Anglicanism

/ang"gli keuh niz'euhm/, n.

the doctrines, principles, or system of the Anglican Church.

[1840-50; ANGLICAN + -ISM]

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Introduction

 one of the major branches of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation and a form of Christianity that includes features of both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Anglicanism is loosely organized in the Anglican Communion, a worldwide family of religious bodies that represents the offspring of the Church of England (England, Church of) and recognizes the archbishop of Canterbury as its nominal head. It prizes traditional worship and structure but operates autonomously and flexibly in different locales. Although the Anglican Communion has a creed—the Thirty-nine Articles—it has been disposed to allow widely divergent interpretations. Thus, Anglicans see themselves as possessing a cluster of historic pieties and procedural loyalties but few firm rules. The Book of Common Prayer (Book of Common Prayer), a compilation of the church's liturgical forms originally issued in 1549, represents the faith's independence from Rome and remains the hallmark of Anglican identity. The prayer book derives from ancient English spirituality and embodies the uniqueness of Anglican Christianity.

History

Christianity in England

      The Church of England (England, Church of), mother church of the Anglican Communion, has a long history. Christianity probably began to be practiced in England not later than the early 3rd century. By the 4th century the church was established well enough to send three British bishops—of Londinium (London), Eboracum (York), and Lindum (Lincoln)—to the Council of Arles (in present-day France) in 314. In the 5th century, after the Romans had withdrawn from Britain and the Anglo-Saxons had invaded it, St. Illtud and St. Patrick (Patrick, Saint) performed missionary work in Wales and in Ireland, respectively. Isolated from continental Christianity in the 5th and 6th centuries, Christianity in the British Isles, especially in the north, was influenced by Irish Christianity, which was organized around monasteries rather than episcopal sees. About 563 St. Columba (Columba, Saint) founded an influential monastic community on the island of Iona in the Inner Hebrides islands of Scotland.

      An important step in the history of the English church was taken in 596, when St. Augustine (Augustine of Canterbury, Saint) was sent on a mission to England by Pope Gregory the Great (Gregory I, Saint). He was charged with evangelizing the largely pagan southern English kingdoms and establishing Roman ecclesiastical organization. He successfully preached to the king of Kent, converting him and a large number of his followers in 597. Augustine's archbishopric at Canterbury soon became the symbolic seat of England's church, which established important ties to Rome under his leadership. Subsequent mission work, such as that of St. Aidan (Aidan, Saint) in northern England about 634, helped to solidify the English church. At the synod of Whitby in 664, the church of Northumbria (one of the northern English kingdoms) broke its ties with the Celtic church and accepted Roman usage, bringing the English church more fully into line with Roman and continental practices.

      The early church in England was a distinctive fusion of British, Celtic, and Roman influences. Although adopting the episcopal structure favoured by the church of Rome, it retained powerful centres in the monasteries. The most important British sees were the archbishoprics of York and Canterbury, which often competed for primacy. Representatives of the church, such as the great historian and scholar Bede (Bede the Venerable, Saint), played an important role in the development of English culture. The church sometimes found itself at odds with the English monarchy, as when St. Anselm (Anselm of Canterbury, Saint), archbishop of Canterbury, went into exile during controversies over the investiture of William Rufus (William II) and Henry I. The martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket (Becket, Saint Thomas), the most famous case of church-state conflict, demonstrated the church's concern to protect its integrity against the throne in the 12th century. The writings of John Wycliffe (Wycliffe, John) questioned the form of the medieval church and became an early protest against control of the English church by Rome.

