Martyn Davie on whether Anglicanism is a confessional Church

http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/3834/

[TitusOneNine] 21 June 2007--There are a number of points that need to be made...

Firstly, a distinction needs to be made between a ‘confessing’ church and a ‘confessional’ church. A ‘confessing’ church is any church that confesses Christ and the gospel before the world as all Christians are called to do. A ‘confessional’ church, on the other hand, is a church that adheres to certain specific statements of belief.

Secondly, it is clear that Anglicanism is not only a ‘confessing’ tradition but also a ‘confessional’ tradition in the sense that there are specific statements of belief to which the churches of the Communion individually and collectively subscribe. For example, the Catholic Creeds and the three ‘historic formularies’ (The Thirty Nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer and the 1662 Ordinal) are accepted as doctrinal authorities by the Church of England26 and for the Communion as a whole the Lambeth Quadrilateral sets out the Anglican understanding of what the visible unity of the Christian Church involves.