09/08/2026
Is Anglicanism Protestant? The answer is yes. Because the Church of England emerged from the sixteenth-century Reformation and sought to place the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the authority of Holy Scripture at the center of the Church’s faith and life, it is both accurate and appropriate to describe it as a Protestant Church—and, by extension, to understand the historic American Church as the Protestant Episcopal Church.
Yet the word “Protestant” is often misunderstood today. It is frequently reduced to meaning little more than “anti-Roman Catholic,” as though Protestantism necessarily meant abandoning catholicity, apostolic Christianity, or the historic Church. That understanding is historically inadequate and fails to capture the classical Anglican position.
Historically, Protestant and catholic were not necessarily contradictory terms. The English Reformers did not believe they were abandoning Christianity or creating an entirely new Church; they believed they were reforming the Church according to the Gospel and recovering the apostolic and catholic faith from teachings and practices they believed had departed from Scripture.
The origin of the word “Protestant” itself points to this broader reality. The term arose from the Protestation issued by evangelical princes and cities at the Second Diet of Speyer in 1529, where they appealed to the authority of God’s Word and the Gospel and refused to submit their consciences to human authority when that authority contradicted the truth of Scripture. The fundamental principle was that the Church is not above the Word of God. Every doctrine, tradition, practice, and ecclesiastical authority must ultimately be measured by the truth revealed in Holy Scripture. This is precisely why Anglicanism is properly Protestant.
Anglicanism does not begin with a rejection of the Church’s catholic heritage; rather, it appeals to Christ, Holy Scripture, the ancient creeds, and the witness of the early Church as standards by which the Church’s teaching and practice are to be examined. The Anglican Reformers believed that whatever contradicted Scripture ought to be corrected, while whatever faithfully expressed the apostolic and catholic faith ought to be preserved. In this sense, the Anglican Reformation was not an abandonment of catholicity but an attempt to reform and recover the catholic Church according to the Gospel.
To be Protestant, therefore, does not mean to be anti-Catholic. It does not mean rejecting the early Church, the ancient creeds, episcopal ministry, sacramental worship, liturgical Christianity, or the catholic faith. Nor does it mean treating everything that existed before the Reformation as inherently corrupt. Rather, Protestantism at its best is a confession that Christ alone is Lord of the Church, that the Gospel is the foundation of the Church’s faith, and that Holy Scripture is the supreme standard by which the Church’s teaching must ultimately be judged. That conviction is deeply Anglican.
The Anglican tradition is therefore Protestant without being sectarian, Reformed without being radically innovative, and catholic without being bound to every later development of Roman doctrine. These convictions are not mutually exclusive; they belong together. We are Protestant because we submit the Church to the authority of the Gospel and Holy Scripture, and we are catholic because we confess the faith of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.
The tragedy is that the word “Protestant” has become impoverished in modern usage and is often defined primarily by what it rejects rather than by what it affirms. Anglicans should not allow that impoverished definition to determine our identity. If we continue to call ourselves Protestant, we should reclaim the word in its historic and theological richness: a commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the authority of Holy Scripture, and the faithful reform and preservation of the catholic and apostolic faith.
Anglicanism is Protestant, but it is not Protestant because it ceased to be catholic. Rather, Anglicanism is Protestant because it believes that the catholic Church must always be reformed according to the Word of God. To defend the Gospel, submit to Scripture, confess the ancient faith, and remain rooted in the historic Church is not to abandon catholicity. It is to seek to preserve and embody the catholic faith in its truest and most faithful form.
