The Thirty-Nine Articles: A Faith for Today - Articles 1 - 5

Many churchgoers have heard of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion but few know much about them. Older church members may remember that new clergy used to have to read the Articles in full on their first Sunday in a parish (often they replaced the sermon). Those who have been to an ordination or induction recently may have heard the bishop asking the candidate if he accepts the Thirty-nine Articles as bearing witness to God’s truth.

Who wrote them? Where are they to be found? Why are they so important to the Church of England? What do they say? Are they at all relevant today? Those are the questions I hope to answer in this series. In this introduction we will look at the background to the Articles. Then in the following chapters we will look in some detail at what the Articles actually say and how they apply in today’s world.

You can find the Articles of Religion at the back of the Book of Common Prayer. They were not included in the Alternative Service Book 1980, as that book was designed to go alongside, not to replace, the older prayer book. Their wording is in places old-fashioned but they can still be understood with some effort. Where I think it will help, I have rendered them into slightly more modern English for the purposes of these studies. To read more, click here.