Canons of the Church of England

This fully revised 2000 edition (including the 2005 first supplement) contains all the latest amendments, as well as additional supporting material, including:

• a full list of those forms of service which have been approved and commended as alternatives to The Book of Common Prayer, including Common Worship services;
• the guidelines agreed by the House of Bishops in March 1997 on the admission of baptized persons to Holy Communion before confirmation;
• advice to clergy concerning marriage and the divorced as issued by the House of Bishops in 2002;
• a full list of Churches designated pursuant to the Church of England (Ecumenical Relations) Measure 1988; and
• the list produced by the Council for Christian Unity of Churches in Communion with the Church of England.

"Knowledge of the Canons by the Clergy is essential for the right ordering and teaching of the Church of England."
+ERIC KEMP
Former Bishop of Chichester

Available to buy

To purchase the complete set of Canons in an easy-to-use binder with reference tags and incorporating the first supplement, simply place an order on the Church House Publishing web site. Please return the yellow slip to the Legal Office to register to receive details of future supplements.

Available to download

The Canons of the Church of England (incorporating the first supplement) are also available to download from this web site as PDF files. Use the information that follows to make best use of the files.

Using PDF files

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Even the largest of the downloads should take less than five minutes to complete on an average 56kbps modem.

Download the Canons

Contents	Table of Contents and Table of Promulgation of Canons (53 Kb) (See addenda below)
Section A	The Church of England (37 Kb)
Section B	Divine Service and the administration of sacraments (140 Kb)
Section C	Ministers, their ordination, functions and charges (93 Kb) (See addenda below: Canons C1, C12, C13, C14, C15 and C26 amended by Amending Canon No.24)
Section D	The order of deaconesses (37 Kb)
Section E	The lay officers of the Church (50 Kb)
Section F	Things appertaining to churches (50 Kb)
Section G	The Ecclesiastical Courts (38 Kb) (See addenda below: Canons G1 and G3 amended by Amending Canon No.24)
Section H	The Synods of the Church (55 Kb)
Supp/Index	Supplementary material and index (141 Kb)
Whole	The whole of the sixth edition of the Canons Warning: (469Kb)

Canons addenda

Details of corrections and updates made to the Canons since the first supplement was published in May 2005.