      Under King Henry VIII in the 16th century, the Church of England broke with Rome, largely because Pope Clement VII refused to grant Henry an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Wishing no reform—except along the lines of Erasmus (Erasmus, Desiderius)'s Christian humanism—Henry intended to replace Rome's authority over the English church with his own. Upon Henry's death, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (Cranmer, Thomas) began changes that allied the Church of England with the Reformation. His The Book of Common Prayer revised traditional forms of worship to incorporate Protestant ideas. These efforts, however, were overturned by Queen Mary (Mary I), who sought to restore Roman Catholicism in England. When Elizabeth I assumed the throne in 1558, the Reformation in England triumphed. The theologian John Jewel (Jewel, John) (1522–71) wrote that the Church of England had returned to ancient precedent. Richard Hooker (Hooker, Richard) (1554?–1600) defended the church against attacks by English Puritans and Catholics. Although the Puritans achieved political power in the Commonwealth in the mid-17th century, the subsequent Restoration (1660) marked the beginning of more than a century of great influence for the Church of England. The church dominated England's religious life, becoming a considerable social and spiritual force and closely allying itself with the power of the throne. It generated impressive forms of philanthropy, and clergy commonly performed the duties of civil servants.

      The church's hold on English religious life began to wane in the 18th century, despite impressive reform efforts. John Wesley (Wesley, John), Charles Simeon, John Newton, and other clergy associated with the Evangelical revival prompted a surge of new religious fervour. Evangelical laity such as William Wilberforce (Wilberforce, William) and the Clapham Sect fought slavery and encouraged social reform. In the early 19th century the Anglo-Catholic (High Church) Oxford movement, led by John Henry Newman (Newman, John Henry), John Keble, and E.B. Pusey, attempted to recover the ancient liturgy and to respond to social concerns. The church made impressive efforts to encompass the diversity of modern English life while retaining its traditional identity.

Developments in worldwide Anglicanism

      From the time of the Reformation, the Church of England expanded, following the routes of British exploration and colonization. It served native peoples and expatriates alike, and all initially considered themselves loyal to the see of Canterbury. The church's great missionary societies were important agents of its growth beyond England. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (founded in 1699), the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (1701), and the Church Missionary Society (begun in 1799) achieved a global identity. These societies undertook mission work among indigenous peoples in the British colonies and began the process of transferring authority in church matters to local leadership. Anglicanism thus came to function as a decentralized body of national churches loyal to one another and to the forms of faith inherited from the Church of England.

      Social and political circumstances often hastened the development of autonomy. The American Revolution compelled the organization of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA), which completed its structure by 1789. The first American bishop, Samuel Seabury (Seabury, Samuel), was consecrated in Scotland in 1784. The Anglican Church of Canada (Canada, Anglican Church of) established its own separate organization in 1893 (though it was known as the Church of England in Canada until 1959), as did the Anglican Church of Australia in 1962.

      Vigorous missionary work in the British colonies produced strong churches in such diverse places as Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, India, and Australia. British, American, and Canadian Anglicans combined their efforts in China and Japan. The church left an impressive legacy of educational institutions and medical facilities. Here and there, members of indigenous peoples became clergy and even bishops. Samuel Crowther of Nigeria became the first black bishop in 1864.

      Consolidation and indigenization characterized the Anglican mission in its later years. Beginning in the late 19th century, Anglican bishops attended the Lambeth Conference, held once every 10 years at the residence of the archbishop of Canterbury in London. The immediate cause of the first meeting in 1867 was a controversy that arose in one of the colonial churches. The archbishop of Cape Town, Robert Gray (who was High Church, or traditionalist), wanted the bishop of Natal, John Colenso (Colenso, John) (who was Low Church, or Evangelical), to be arraigned on charges of heresy for holding what were then regarded as advanced views of the Creation stories in the opening chapters of Genesis. The controversy aroused intense feelings and anxieties on a wide range of issues—doctrinal, personal, and organizational—among all the Anglican churches throughout the world. Bishop Colenso was convicted and deposed in the church courts, but, upon appeal to the civil courts of England, he won his case and retained his church properties. The most important organizational issue raised by the dispute concerned the relationship between the church's various branches. Because they lack an authoritative centre, however, Anglicans have continued to rely upon consultation and consensus to coordinate matters of belief and practice.

