The spurious word Confessionalism is employed to describe a church's adherence to a particular tradition of doctrine and order, and the elements in that tradition which hold a group or family of churches together in a common sharing of life, worship and fellowship. The confession of faith as such is very much a Reformation phenomenon and the various particular Confessions of Faith in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries played a large part in creating the families of churches to which we are now accustomed within Protestantism. It is by the Augsburg Confession (1530) that Lutheran church tradition is denned; the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) stamped the Continental Reformed Churches with their own particular character; the Thirty-Nine Articles (1563) were for many long years and are still officially the defining document for the Anglican Communion; and it is largely the existence of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) which has made it possible to identify Presbyterianism as a family of churches at least within the Anglo-Saxon world. It is true that the relation of even the English-speaking Presbyterian churches to this Confession of Faith has been greatly modified over the years, but it still provides the essential criteria for recognising one of our churches as Reformed and Presbyterian.