An Ancient Church
The roots of the Church of England go back to the time of the
Roman Empire when a Christian church came into existence in what
was then the Roman province of Britain. The early Christian writers
Tertullian and Origen mention the existence of a British church in
the third century AD and in the fourth century British bishops
attended a number of the great councils of the Church such as the
Council of Arles in 314 and the Council of Rimini in 359. The first
member of the British church whom we know by name is St Alban, who,
tradition tells us, was martyred for his faith on the spot where St
Albans Abbey now stands.
The British church was a missionary church with figures such as
St Illtud, St Ninian and St Patrick evangelising in Wales, Scotland
and Ireland, but the invasions by the pagan Angles, Saxons and
Jutes in the fifth century seem to have destroyed the organisation
of the church in much of what is now England. In 597 a mission sent
by Pope Gregory the Great and led by St Augustine of Canterbury
landed in Kent to begin the work of converting these pagan peoples.
What eventually became known as the Church of England (the
Ecclesia Anglicana - or the English Church) was the result
of a combination of three streams of Christianity, the Roman
tradition of St Augustine and his successors, the remnants of the
old Romano-British church and the Celtic tradition coming down from
Scotland and associated with people like St Aidan and St
Cuthbert.
An English Church
These three streams came together as a result of increasing
mutual contact and a number of local synods, of which the Synod of
Whitby in 664 has traditionally been seen as the most important.
The result was an English Church, led by the two Archbishops of
Canterbury and York, that was fully assimilated into the mainstream
of the Christian Church of the west. This meant that it was
influenced by the wider development of the Western Christian
tradition in matters such as theology, liturgy, church
architecture, and the development of monasticism. It also meant
that until the Reformation in the 16th century the Church of
England acknowledged the authority of the Pope.
A reformed Church
At the Reformation the Western Church became divided between
those who continued to accept Papal authority and the various
Protestant churches that repudiated it. The Church of England was
among the churches that broke with Rome. The catalyst for this
decision was the refusal of the Pope to annul the marriage of Henry
VIII and Catherine of Aragon, but underlying this was a Tudor
nationalist belief that authority over the English Church properly
belonged to the English monarchy. In the reign of Henry's son
Edward VI the Church of England underwent further reformation,
driven by the conviction that the theology being developed by the
theologians of the Protestant Reformation was more faithful to the
teaching of the Bible and the Early Church than the teaching of
those who continued to support the Pope.
In the reign of Mary Tudor. the Church of England once again
submitted to Papal authority. However, this policy was reversed
when Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558.
The religious settlement that eventually emerged in the reign of
Elizabeth gave the Church of England the distinctive identity that
it has retained to this day. It resulted in a Church that
consciously retained a large amount of continuity with the Church
of the Patristic and Medieval periods in terms of its use of the
catholic creeds, its pattern of ministry, its buildings and aspects
of its liturgy, but which also embodied Protestant insights in its
theology and in the overall shape of its liturgical practice. The
way that this is often expressed is by saying that the Church of
England is both 'catholic and reformed.'
At the end of the 16th century Richard Hooker produced the
classic defence of the Elizabethan settlement in his Of the
Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, a work which sought to defend
the Church of England against its Puritan critics who wanted
further changes to make the Church of England more like the
churches of Geneva or Scotland.
An established Church
In the 17th century continuing tensions within the Church of
England over theological and liturgical issues were among the
factors that led to the English Civil War. The Church was
associated with the losing Royalist side and during the period of
the Commonwealth from 1649-1660 its bishops were abolished and its
prayer book, the Book of Common Prayer, was banned. With
the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 this situation was reversed
and in 1662 those clergy who could not accept this decision were
forced to leave their posts. These dissenting clergy and their
congregations were then persecuted until 1689 when the Toleration
Act gave legal existence to those Protestant groups outside the
Church of England who accepted the doctrine of the Trinity.
The settlement of 1689 has remained the basis of the
constitutional position of the Church of England ever since, a
constitutional position in which the Church of England has remained
the established Church with a range of particular legal privileges
and responsibilities, but with ever increasing religious and civil
rights being granted to other Christians, those of other faiths and
those professing no faith at all.
As well as being the established Church in England, the Church
of England has also become the mother church of the Anglican
Communion, a group of separate churches that are in communion with
the Archbishop of Canterbury and for whom he is the focus of
unity.
A comprehensive Church
The history of the Church of England from the 18th century
onwards has been enriched by the co-existence within it of three
broad traditions, the Evangelical, the Catholic and the
Liberal.
- The Evangelical tradition has emphasized the significance of
the Protestant aspects of the Church of England's identity,
stressing the importance of the authority of Scripture, preaching,
justification by faith and personal conversion.
- The Catholic tradition, strengthened and reshaped from the
1830s by the Oxford movement, has emphasized the significance of
the continuity between the Church of England and the Church of the
Early and Medieval periods. It has stressed the importance of the
visible Church and its sacraments and the belief that the ministry
of bishops, priests and deacons is a sign and instrument of the
Church of England's Catholic and apostolic identity.
- The Liberal tradition has emphasized the importance of the use
of reason in theological exploration. It has stressed the need to
develop Christian belief and practice in order to respond
creatively to wider advances in human knowledge and understanding
and the importance of social and political action in forwarding
God's kingdom.
It should be noted that these three traditions have not existed
in strict isolation. Both in the case of individuals and in the
case of the Church as a whole, influences from all three traditions
have overlapped in a whole variety of different ways. It also needs
to be noted that since the 1960's a fourth influence, the
Charismatic movement, has become increasingly important. This has
emphasized the importance of the Church being open to renewal
through the work of the Holy Spirit. Its roots lie in
Evangelicalism but it has influenced people from a variety of
different traditions.
A Church committed to mission and unity
From the 18th century onwards the Church of England has also
been faced with a number of challenges that it continues to face
today.
- There has been the challenge of responding to social changes in
England such as population growth, urbanisation and the development
of an increasingly multi-cultural and multi-faith society.
- There has been the challenge of engaging in mission in a
society that has become increasingly materialist in outlook and in
which belief in God or interest in 'spiritual' matters is not seen
as being linked to involvement with the life of the Church.
- There has been the challenge of providing sufficient and
sufficiently trained clergy and lay ministers to enable the Church
of England to carry out its responsibility to provide ministry and
pastoral care for every parish in the country.
- There has been the challenge of trying to overcome the
divisions of the past by developing closer relationships between
the Church of England and other churches and trying to move with
them towards the goal of full visible unity.
As this brief account has shown, the changes that have taken
place in the Church of England over the centuries have been many
and various. What has remained constant, however, has been the
Church's commitment to the faith 'uniquely revealed in the Holy
Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds,' its maintenance
of the traditional three fold order of ministry, and its
determination to bring the grace of God to the whole nation through
word and sacrament in the power of the Holy Spirit.
For further reading
I Bunting (ed) Celebrating the Anglican Way
S C Neill Anglicanism
S Platten (ed) Anglicanism and the Western Christian
Tradition