Sources: The Act of Supremacy (1534); Cranmer, Book of Common Prayer (1549, 1552, 1662); The Thirty-Nine Articles (1563); Richard Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (~1594–1662).

The Church of England began as a political act — Henry VIII’s break with Rome in 1534 over the refusal to grant an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon — but developed a distinctive theological identity under Thomas Cranmer’s influence. Anglican theological identity is notoriously difficult to define: (1) Via media — the middle way between Roman Catholicism and continental Protestantism, retaining episcopal order and liturgical worship while affirming Protestant doctrine on justification; (2) The Book of Common Prayer — Cranmer’s liturgical masterpiece (1549, revised 1552, 1662) provided the defining Anglican identity; its language shaped English prose for centuries; (3) The Thirty-Nine Articles (1563) — the doctrinal standard, Protestant in content but deliberately ambiguous enough to accommodate both Calvinist and Arminian readings; (4) Apostolic succession — Anglican orders trace through the historic episcopate; this claim is disputed by Rome (Leo XIII declared Anglican orders “absolutely null and utterly void” in 1896) and by non-episcopal Protestants; (5) Scripture, tradition, reason — Hooker’s three-legged stool of authority. The Anglican Communion (~85 million members) is the global fellowship of churches in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, strained by the Global South’s conservative positions on homosexuality clashing with Western liberal revisionism — a conflict producing near-schism at the Lambeth Conferences.