ANGLICANISM

ANGLICANISM . Anglicanism, also called the Anglican Communion, is a federation of autonomous national and regional churches that are in full intercommunion through the archbishop of Canterbury of the Church of England. Anglican churches share a tradition of doctrine, polity, and liturgy stemming from the English Reformation of the sixteenth century. Often classified as Protestant, they also claim a Catholic heritage of faith and order from the ancient, undivided church.

Early History

The endeavor to hold together in a comprehensive middle way (via media ) the tensions of its Protestant and Catholic elements is characteristic of Anglicanism. This tradition is a legacy of the English Reformation, which was essentially an act of state, not a popular movement. Without the coercive power of the state Anglicanism might have died aborning. The long reign of Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603) ensured its survival.

Like her father, Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547), Elizabeth was determined to rule both church and state. The Act of Supremacy of 1559 changed Henry's title of "supreme head in earth of the Church of England" (1534) to that of "supreme governor." Elizabeth had no intention of submitting England to papal authority, which her sister, Mary I (r. 1553–1558), had restored. She was equally adamant against agitation for a presbyterian form of church government that would dispense with the royal supremacy, the episcopacy, and the liturgy.

The two editions of The Book of Common Prayer authorized in 1549 and 1552 under Edward VI (r. 1547–1553) were chiefly the work of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury (1533–1556), whom Queen Mary had burned as a heretic. Both books were Protestant in doctrine, but many ceremonies and ornaments from the Latin rites that were retained in 1549 were eliminated in 1552. Elizabeth preferred the 1549 prayer book. Parliament would accept only that of 1552, but the queen succeeded in making a few substantial changes in it. Pejorative references to the bishop of Rome were omitted. The 1,549 words of administration at Communion were added. Those additions clearly identified the consecrated bread and wine with the body and blood of Christ. Elizabeth eliminated a rubric stating that kneeling to receive Communion did not imply adoration of "any real and essential presence there being of Christ's natural flesh and blood," but she was unable to enforce a new rubric restoring the ornaments of the church as they had been specified in the second year of Edward VI's reign.

Many episcopal sees, including Canterbury, were vacant at Elizabeth's accession. Most of Mary's bishops were deprived of their offices for refusing to accept the new settlement. Careful to maintain the episcopal succession, Elizabeth chose Matthew Parker, a moderate reformer and a friend and admirer of Cranmer, to be archbishop of Canterbury. He was consecrated on December 17, 1559, by two bishops from Henry's time and two from Edward's. Vacant sees were filled with the queen's supporters.

In 1571 Parliament approved the Thirty-nine Articles, the only official confessional statement of Anglicanism, which are still included in most editions of the prayer book. They are not a complete system of doctrine but point out differences from Roman Catholicism and Anabaptism and indicate nuanced agreement with Lutheran and Reformed positions. The queen added in Article 20 the statement "The Church hath power to decree Rites and Ceremonies."

Elizabeth's settlement remains the foundation of Anglicanism. It affirms the status of the canonical scriptures as the final arbiter in all matters of doctrine and as containing all matters necessary to salvation. Traditions of the ancient church and teachings of the early Church Fathers, unless contrary to scripture, are treasured. The dogmatic decisions of the first four ecumenical councils on the Trinity and the Incarnation are accepted. Anglican liturgies regularly use the Apostles' and Nicene creeds and in some places the Athanasian Creed (Quicunque vult ).

Theology and Church Government

Today most Anglicans accept modern methods of literary and historical criticism of the scriptures and other religious documents. Anglicanism has never had a dominant theologian such as Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, or John Calvin. The apologetic work of Richard Hooker (1554–1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, is still influential with its appeal to scripture, church tradition, reason, and experience. Anglican theology tends to be biblical, pastoral, and apologetic rather than dogmatic or confessional.

The Anglican polity is episcopal and preserves the ordained orders of bishops, presbyter-priests, and deacons that go back to apostolic times. There is no official doctrine of episcopacy. Some Anglicans consider it essential; others feel it is needed for the proper ordering or fullness of a truly catholic church. In negotiations for unity or intercommunion with other churches Anglicans insist that an unbroken succession of bishops, together with the other two orders, be maintained.

