Anglican Tradition
What does Saint John’s believe?
Saint John’s Church is rooted in the biblical and historic faith of catholic Christianity, particularly as it has been found in the Anglican Church and the Book of Common Prayer.
Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher, who served as Archbishop of Canterbury in the mid-20th century, articulated the essential focus of our tradition when he said: “We have no doctrine of our own. We only possess the Catholic doctrine of the Catholic Church enshrined in the Catholic Creeds, and these creeds we hold without addition or diminution.”
The Anglican Church in North America, of which Saint John’s Church is a founding parish, is rooted first in the worship of Jesus Christ as Lord and God, and defines the following as our fundamental declarations of the Anglican tradition:
1. We confess the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God, containing all things necessary for salvation, and to be the final authority and unchangeable standard for Christian faith and life.
2. We confess Baptism and the Supper of the Lord to be Sacraments ordained by Christ himself in the Gospel, and thus to be ministered with unfailing use of His words of institution and of the elements ordained by him.
3. We confess the godly historic Episcopate as an inherent part of the apostolic faith and practice, and therefore as integral to the fullness and unity of the Body of Christ.
4. We confess as proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture the historic faith of the undivided church as declared in the three Catholic Creeds: the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian.
5. Concerning the seven Councils of the undivided Church, we affirm the teaching of the first four Councils and the Christo-logical clarifications of the fifth, sixth and seventh Councils, in so far as they are agreeable to the Holy Scriptures.
6. We receive the Book of Common Prayer as set forth by the Church of England in 1662, together with the Ordinal attached to the same, as a standard for Anglican doctrine and discipline, and, with the Books which preceded it, as the standard for the Anglican tradition of worship.
7. We receive the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, taken in their literal and grammatical sense, as expressing the Anglican response to certain doctrinal issues controverted at that time, and as expressing fundamental principles of authentic Anglican belief.
Our Affiliation
Saint John’s Church is a member of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, a constituent member of the Anglican Church in North America. The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth was founded in 1983, and is committed to the mission of equipping the saints for the work of ministry. The spiritual head of the Diocese is the Bishop of Fort Worth, the Rt. Rev’d Ryan S. Reed, who has been Bishop since 2020.
