of episcopal apostolic succession, dating back to the apostles or to leaders from the apostolic era, include the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Church of the East, the Anglican Communion, and some Lutheran Churches ( see below ).

; Presiding Bishop or President Bishop: These titles are often used for the head of a national Anglican church, but the title is not usually associated with a particular episcopal see like the title of a primate.

Some Christian denominations ( such as Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox ), include a number of books that are not in the Hebrew Bible ( the biblical apocrypha or deuterocanonical books or Anagignoskomena, see Development of the Old Testament canon ) in their biblical canon that are not in today's Jewish canon, although they were included in the Septuagint.

For specific related academic terms, see Divinity ( academic discipline ), or Divine ( Anglican ).

" Hence, Anglican jurisdictions have traditionally been conservative in their approach to either innovative doctrinal development or in encompassing actions of the church as doctrinal ( see lex orandi, lex credendi ).

According to Kallistos Ware, some Western theologians, both Roman Catholic and Anglican, see the theology of Palamas as introducing an inadmissible division within God ; however, others have incorporated his theology into their own thinking, maintaining, as Jeffrey D. Finch reports, that there is no conflict between his teaching and Roman Catholic thought.

In many towns and villages there are United Churches which are sometimes with Anglican or Baptist churches, but most commonly are Methodist and URC, simply because in terms of belief, practice and churchmanship, many Methodists see themselves as closer to the United Reformed Church than to other denominations such as the Church of England.

For Anglican spirituality, see Anglican devotions.

To this end, they emphasise the country's Anglican heritage, oppose any transfer of power away from the United Kingdom — either downwards to the nations and regions or upwards to the European Union — and seek to place greater emphasis on traditional family structures to repair what they see as a broken society in the UK.

After the Kingdom of Kent's conversion to Christianity in 597, St Augustine founded an episcopal see in the city and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, a position that now heads the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion ( though the modern-day Province of Canterbury covers the entire south of England ).

For the forms of address for Anglican clergy, see Forms of address in the United Kingdom.

The night before her execution, she told the Reverend Stirling Gahan, the Anglican chaplain who had been allowed to see her and to give her Holy Communion, " Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.

For Anglicans who have joined the Roman Catholic Church, see Anglican Use and Anglican Ordinariates.

The Manchester case established a precedent that any municipal borough in which an Anglican see was established was entitled to petition for city status.

The congregation prospered, and the church became the see of the Anglican bishops of New Jersey.

Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and traditional Anglican Christians traditionally believe that 1 Peter 2: 9 gives responsibility to all believers for the preservation and propagation of the Gospel and the Church, as distinct from the liturgical and sacramental roles of the ordained priesthood and consecrated episcopate ( see Apostolic Succession ).

The text forms a part of the daily office in the Roman Catholic Vespers service, the Lutheran Vespers service, and the Anglican services of Evening Prayer, according to both the Book of Common Prayer and Common Worship ( see Evening Prayer ( Anglican )).

Initially higly critical of the calling of the second Lambeth Conference ( 1878 ) he was won over by the experience, writing in his biography that, ' I feel I have learned much from the Pananglican and I see, too, that it is really an institution which will root itself and will ... exercise a powerful influence in the future of the Anglican Communion.

With respect to Anglicanism, he has stated that " it's very sad to see a good man like the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, going to such extraordinary lengths to appease homophobes within the Anglican Communion ".