We, the people of God, of the Anglican Church, I.A.C. Canada Synod, are united as a community of believers by virtue of our common Baptism into the triune God; Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. We dedicate ourselves to growing together in faith for today’s world and the world to come, by welcoming people to that faith, nurturing that faith, and evangelising together in Christ’s mission of caring, servi
ce, and prayer in His Name. As Anglicans we worship Almighty God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We uphold the Faith that was once delivered by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to the Apostles, the Martyrs and Saints, and practice that Faith at all times and in every place. We are Catholic because we have no new doctrines of our own, and are part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. We are Reformed, because we repudiate the Papal claim to infallibility and those particular dogmatic teachings that cannot be proved by Holy Writ. We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be authoritative Word of God, handed down to us by the Prophets, and above all, we believe in Jesus Christ the Messiah revealed in God’s self-disclosing and saving plan for mankind as recorded in those same Holy Scriptures. We are a Bible-believing Church that accepts the unchanging truth and moral norms as expressed in the Word of God. We maintain and practice that matters of faith, order, doctrine, morality and discipline, are not subject to changes wrought by contemporary social and secular mores. We believe that the Decalogue was graven in stone, and the momentous Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds, de facto expose the sound judicial and ecclesial Doctrine of the Apostolic and Apologetic Church. We are a devotional Church, whose adherents pray privately, each in his or her own way, or corporately in Divine Worship during which our "common prayers" are the liturgical, Opus Dei which requires active participation with all of our human senses. The focus and central act of our Divine Worship is the Holy Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, or the Mass, also known in the Eastern Churches as the Divine Liturgy. We believe that "the Church" includes a ministry of Lay people in that "the priesthood of all believers" is indispensable in extending the Kingdom of God. We believe that the Church’s Ministry is the unity of both Word and Sacrament. The elements are effectual signs which convey God’s grace, and that, at every Sacramental act we encounter God. The Sacraments of the Anglican Tradition are Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Communion, Holy Orders, Holy Matrimony, the Ministry of Absolution or Penance, and the Ministry of Healing, or Unction. The essence and purpose of the Church was, and is, to proclaim the Gospel boldly, and to bring humanity to Christ, and to bring Christ to mankind, and reconcile the world to Him. As Independent Anglicans, we are profoundly committed to the authentic Doctrine of the old Church of England and the principles of the Solemn Declaration, 1893 and the Anglican three-legged stool: Scripture, Reason and Tradition, and of course, Divine Worship exclusively from the Book of Common Prayer.