All Anglican churches are constitutionally governed, with each church having its own canons for executive and legislative authorities. Bishops, the clergy, and the laity participate in all synodical decision making, but a consensus of these orders, voting separately, is necessary for decisions about major doctrinal, liturgical, or canonical matters. Outside England bishops generally are elected by a synod of the diocese in which they will serve, subject to confirmation by other bishops and representative clergy and laity from each diocese.

The Church of England is the only contemporary Anglican church that is state-established. The archbishop of Canterbury has a primacy of honor among all Anglican bishops but has no jurisdiction outside his own diocese and province. The British Crown, after appropriate consultations, nominates the English bishops, who then are elected by their respective cathedral chapters. Parliament retains final control over doctrine and liturgy, but the Synodical Government Measure of 1969 gave the English church the freedom to order its internal life through a general synod of bishops, clergy, and laity.

In addition to the episcopate, Anglicanism is bonded by a common liturgy that is contained in various recensions of The Book of Common Prayer and is based on either the Elizabethan version of 1559 or that of 1549. Use of the prayer book is prescribed in all Anglican churches. With the Bible and a hymnal, it provides everything needed for the churches' rites and ceremonies. The prayer book has been in continuous use since the sixteenth century except for the years of the English Commonwealth (1645–1660), when it was proscribed for public and private use. It is the only vernacular liturgy of the Reformation period still in use.

The prayer-book formularies, many of them derived from the ancient church, are a principal source of doctrine and a primary basis of the spirituality of both the clergy and the laity. The daily and Sunday liturgies are set within the framework of the traditional seasons of the Christian year and the fixed feasts of Christ and the saints. The sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper (also called Holy Communion or Eucharist) generally are considered necessary to salvation.

Valid baptism is by water "in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." When they reach a competent age, persons who were baptized in infancy are expected to reaffirm the baptismal promises made by their parents or sponsors, at which time they receive confirmation by a bishop. The Eucharist, with invariable elements of bread and wine, consecrated by a thanksgiving prayer that includes Christ's "words of institution" at the last supper, is a memorial of Christ's once-for-all redemptive acts in which Christ is objectively present and effectually received in faith.

Churches outside England

For almost three centuries the expansion of Anglicanism was hindered by the Church of England's lack of an overall missionary strategy and its concept of a church that must be established by the state and sufficiently endowed. Within the British Isles the Church in Wales, whose roots go back to the ancient church in Roman Britain, was part of the province of Canterbury from the Norman Conquest of 1066 until its disestablishment and disendowment (the political actions that made the church independent of the government, and self-supporting) in 1920. It now uses Welsh as well as English in its liturgy.

The English Reformation was rejected by 90 percent of the people in Ireland, yet not until 1870 was the (Anglican) Church of Ireland disestablished and largely disendowed. Four Anglican dioceses now straddle the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Old enmities between the Irish church and its predominant Roman Catholic neighbor have diminished.

The Reformation in Scotland was predominantly presbyterian. A precarious Anglican episcopate was maintained by the Stuart sovereigns. For its loyalty to James II and his male descendants after their deposition by Parliament, the Scottish Episcopal Church was disestablished in 1689 and subjected to penal laws between 1715 and 1792. Yet it maintained its episcopal succession, revised its liturgy, and in 1784 consecrated its first American bishop, Samuel Seabury of Connecticut (1729–1797).

Beginning in Virginia in 1607, the English church came to be established in the American colonies from Maryland southward and in New York City. Except in Virginia Anglicans were outnumbered in the colonies by religious dissidents and refugees. The bishop of London exercised general supervision, yet no bishop visited America during the colonial period.

After a brief visit to Maryland the Reverend Thomas Bray (1658–1730) founded in 1701 the voluntary Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG).