      The end of colonialism and the rise of newly independent nations compelled Anglicans to rethink their identity and mission. Once the church of the colonizer, Anglicanism spawned a host of self-directing churches linked by common form and historical allegiance to the Church of England. In most cases Anglicanism has been able to adapt in an affirmative way to new and changing social circumstances. In 1947, for example, Anglicans joined several Christian bodies to create the Church of South India, a unique ecumenical union. Even more dramatic developments took place in Africa, where in the early 21st century more than half of all Anglicans worldwide live. In 2004 the church in Africa sought to establish its own identity at the First African Anglican Bishops' Conference. The bishops in council declared that the church in Africa had come of age and should focus on issues of poverty and social justice. The council called for the creation of institutions to train clerics in Africa, rather than in England or America, and to develop a theology relevant to African society.

      Anglicans have frequently been articulate opponents of injustice. Archbishop Janani Luwum of Uganda, for example, was martyred for his opposition to the rule of Idi Amin. In South Africa the Anglican church consistently opposed apartheid, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Tutu, Desmond) won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1984 for his stand on behalf of racial equality. Anglicans rarely become revolutionaries, however, because the church views its task as working for justice through existing institutions.

      Since the mid-19th century the Church of England has developed a similar posture toward establishing social justice. Still England's official church, it experienced attrition during the 19th and 20th centuries, and during the same period a succession of leaders sought to enhance the church's claim to be the soul of the nation. In the mid-19th century Christian Socialism, a movement that attempted to apply the social principles of Christianity to modern industrial life, found proponents in the Church of England. Sparked by the theologian F.D. Maurice, the movement within the Anglican church was subsequently led by clergy such as Stewart Headlam and Henry Scott Holland. In the 20th century William Temple (Temple, William), archbishop of Cantebury from 1942 to 1944, emphasized that the church should be a community of worship in step with modern life. The scholar and lay theologian C.S. Lewis (Lewis, C.S.) responded to modern doubts in a sensitive restatement of the tenets of Christian belief, and John A.T. Robinson, bishop of Woolwich, affirmed the searching quality of modern Christian experience.

Teachings

Doctrinal views

      What has come to be known as the Lambeth Quadrilateral defines the essential beliefs of Anglicanism. First suggested by an American, William Reed Huntington, in 1870, the Quadrilateral states four elements essential to the Anglican conception of Christian identity—the Bible, the Nicene Creed, baptism and Holy Communion, and the episcopate. The Lambeth Conference of 1930 further clarified the nature of Anglicanism when it described the Anglican Communion as

a fellowship within the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, of those duly constituted Dioceses, Provinces or Regional Churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, which uphold and propagate the…faith and order as they are generally set forth in the Book of Common Prayer…; promote within each of their territories a national expression of Christian faith, life and worship; and are bound together not by a central legislative and executive authority, but by mutual loyalty sustained through the common counsel of the Bishops in conference.

      The Anglican Communion thus holds to the faith as expounded by the Scriptures and by the early Church Fathers. It respects the authority of the state but does not submit to it, and it equally respects the freedom of the individual. The Anglican Communion does not seek to evade the challenges of the world or to live a life separate from it. Basing its doctrines on the Bible, the Anglican Communion allows a remarkable latitude of interpretation by both clergy and laity.

      The Church of England holds close to the spirit of the Thirty-nine Articles, a doctrinal statement drawn up by the clergy of Canterbury in the mid-16th century and approved by Elizabeth I in 1571. Nevertheless, subscription to the articles is not required of the laity, and adherence by the clergy is expected only in a general way. Other churches or councils of the Anglican Communion take different views of the articles, but none regards them as having, for example, the status of the historic statements of belief set forth in the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed, nor do they accord them the status given to other 16th-century doctrinal statements, such as the Augsburg Confession of the Lutheran churches or the Westminster Confession of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches.

