Anglicanism

The term Anglican (from the "Angles" or English) describes those people and churches following the religious traditions developed by the established Church of England. The Anglican Communion codifies the Anglican relationship to the Church of England as a theologically broad and often diverging community of churches, which holds the English church as its mother institution. Adherents of Anglicanism number in the tens of millions worldwide.

Origins

See History of the Church of England

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While Anglicans acknowledge that the schism under Henry VIII of England led to the Church of England existing as a separate entity, they stress its continuity with the pre-Reformation Church of England. The organisational machinery of the Church of England was in place by the time of the Synod of Hertford in 673 AD, when the English bishops were for the first time able to act as one body, under the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Since the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, the Church of England has enjoyed a heritage both Catholic and Protestant, with the British monarch as its Supreme Governor. The British monarch plays no constitutional role in Anglican churches in other parts of the world.

Related Topics:
Schism - Henry VIII of England - Elizabethan Religious Settlement - Church of England - Supreme Governor

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Nonetheless, the English Reformation was initially driven by the dynastic goals of Henry VIII of England, who, in his quest for a queen to bear him a male heir, found it necessary and profitable to replace the Papacy with the English crown. Henry's need for a legitimate male heir was real. England's previous experience in the twelfth century of rule by a queen had been a disaster that no-one wished to see repeated. (see Empress Matilda) It was not Henry's intention to found a new church. He was well informed enough about history to know that the powers he was claiming were those which had been exercised by European monarchs over the church in their dominions since the time of Constantine, and that what had changed since then had been the growth of papal power. The Act of Supremacy put Henry at the head of the church in 1534, while acts such as the Dissolution of the Monasteries, put huge amounts of church land and property into the hands of the Crown and ultimately into those of the English nobility. These created vested interests which made a powerful material incentive to support a separate Christian church in England, under the rule of the Monarch. The theological justification for Anglican distinctiveness was begun by the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, and continued by other thinkers such as Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes. Cranmer had studied in Europe and was influenced by the ideas of the Reformation and had also married despite being a priest. Because Cranmer and other leaders of the Church of England had been ordained by bishops in the Apostolic Succession, and passed on that ordination to their successors, Anglicans consider that they have retained the Apostolic succession.

Related Topics:
Henry VIII of England - Papacy - Empress Matilda - Act of Supremacy - 1534 - Dissolution of the Monasteries - The Crown - Archbishop of Canterbury - Thomas Cranmer - Richard Hooker - Lancelot Andrewes - Reformation - Apostolic Succession

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During the short reign of Edward VI, Henry's son, Cranmer was able to move the Church of England significantly towards a more Protestant Calvinist position. The first Book of Common Prayer dates from this period. This reform was reversed abruptly in the subsequent reign of Queen Mary. Only under Queen Elizabeth I was the English church established as a reformed Catholic church.

Related Topics:
Edward VI - Calvinist - Book of Common Prayer - Queen Mary - Queen Elizabeth I

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In the sixteenth century religious life was an important part of the cement which held society together. Differences in religion were likely to lead to civil unrest at the very least, with treason and foreign invasion possibly thrown in as well. Elizabeth's solution to the problem of minimising bloodshed over religion in her dominions was a religious settlement which prescribed a fixed form of worship which everyone was expected to take part in, i.e. common prayer, but a belief system formulated in a way that would allow people with different understandings of what the Bible taught to give assent. The Protestant principle that all things must be proved by scripture was turned upside down in article VI of the Thirty-nine Articles, so that no one could be required to believe anything unless it could be clearly proved from the Scriptures. This recognised that there were areas where the Bible did not give clear cut teaching, where differences of opinion amongst Christians were legitimate. The bulk of the population was willing to go along with Elizabeth's religious settlement, but extremists at both ends of the theological spectrum would have nothing to do with it, and cracks in the facade of religious unity in England were appearing.

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For the next century there were significant swings back and forth between the Puritans and those with a more Catholic understanding of Anglicanism. It must be understood that the concept of religious freedom was in those days neither understood nor accepted by many people, and that the groups involved in the struggle were aiming for control, not freedom. By continental standards the level of violence over religion was not high, but among the casualties were a king, (Charles I) and an Archbishop of Canterbury, (William Laud). The final outcome in 1660 after the Restoration of Charles II was not too far removed from the Elizabethan ideal. One difference was that the ideal of encompassing all the people of England in one religious organisation, taken for granted by the Tudors, had to be abandoned. The religious landscape of England assumed its present form, with an Anglican established church occupying the middle ground, and the two extremes, Roman Catholic and Puritan, too strong to be suppressed altogether, having to continue their existence outside the national church, rather than controlling it. The English Reformation may be said to have ended at this point.

Related Topics:
Puritan - Charles I - William Laud - 1660 - Restoration - Charles II - Tudors

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The Elizabethan settlement failed in that it was never able to gain the assent of the entire English people. Yet as the Anglican form of Christianity is now flourishing in many parts of the world far away from England it may possibly have succeeded beyond the wildest expectations of anybody alive in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

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