Until the American Revolution the SPG sent more than three hundred missionaries into the colonies. The revolution undid those accomplishments, with the Anglican clergy and laity becoming divided between American patriots and loyalists to the British Crown.

With independence, all SPG support was withdrawn. A large proportion of the clergy and laity had left for England or Canada. There were no more establishments, and in Virginia disendowment followed. The remaining clergy and laity, both patriots and loyalists, began to organize in state conventions. The consecration of Bishop Seabury for Connecticut by Scottish bishops, who were considered schismatic by the Church of England, spurred the English bishops to obtain an act of Parliament in June 1786 that enabled them to consecrate American bishops without the customary oaths of obedience to the royal supremacy and the archbishop of Canterbury. Three Americans were so consecrated: for Pennsylvania and New York in 1787 and for Virginia in 1790.

Under the leadership of Bishop William White of Pennsylvania (1748–1836) and Bishop Seabury, a national church that was formed at a general convention in 1789 adopted a constitution, canons, and a revised prayer book. By the General Convention in 1835 the Episcopal Church was strong enough to establish a concerted missionary strategy, and it organized the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, which to this day includes all its baptized members. A bishop was chosen to organize dioceses on the western frontier, and a bishop was resident in China in 1844 and in Japan in 1874. Liberia received its first bishop in 1851.

In England evangelical Anglicans, influenced by the revival movement of the Wesleys, in the late eighteenth century formed the Church Missionary Society, whose aims were comparable to those of the SPG. Later other voluntary missionary societies with special areas of interest arose. The Church of England was slow, however, in providing bishops for its burgeoning missions overseas, and voluntary societies could not provide them legally since bishops can be appointed only by the church, not by voluntary societies, even if they are affiliated with the church. Canada received its first bishop in 1787, followed by India in 1814, the West Indies in 1824, Australia in 1836, New Zealand in 1841, and South Africa in 1847.

Conflicts, Congresses, and Interfaith Dialogue

By the 1860s two internal conflicts were disturbing many Anglican churches: the emergence in some churches of modern biblical criticism and the rise of ritual and ceremonial practices influenced by the Tractarian (or Oxford) Movement of the 1830s and 1840s, which emphasized the Catholic heritage of Anglicanism. At the request of the Canadian bishops and with the counsel of his own convocation, Archbishop Longley of Canterbury invited all Anglican bishops to meet at his palace at Lambeth in London in 1867 for common consultation and encouragement. Seventy-six bishops attended. The success of that meeting led to similar Lambeth Conferences at approximately ten-year intervals except when the two world wars intervened.

The encyclical letters, resolutions, and reports of these conferences have no legislative, but only advisory, authority. They deal with internal Anglican affairs, ecumenical relations, and important social and ethical issues. The 1958 conference was the first to invite representative observers from other churches, both eastern and western, to attend. Anglican congresses in Minneapolis (1954) and Toronto (1964) of bishops and clergy and lay delegates from most of the Anglican dioceses, along with congresses in Lambeth (1958 and 1968), opened the way to new structures of Anglican intercommunication.

In 1960 the first Anglican executive officer, serving under the archbishop of Canterbury, was chosen. His duties were to visit and assess the problems of the various Anglican churches and promote communication and common strategy for missionary work among them. In 1971 the Anglican Consultative Council came into being, and the Anglican executive officer became its secretary general. The council meets every two or three years in different parts of the Anglican world. The archbishop of Canterbury is its president, but the council elects its own chairperson; to date three of the chairs have been laypersons. Members consist of representative bishops, clergy, and laity of the several Anglican churches. Its concerns are much the same as those of the Lambeth Conferences, and like them it has no legislative authority.

Anglicanism is strongly involved in endeavors for Christian unity. The 1888 Lambeth Conference proposed a fourfold basis for negotiations: the scriptures as "the rule and ultimate standard of faith"; the Apostles' and Nicene creeds as "sufficient statement of the Christian faith"; the sacraments of baptism and the Supper of the Lord as instituted by Christ; and "the Historic Episcopate, locally adapted … to the varying needs of nations and peoples." This "Lambeth Quadrilateral" has been constantly reaffirmed.

