Formularies in the Anglican Way

Adelphoi,

I have been asked about Formularies in the Anglican Way -- so here goes.

Formularies - an odd word! What are they?

In "The Study of Anglicanism" (edited by Stephen Sykes & John Booty, SPCK & Fortress), which is still used widely as a text-book, I have an essay on "The Articles and the Homilies" which I wrote some 12 or so years ago.

In doing some of the research for the essay in the Anglican Communion Office in London in the 1980s, I discovered that all Anglican Provinces received the classic Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal, alongside Holy Scripture, as the basis of their worship, doctrine, order and discipline; also most received the Articles of Religion. (A few provinces whose origins were in mission work by Anglo Catholics, omitted the Articles from their Constitution yet did not deny them.)

Formularies is a technical term used by Anglicans of the BCP, the Ordinal & the Articles [sometimes also the Canon Law] as these are named & cited in constitutions and books of canons throughout the Anglican Family; but, it is a word not used much today, though it was common in earlier times.

By a formulary we usually mean "a document containing the set form or forms according to which something is to be done."

So the basis of the worship of the Church in Word, Sacrament and Offices is set forth in the BCP; the basis of her Ministerial Order of Bishop, Priest and Deacon in the Ordinal; and of her doctrine (in terms of the major dogma of the Trinity, the Person of Christ, the authority of the Bible & Salvation, and also in the context of major controversies of the late Medieval & Reformation period) in the Articles of Religion.

After the Ecclesia Anglicana (the national Church of England as Latin based) broke with Rome under Henry VIII and became an independent National Church, She attempted to reform aspects of her inherited colourful, medieval Catholicism. She received in the 1530s her first non-Roman official Anglican Formularies in English -- "The Ten Articles" of 1536 and "The Bishops' Book" of 1537 (revised as The King's Book in 1543). These were not Protestant (as in Lutheranism) statements but were attempts to provide a revised form of medieval Catholicism for the English Church - a religion and doctrine without the Pope as the ultimate head of the Ecclesia Anglicana, but with the Latin Mass, the Sarum Rite, still in place.

It was after the death of Henry VIII and during the reign of his son, Edward VI, that the movement of reform from the European Continent, made its full impact on Britain. Archbishop Cranmer and colleagues made sure that the English Bible was available in all parishes and they also produced a new Prayer Book, The Book of the Common Prayer (1549), to replace the collection of medieval service books, and the Ordinal, to replace the Ordination Rites of the "Use of Sarum."

With no medieval Latin books authorised, the BCP & Ordinal became the authoritative Formularies of the now English-speaking Church of England. Later, in the reign of Elizabeth I there was added to these two a third formulary, The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (which had gone through several editions). And from the 17th century all three Formularies were printed inside the one book, which went by the title of "The Book of Common Prayer" (1662).

This Book went all over the world wherever the British Empire went and so was used in the American Colonies until the very late eighteenth century (when replaced by the 1789 American edition of the 1662 BCP).

The Formularies were never in competition with the Bible but seen as subsidiary to the Canon of Holy Scripture with its two Testaments, and thus as helps to the use, reading, interpretation and exposition of the Bible in the Church.

Thus the Anglican Communion of Churches is not a confessing Church as are the Lutheran & Reformed Churches of the Reformation (i.e., Anglicans do not say "we believe, teach & confess" via a Confession of Faith). Rather, the Anglican Way has certain authoritative FORMS to shape her worship, her doctrine, her ministerial order & polity and her basic dogma and doctrine. These FORMS are found in her Formularies and they belong to her very foundation. If she loses them, she has no bearings and no direction. They are also like sign-posts pointing out the direction of the Anglican Way into and within the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

It is only in recent times that successful attempts have been made to remove these Formularies from the Anglican Way. The favourite method (as used in the ECUSA in 1976/79 and more recently in the Church of the West Indies) is to create a book of alternative services with new ordination rites (which book has many self-contradictory forms in it) and mischievously to call it "The Book of Common Prayer," and then to ditch the authentic BCP (instead of keeping it as the formulary that it is). Thus the 1662/1789/1892/1928 BCP of the PECUSA was set aside to make way for the 1979 prayer book, a book not of Common Prayer but of many alternatives for prayer.

Recent turmoil in the Anglican Communion has shown that the Anglican Way needs her classic Formularies, at least to keep her on the straight and narrow way. Her attempts to produce new types of services and new ordination rites should not be for the purpose of setting aside the Formularies; rather it should be seen as providing alternatives to them for those who want "contemporary language" and/or a new "shape". The new rites should conform to the doctrinal norms and forms within the Formularies. One reason why the ECUSA is fast heading away from the authentic, biblical & historical Anglican Way is because in her General Convention (but not in every parish) she has cast away in canon law and practice her classic Formularies (though they are still there un-noticed in her original Constitution).

Finally, I need to state three things.

First, the Formularies belong together - all three. The Anglican Way needs and should have all three. Evangelicals have tended to make too much of the Articles and too little of the BCP & Ordinal while Anglo-Catholics have tended to downplay the Articles.

In the second place, we need to realise that the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral is not a Formulary but a statement of the minimum conditions for re-union of an Anglican Church with a non-Anglican Church (e.g., Lutheran). Too many people in recent times have been treating it as an internal Anglican definition of faith, when it is in fact an external one meant for relating to others.

Finally, Anglicans have been putting great emphasis upon the "instruments of unity" (See of Canterbury, ACC, Primates' meeting & Lambeth Conf.) in recent times because the former unity guaranteed by the Formularies has been waning.


The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon