Full participation in the sacramental life of each church is available to all communicant members. Both Robinson’s consecration and the blessing of same-sex unions by individual American and Canadian congregations met with opposition within the Anglican Communion. These articles have historically shaped and continue to direct the ethos of the communion, an ethos reinforced by their interpretation and expansion by such influential early theologians such as Richard Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes and John Cosin. [2][3][4] Founded in 1867 in London, England, the communion currently has over 85 million members[5][6] within the Church of England and other national and regional churches in full communion. The Anglican Communion is united by a common loyalty to the archbishop of Canterbury in England as its senior bishop and titular leader and by a general agreement with the doctrines and practices defined since the 16th century in The Book of Common Prayer. You can read more in our press release by clicking here. In March 2020, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chair of the Anglican Consultative Council, the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, and the five primates elected to represent their regions on the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, wrote a joint letter to the Anglican Communion about the Covid-19 pandemic. Those who objected condemned these actions as unscriptural, unilateral, and without the agreement of the communion prior to these steps being taken. By 1840 there were still only ten colonial bishops for the Church of England; but even this small beginning greatly facilitated the growth of Anglicanism around the world. Since its inception the Lambeth Conference, which meets every 10 years, has constituted the principal cohesive factor in Anglicanism, even though its decisions are not binding and must be approved by the individual churches. For example, the Anglican Church of Kenya, the Church of Nigeria and the Church of Uganda have opposed homosexuality. Easter and Christmas are two of the most important holy days in the Communion, and members of the church attend weekly services. The enormous expansion in the 18th and 19th centuries of the British Empire brought Anglicanism along with it. In 1787 a bishop of Nova Scotia was appointed with a jurisdiction over all of British North America; in time several more colleagues were appointed to other cities in present-day Canada. The Archbishop of Canterbury has taken the important decision to reschedule the Lambeth Conference by a further year to the British summer of 2022. As such Anglicanism was, from the outset, a movement with an explicitly episcopal polity, a characteristic which has been vital in maintaining the unity of the communion by conveying the episcopate's role in manifesting visible catholicity and ecumenism. In the video, the Archbishop has also announced that alongside the postponed physical conference meeting in 2022 in Canterbury, a wider programme will be developed before and after the event, delivered virtually and through other meetings. Anglicanism is loosely organized in the Anglican Communion, a worldwide family of religious bodies that represents the offspring of the Church of England and recognizes the archbishop of Canterbury as its nominal head. This page was last edited on 13 September 2020, at 22:38. A new study guide to Christian Doctrine - What do Anglicans Believe, by the Theological Education in the Anglican Communion (TEAC) team has just been published by the Anglican Consultative Council. 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