Members only: The Thirty-Nine Articles and the Protes­tant Epis­co­pal Church in the United States

What role did the Articles of Religion play in the history of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States? The most common answer you will hear to this question, whether in popular accounts of its history, from pulpits, or even in some seminary classrooms, is 'Not much'. The common story goes something like this: when the Episcopal Church became independent after the Revolutionary War, the new church rooted its identity in its liturgy and polity and allowed the role of the Articles of Religion to wane. To be sure, the fledgling Episcopal Church did eventually adopt its own version of the Church of England's articles, but it waited until 1801 to do so and removed the requirement that clergy subscribe to it. This late adoption is indicative, the story goes, of the church's general attitude toward the Articles: they were never important. Thus, for example, the entry on the Articles in Don Armentrout and Robert Slocum's An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church (which is also available on the Episcopal Church's website) includes only two dismissive sentences on the American use of the Articles of Religion: 'The Episcopal Church has never required subscription to the Articles. They now appear in a section called "Historical Documents" in the back of the BCP'. There is no treatment of the Articles of Religion in two of the three best-known current histories of the Episcopal Church — David Holmes' A Brief History of the Episcopal Church and David Hein and Gardiner Shattuck's The Episcopalians. It is not hard to get the sense that the Articles never really mattered.