The ministry

      Anglicans accept a threefold order of ministry, consisting of bishops, priests or presbyters, and deacons. Although they hold to the view of succession from the Apostles, they are not committed to any particular theory regarding the conveyance of that ministry. Anglicans attempt to balance the clerical point of view with forms of authority that include the laity. Even bishops are rarely able to function without the advice and consent of other clergy and laity.

worship and organization

Anglican worship

      Worship is the centre of Anglican life. Anglicans view their tradition as a broad form of public prayer, and they attempt to encompass diverse Christian styles in a traditional context. Although The Book of Common Prayer is the most apparent mark of Anglican identity, it has undergone many revisions and wears national guises. The prayer book of 1662 represents the official version in the Church of England, but a 1928 version is commonly used. In 2000 the church introduced Common Worship, a modernized collection of services and prayers, as an official alternative to the 1662 prayer book.

      Outside England a few Anglicans still rely upon the English prayer book of 1662, but most have their own versions, increasingly in languages other than English. All forms hold to the essential, historic elements of the prayer book but incorporate local idioms. In recent years there has been a recovery of ancient liturgical styles and vestments as well as an increased emphasis on the Eucharist as the central act of Christian worship. Experimental rites have appeared in different parts of the Anglican world. Change in Anglican worship has meant increased variety, new roles for the laity, and a tendency toward freedom of expression while retaining the essence of the church's traditional forms.

Comprehensiveness in doctrine and practice

      Often said to be the middle way between Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, the Anglican Communion is comprehensive in matters of doctrine and practice. While asserting the importance of the apostolic succession of bishops and The Book of Common Prayer, it nevertheless allows a considerable degree of flexibility in most doctrinal and liturgical matters. Thus, within the Communion there are several schools of thought and practice, including High Church, Anglo-Catholic (Anglo-Catholicism), Low Church or Evangelical (Anglican Evangelical), and others. The various churches of the Anglican Communion, though autonomous, are bound together by a common heritage and common doctrinal and liturgical concerns, and there has always been a considerable amount of interchange of ecclesiastical personnel.

Authority and structure

      The Anglican Communion consists of autonomous national churches that are bound together by intangible links best described as ties of loyalty between the see of Canterbury and each other. Although the archbishop of Canterbury is respected throughout the Communion and his words carry great moral authority, he exercises no jurisdiction over any part of the Communion other than the diocese of Canterbury and the Church of England as a whole through the authority vested in synods and convocations. Like a family, the Anglican Communion changes its form and shape, growing larger when new provinces (areas of jurisdiction) are formed and smaller when schemes of union with non-Anglican churches are consummated.

      The basic unit of the Anglican Communion is the diocese, a geographic area over which a bishop presides. Dioceses generally form part of a larger unit known as a province, but even these are far from uniform in configuration. A province may, for example, be part of an autonomous church: the Anglican Church of Australia has five provinces and that of Canada four; the Churches of England and Ireland have two each; and the Episcopal Church (Episcopal Church in the United States of America) in the United States of America (ECUSA), has nine. Some provinces, however, include whole countries, such as Japan, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Other provinces cover a number of countries, such as the provinces of Southern Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, the West Indies, and the Southern Cone of America. On occasion, one diocese covers a whole country or even several countries, such as the diocese of Polynesia.

      Variations occur in the titles of the heads of the various provinces or national churches. England has two archbishops (Canterbury and York), known as metropolitans, as does Ireland. Canada has a primate (who has no province) and four metropolitans. Australia has five archbishops, one of whom—while having jurisdiction over a province—is known as the primate. The church of Japan and that of Brazil each have a primate who also has a diocese, and the United States has a presiding bishop and a primate, both without a diocese. To complicate organizational matters, the Scottish Episcopal Church has a primus (primate), and the ECUSA has presidents (who are elected for three-year periods) of its nine provinces.