The Episcopal Church under the leadership of Bishop Charles Henry Brent (1862–1929) planned the first World Conference on Faith and Order at Lausanne in 1927, over which Brent presided. Delegates from more than a hundred Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches attended. This movement became part of the World Council of Churches, constituted in 1948.

At Bonn in 1931 the Anglican Communion entered into an agreement with the Old Catholic churches of the Union of Utrecht (1889) for full intercommunion, which stated that this does "not require from either Communion the acceptance of all doctrinal opinion, sacramental devotion, or liturgical practice characteristic of the other, but implies that each believes the other to hold all the essentials of the Christian Faith." This concordat has been the basis of all intercommunion with non-Anglican Episcopal episcopal churches, which Anglicans call the Wider Episcopal Fellowship.

A member of this fellowship is the Philippine Independent Catholic Church, which split from the Roman Catholic Church in 1902 and in 1948 requested and received from the Episcopal Church the historical episcopal succession. In 1961 full intercommunion was established, and in 1965 the Philippine church became a member of the confederation of Old Catholic churches. A unique development began when Anglican dioceses joined with other Protestant churches in forming the Church of South India in 1947, with Anglicans providing the historical episcopate. The churches of North India, Pakistan, and (after national independence) Bangladesh subsequently were formed on the same basis. Intercommunion also has been established with the ancient Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar in India.

Serious efforts to achieve the future reunion of Anglicanism with the Roman Catholic Church began with an official visit of Archbishop Ramsey of Canterbury with Pope Paul VI in March 1966. A joint preparatory commission in 1967 and 1968 sorted major theological issues for dialogue and made recommendations for areas of cooperation. Between 1970 and 1981 the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission published substantial agreements on eucharistic doctrine, ministry, and ordination and two agreements on authority in the church. Those agreements were gathered, with some elucidations, in the commission's Final Report (1982). When Pope John Paul II visited Britain in 1982, he and Archbishop Runcie signed the "Common Declaration" at Canterbury Cathedral on June 29 for a new commission to study further theological issues, pastoral problems, and practical steps for "the next stage" toward unity.

Anglican-Lutheran international dialogues took place between 1970 and 1972. The ensuing report has been influential in an official Lutheran-Episcopal dialogue in the United States. In September 1982 three Lutheran bodies, in the process of uniting, agreed with the Episcopal Church to celebrate an interim shared Eucharist on specified occasions as a step toward closer unity in doctrine, liturgy, and ministry. Moves toward ecumenism between the the Church of England and other European denominations and between the American Episcopal Church and other denominations continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Such dialogues recall expectations voiced in the encyclical letter of the 1948 Lambeth Conference that, no doubt, was influenced by the formation of the Church of South India the year before:

Reunion of any part of our Communion with other denominations in its own area must make the resulting Church no longer simply Anglican, but something more comprehensive.… The Anglican Communion would be merged in a much larger Communion of National or Regional Churches, in full communion with one another, united in all the terms of what is known as the Lambeth Quadrilateral.

In addition to developments related to the ecumenical movement, a significant change in the Anglican Communion during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has been its growth in African and Asian countries. Whereas there are currently about 26,000,000 Anglicans in England; 2,400,000 in the United States; about 4,000,000 in Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and Polynesia; and about 700,000 in Canada, the real growth of Anglican churches has occurred elsewhere. There are over 41,500,000 Anglicans in Africa, with Nigeria alone accounting for 17,500,000. Indeed, the independence of African countries that was won after World War II led to an increased rate of conversion to Anglican churches even in areas that had never been colonies of Britain. The leadership and clergy of African Anglican churches are also indigenous in a way they were not before the collapse of nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonialism. At the 1998 Lambeth Conference bishops from Africa and Asia (224 and 95, respectively) outnumbered those from Europe, the United States, and Canada combined (316). A resolution affirming traditional disapproval of homosexually active clergy passed largely because of support from African bishops.

