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Anglicans are Christians who belong to the Church that grew from the ancient Church of the British Isles and was reformed in the sixteenth century. Today that Church is a worldwide family of self-governing churches, from Nigeria and Uganda to Australia and the Americas.

Anglicans believe what the whole Church has always believed: that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit; that the Son became man in Jesus Christ, died for our sins and rose again; and that we are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of Christ, by faith. Holy Scripture is the supreme rule of that faith, summarised in the Creeds.

Anglicans worship by common prayer: shared words, drawn from Scripture, that the whole congregation prays together. The Book of Common Prayer gives the pattern: Morning and Evening Prayer each day, Holy Communion, and services for the great moments of life. The Church is led by bishops, with priests and deacons, as it has been since the apostles’ time.

The Church in Britain is ancient: there were British martyrs in the third century and British bishops at the Council of Arles in 314. Celtic missionaries from Iona and Augustine’s mission from Rome built the Church of the English, the Ecclesia Anglicana of Magna Carta.

In the sixteenth century that Church rejected papal jurisdiction and was reformed by the Word of God under Thomas Cranmer and his successors. The Prayer Book, the Articles and the Ordinal set its teaching and worship. From the eighteenth century, missionaries and local believers carried it across the world.

Liturgy is the ordered public worship of the Church. Anglicans pray set forms, not because free prayer is wrong, but because common words let a whole congregation pray as one, keep worship soaked in Scripture, and guard sound doctrine. The principle is ancient: the way we pray shapes what we believe.

The Daily Office is the backbone: Morning Prayer (Mattins) and Evening Prayer (Evensong), with confession, psalms, readings from the Old and New Testaments, canticles such as the Te Deum, the Magnificat and the Nunc dimittis, the Creed and the collects. Over a month the whole Psalter is prayed.

Holy Communion follows a clear shape in the 1662 book: the Collect for Purity, the Commandments, the Epistle and Gospel, the Nicene Creed and sermon, the prayer for the Church, confession and absolution, the Comfortable Words, the Prayer of Humble Access, the consecration and communion, and the Gloria and blessing.

The Christian year carries it all: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Ascension, Whitsunday and the long green season of Trinity, each with its own collect, readings and colour.

Classic Anglican doctrine is set out in the historic formularies: the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1571, the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 and the Ordinal. They are not a new creed but a reading of the old faith in the light of Scripture.

Thomas Cranmer gave the Church its first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, revised it in 1552, and the book was restored under Elizabeth I in 1559. After the upheavals of the seventeenth century, the classic edition was issued in 1662. It has been translated into many languages and shaped Anglican worship across the world.

Open it and you will find: the Kalendar and tables of lessons; Morning and Evening Prayer; the Litany; the collects, epistles and gospels for every Sunday and holy day; Holy Communion; Baptism, the Catechism and Confirmation; Matrimony; the Visitation of the Sick and the Burial of the Dead; the Psalter; and, bound with it, the Ordinal and the Thirty-Nine Articles.

Its language is dense with Scripture. Much of it, like the Psalter of Miles Coverdale, is older than the King James Bible, and generations have learned to pray in its words.

Vestments are not costume. They hide the individual behind the office, mark the seasons, and teach at a glance who does what in worship.