      Several branches of the church exist apart from provincial or national churches, though usually in reliance upon either the Church of England or the ECUSA. A number of dioceses in Central America, as in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, participate in the ECUSA, though with the goal of eventual autonomy in a Central American province. The church in Hong Kong, once a special adjunct to the Council of Churches of East Asia, now constitutes a province, and Bermuda is an extraprovincial see of the Church of England. In some areas, such as China, India, and Pakistan, Anglicans have participated in the creation of ecumenical forms of church union.

Internal developments

      The mother church of the Anglican Communion, the Church of England, has maintained close connections with the state. It has representative bishops in the House of Lords and can properly be called the established church, even though, contrary to much popular opinion, it is in no sense supported financially by the state. The Church of England itself is without question the church of the English people, even though many of the country's citizens do not so regard it.

      The Anglican Communion has never had much worldwide structure—indeed, it has been characterized by its lack of structure. Even meetings of Anglican church leaders have been restricted, except in very recent times, to the Lambeth Conferences and to pan-Anglican congresses, which involve clergy and laity as well as bishops. Only three such meetings were held in the 20th century: in London in 1908, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., in 1954, and in Toronto, Canada, in 1963. The Lambeth Conference of 1968 recommended the formation of the Anglican Consultative Council, an advisory body of about 60 members, including bishops, clergy, and laypersons; its president is the archbishop of Canterbury. The council shares information, coordinates policy, and develops unified mission strategies. Although it lacks binding authority, the council increases the Anglican tendency toward consultation in matters of faith and life. It meets at two- or three-year intervals between Lambeth Conferences. It replaced the Lambeth Consultative Body, whose members were the primates or presiding bishops of the various national churches, and the Advisory Council on Missionary Strategy, which came into being after World War II. The Lambeth Conference of 1978 recommended that the primates of all Anglican provinces meet regularly, and they have since done so in various countries of the Anglican Communion.

      The importance of conversation among Anglicans is reflected in the extent of change in some branches of the Anglican Communion. In the second half of the 20th century, most churches of the Anglican world revised their versions of The Book of Common Prayer (Book of Common Prayer). In the United States, revision of the Episcopalian prayer book was extensive. The new prayer book of 1979 reflected years of liturgical study, trial drafts, and discussion. It offered unprecedented liturgical options, including the use of modern English liturgies and opportunities for informal worship. The controversy generated by the book abated only slowly.

      Equally controversial were the admission of women to the church's priesthood and the prospect of women bishops. Women had been ordained priests in Hong Kong in 1944 and in 1971. By the mid-1970s, women in various parts of the Anglican world called for the priesthood to be opened to them. The impact was greatest in the United States and Canada, where women eventually constituted a significant percentage of seminary students. American Episcopalians approved women as priests in 1976 after heated debate. While several other Anglican churches took a similar course, the Church of England preferred to study the issue. Opponents of the ordination of women feared the loss of the church's Catholic heritage, while advocates saw a chance for Anglican leadership in expanding the ministries open to women in the church. After two decades of debate, the Church of England ordained its first women priests in 1994.

      The Lambeth Conference of 1988 confronted the possibility that a woman would become a bishop in the United States. That possibility became a reality in 1989, when Barbara C. Harris was ordained a bishop. (She was elected as a suffragan bishop of Massachusetts but did not head a diocese.) In subsequent years, other women were consecrated as bishops. In 1990 New Zealander Penelope Jamieson became the first diocesan bishop, and in 2006 the ECUSA elected Katharine Jefferts Schori as the first woman presiding bishop of any member church of the Anglican Communion. The Church of England voted to consecrate women as bishops in 2008. The election of women as bishops or presiding bishops was welcomed by some members of the Anglican Communion and strongly opposed by others.

