Main CHARACTERISTICS of the ANGLICAN Church

In the world there are dozens of religions, many of them being branches of much larger religions, or existing only in a few states due to their existence united to a certain nation. To talk about one of the religions born of the reforms that changed the Catholic religion forever, in this lesson from a PROFESSOR we are going to talk about the main characteristics of the Anglican Church.

The Anglican church or Anglicanism is a religious doctrine born from Protestantismthat follows its own ideals referring to Christianity, being an intermediate point between the Catholic and Protestant religion.

Today we call all those churches that are part of the Anglican Anglican Anglican Communion, being a series of 40 provinces who are in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is considered as the spiritual leader of Anglicanism today.

The majority of Anglican believers live in England or in English-speaking states, since this religion from its beginnings has been very close to the English, being itself a

Christian reform within English religious ideals. And it is that even the name of Anglican means of England, being in some occasions even denominated like Church of England.

As for its divisions, which as almost every religious group has, there are three, being the so-called high church, the low church and finally the liberals. These divisions do not differ greatly from each other, since they maintain the same basic ideals. Here we discover the main similarities and differences between Anglicans and Protestants.

Before talking about the characteristics of the Anglican Church we must understand the emergence of this religious movement. To do this, we will talk about its history, from its origins to its spread throughout the English region and by external English communities.

In the origin of anglicanism we can find two key elements for its appearance, the first being the increasingly common Pope intervention in English politics and the second the Henry VIII figure. The English king needed to have a male child to inherit his crown, but no child had survived from his marriage, so that the British monarch thought that her fault lay with her wife and therefore he wanted to separate from her, which led to the Pope's refusal to for a divorce to occur, since the highest Christian authority did not want a separation in one of the main crowns of Europe.

This, on the other hand, was also a love problem since it is said that Henry VIII had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, but she would only maintain relations with the king if he divorced her and married her. All this led Henry VIII to carry out the act of Supremacy in 1534, the monarch becoming the leader of the Church of England, ending the authority of the Pope, giving validity to her own divorce and marrying Anne Boleyn.

Although Anglicanism was born in parallel to the Protestant Reformation and it has many similar elements, it does not seem that at first Henry VII created this doctrine based on Protestantism, since the English monarch himself criticized the leader of reformism on numerous occasions, Luther.

The later advance of the Anglican Church throughout the world was subject to the English expansion around the world, being especially relevant the importance it had in the Thirteen coloniesThese being the English colonial possessions that would end up forming the United States. Even with this, there are many cases of American churches that after independence abandoned Anglican beliefs to become different branches of Protestantism.

To continue with this lesson we must talk about the characteristics of the Anglican Church and thus understand their differences and similarities with other similar religions. The main characteristics of Anglicanism are as follows:

• Anglicanism is considered a kind of middle ground between Protestants and Catholics, accepting the basic principles of the Protestants but maintaining a system more similar to that of the Catholics. This is because its creation was both between the Protestant Reformation and the Counter Reformation and the vision of him was neutral on it.
• The only valid text for this religion is what the Bible contains, being common that in religious acts the Bible is read instead of performing the typical Catholic mass. It is considered that all the values ​​of religion are born with the Bible, so no other text is valid.
• The only valid sacraments are the baptism and eucharist, although other sacraments are sometimes used for their historical importance. This has created a great controversy throughout the Church, since many Anglican figures have defended the figure of the sacraments, while others deny them.
• The figure of the Virgin or any other saint is not worshiped, since it considers that every baptized person is holy.
• Religious people they can get married, contrary to what happens in religions such as the Catholic in which they must remain without marrying.
• Anglicans have approached positions with the homosexuality, being much more open with this group than other religions of such a current.
• The woman it has greater relevance than in other religions, being possible the ordination of women, something unthinkable in other religions.
• It is considered that salvation must be achieved through faith, although some figures defend that acts and sacraments can help.