Current differences of opinion on ethical issues in the Anglican Communion, especially those related to the ordination of women and the morality of homosexuality, often reflect geographical differences. The General Convention of the Episcopal Church (U.S.A.) first allowed the ordination of women in 1976, an event that was prompted by two instances of retired bishops ordaining female deacons to the priesthood without official approval on July 29, 1974, in Philadelphia and on September 7, 1975, in Washington, D.C. The first female Episcopal bishop, Barbara Harris, was elected in 1989. The General Synod of the Church of England voted in favor of allowing the ordination of women on November 11, 1992; in 1975 it had narrowly voted that it had "no fundamental objections" to women's ordination.

However, these developments have not met with approval throughout the Anglican Communion, with the churches and bishops in Africa and Asia notably opposed to such changes. In 1998 the Eames Commission, the Archbishop of Canterbury's Commission on Communion and Women in the Episcopate, reported that no ordination of women to any clerical office was at that time allowed in the provinces of Central Africa, Jerusalem and the Middle East, Korea, Melanesia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, South East Asia, and Tanzania. Other provinces allow women's ordination to the deaconate but not to the priesthood. Only a few provinces allow women's ordination as both deacons and priests and allow the election of a woman as bishop.

Similarly, there has been disagreement about the morality of same-sex unions and the ordination of openly gay or lesbian Christians to the priesthood. When the Episcopal Church in the United States allowed the election of an openly gay man as bishop of Vermont in 2003, that event caused much controversy within and among Anglican communions, with the most vociferous disapproval being voiced by African bishops.

Since its beginning as a national, Protestant church in England in the sixteenth century, the Anglican communion has grown into a worldwide, diverse federation of churches bound together by a respect for a common tradition of doctrine, liturgy, and polity. The different churches draw on a past that includes both Protestant and Catholic elements. The loosely structured, federated nature of the communion may frustrate some attempts at greater unity and conformity, but it also may enable survival, and perhaps even flourishing, of the church in an increasingly international world.

See Also

Cranmer, Thomas; Hooker, Richard.

Bibliography

For official church documents and reports, see the Official Report of the Lambeth Conference for 1988 (London) and 1998 (Harrisburg, Pa.). See also the Official Year Book of the Church of England, published each year. For surveys of Anglicanism with a bibliography, see J. W. C. Wand, Anglicanism in History and Today (London, 1961); Stephen C. Neill, Anglicanism, 3d ed. (Baltimore, 1965). See also Hugh Gerard Gibson Herklots, Frontiers of the Church: The Making of the Anglican Communion (London, 1961); Paul D. L. Avis, Church, State, and Establishment (London, 2001); Paul D. L. Avis, Anglican Understanding of the Church: An Introduction (London, 2000); Christopher Webber, Welcome to the Episcopal Church: An Introduction to its History, Faith, and Worship (Harrisburg, Pa., 1999); Andrew Wingate, et al., eds., Anglicanism: A Global Communion (London, 1998).

On The Book of Common Prayer, including its texts and sources (1549–1662), see Frank E. Brightman, The English Rite, 2d ed., 2 vols. (London, 1921); Geoffrey J. Cuming, A History of Anglican Liturgy, 2d ed. (London, 1980). For Anglican worship from an ecumenical and artistic perspective, see Horton Davies, Worship and Theology in England, 5 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1961–1975). For Anglican–Roman Catholic relations, see Bernard Pawley and Margaret Pawley, Rome and Canterbury through Four Centuries: A Study of the Relations between the Church of Rome and the Anglican Churches, 1530–1973, with a large bibliography and an American epilogue by Arthur A. Vogel (New York, 1975).

On recent developments regarding the ordination of women, see Pamela W. Darling, New Wine: The Story of Women Transforming Leadership and Power in the Episcopal Church (Cambridge, Mass., 1994); Susan Dowell and Jane Williams, Bread, Wine and Women: The Ordination Debate in the Church of England (London, 1994).

Massey H. Shepherd, Jr. (1987)

Dale B. Martin (2005)