      The consecration in 2003 of V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as the bishop of New Hampshire, U.S., posed another challenge to Anglican solidarity. Robinson's consecration met with strong opposition throughout the church—especially in Africa, where bishops called for the ECUSA to repent and came close to forging a schism over the matter. Like the elevation of women to the bishopric, the consecration of gay men to the office of bishop also created an obstacle to improved relations with the Roman Catholic Church.

      Despite the importance that the Anglican Communion places on its global mission, the penetration of Latin America has been only a recent development. Although Anglicans recognize and respect the pervasive influence of Roman Catholicism, they have found a niche among religiously uncommitted people in the area. There has also been impressive growth in Africa and Asia, all sparked by indigenous leadership, and Anglicanism has thus become as much a non-Western as a Western form of Christianity.

Relations with other churches

      Because the Anglican Communion consists of a cluster of related churches, it does not, as a worldwide communion, have membership in the World Council of Churches; each of the Anglican churches, however, holds such membership. This type of ecumenical (ecumenism) relationship is in keeping with one of the consistent goals of Anglicanism. Anglicans see themselves as catalysts for Christian unity, and the Anglican blend of Catholic liturgy and Protestant procedure appears to afford the basis of a broad ecumenical encounter. Anglicanism has points in common with virtually all other expressions of the Christian faith. Anglicans readily engage Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant leaders in theological discussion and joint liturgy. Ecumenical processes involving the Roman Catholic Church have been regular and intensive, though without prospect of organic reunion. The Anglican/Roman Catholic International Theological Commission has met regularly, as have committees involving the Lutheran and Reformed traditions. In North America, Lutheran-Episcopalian dialogue has led to a formal “concordat” that entailed the mutual recognition of sacraments and ministry. For Anglicans, ecumenical discussion is the appropriate context for advancing the Christian mission.

World Anglicanism

      The Anglican Communion has tried to bridge the gulfs between Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox churches. As noted above, in 1947 Anglican dioceses were included in the new Church of South India, a communion that also included Methodist and Congregationalist mission churches. In other areas the Anglican Communion has special interchurch relations, as with the Lusitanian Catholic Apostolic Evangelical Church in Portugal, the Mar Thoma Syrian Church in India, the Old Catholic churches in Europe and the United States, the Philippine Independent Church, and the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church. In 1974 the Church of England and English Roman Catholics, Baptists, United Reformed, and Methodists agreed to form a national commission for discussions of the possibility of practical reunion. Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie (Runcie, Robert) and Pope John Paul II (John Paul II), following their historic meeting in England in 1982, emphasized the importance of the reconciliation effort. This effort was continued by Runcie's successors, including Rowan Williams (Williams, Rowan), who made a trip to Rome soon after his elevation to the position of archbishop of Canterbury in 2002.

The Most Rev. Ralph Stanley Dean The Rev. William L. Sachs

Additional Reading

Good introductions to the essence of Anglicanism are Michael Ramsey, The Anglican Spirit, ed. by Dale Coleman (1991, reissued 2004); and Rowan Williams, Anglican Identities (2003). Stephen Neill, Anglicanism, 4th ed. (1977); and Stephen Sykes, John Booty, and Jonathan Knight (eds.), Study in Anglicanism, rev. ed. (1998), are the most comprehensive treatments of Anglican history. John R.H. Moorman, A History of the Church in England, 3rd ed. (1973, reissued 1994), presents the basic facts about Anglicanism's mother church. Marion J. Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book (1981, reissued 1995), is a detailed examination of Anglican worship and its rationale. James T. Addison, The Episcopal Church in the United States, 1789–1931 (1951, reissued 1969), is the most thorough treatment of American Anglicanism. Paul A. Welsby, A History of the Church of England, 1945–1980 (1984), explains recent changes in the Church of England. Also of interest are Raymond W. Albright, A History of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1964), the standard story of American Episcopalianism; and Robert Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, rev. ed. (1999).The Most Rev. Ralph Stanley Dean The Rev. William L. Sachs

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