Church of England

The Church of England is the leading Christian church in England. It is the church established by law: its formal head is the English monarch (Charles III). It is the mother church of the Anglican Communion. Its headquarters are at Church House, Westminster, in London. The Church of England understands itself to be both Catholic and Reformed: Catholic because it views itself as a part of the universal church of Jesus Christ in unbroken continuity with the early apostolic church. This is expressed in its emphasis on the teachings of the early Church Fathers, as in the Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed and Athanasian Creed. Reformed because it has been shaped by the doctrinal ideas of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, in particular by the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer. There are other Protestant churches in England which are not part of the Anglican Communion.