Untitled Document

The adjective "Anglican" comes from the Latin Anglicus, meaning English. When applied to a modern church, the term Anglican means that church traces its origins back to the Western Church as it developed historically in England. Historians believe that Christianity came to the British Isles as early as the third century AD. The first Archbishop of Canterbury was St. Augustine of Canterbury (served 597-604 AD). For nearly a thousand years the English Church remained in communion with Rome and was an integral part of the Western Church.

The Protestant Reformation, which swept most of northern and central Europe during the sixteenth-century, affected England in a unique way. King Henry VIII had little sympathy for Martin Luther, or other Continental Protestant Reformers, on a theological level. However, Henry's political struggles with the Vatican, over his efforts to annul his marriages and secure a male heir to the English throne, led the king to repudiate papal jurisdiction over England in 1534. The decisive break between the English Church and Rome came in 1570. While neither Henry nor his ultimate successor, Queen Elizabeth I, were interested in major theological changes in the English Church, they were keen to assert the independence of the English Church from Roman authority for their own pragmatic political reasons.

The leadership of the English Church was, meanwhile, deeply divided itself among those bishops who fully embraced the new Protestant doctrines emerging on the Continent, on the one hand, and those English bishops who rejected the theology of Luther, Calvin, and other Continental Protestant Reformers, on the other hand. However, even among those leaders of the English church who rejected most of the theological positions of the Reformers, there were many who were sympathetic to both their criticisms of institutional corruption in the Western Church, and to the increasing concentration of ecclesiastical and doctrinal authority in the hands of the Roman Pope.

On one level the Protestant Reformation involved profound differences within Western Christianity about a series of complex questions of doctrine. On another level the Reformation and Counter-Reformation were aspects of an ancient struggle within the Church about authority, in particular, about the role and prerogatives of the Bishop of Rome (the Pope) in determining matters of doctrine for the entire Church. In the early Church decisions about what constituted heresy and what understandings constituted correct Christian doctrine were made by great councils of bishops and theologians who gathered together to debate and decide questions of doctrine when they arose. The understanding in the early Church was that the Holy Spirit guided the Church in defining Christian doctrine through these great gatherings of bishops known as Ecumenical Councils. Between 325 and 787 AD the unified Church held seven great Ecumenical Councils, which each played a role in hammering out and defining what constituted correct Christian doctrine in response to various heretical ideas as they arose within the Church.

Long before the Protestant Reformation, therefore, there were tensions in the Church about the exact nature and extent of the authority of the Roman Pope in determining what was and what was not correct Christian doctrine. The Roman position was increasingly that the Pope had unique authority in determining matters of doctrine. Other leading bishops of the Church, however, disagreed and held that while the Bishop of Rome, as the successor of St. Peter, held a certain honorific position as leader in the Councils of the Church, ultimate authority in the Church lay not with any one bishop, but with the Council of bishops speaking as a whole. By the year 1054 AD tensions within the Church over this question of authority became so great that the unified Church split between the Eastern and Western Church. This split in the Church is known as the Great Schism, and it tragically still divides Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic Christians to this day.

As the English church became fully separated from Rome after 1570 AD, Anglican theologians began to re-examine the issue of authority in the Early Church before the Great Schism of 1054, and they ultimately came to the conclusion that the position of the Eastern Church in this critical question of authority was correct. While acknowledging the important symbolic headship of the Bishop of Rome in the Councils of the Church, Anglican theologians rejected the idea that the Pope had unilateral authority to determine the correctness of doctrine for the Church. That authority, they argued, lay ultimately with the Ecumenical Councils of the Church as a whole, and not with any one bishop -- not even the Pope. Like the Eastern Orthodox churches, therefore, Anglican Christianity holds that ultimately Church authority in matters of doctrine is conciliar (i.e., it relies on councils), not pontifical in nature. In other words, we are distinguished from Roman Catholics in that while we greatly respect and acknowledge the priority of the Pope in the councils of the Church, we do not assign to the Bishop of Rome the level of unilateral authority in establishing Church doctrine that Roman Catholics acknowledge. We thus stand for a return to ancient and traditional Christian understandings of Church authority.

As Anglicanism evolved, however, it too was shaped by its own internal frictions and divisions. Most notably, much of Anglican history has been characterized by a historic tension between a more militantly pro-Protestant tendency (usually identified as "evangelical"), on the one hand, which sought to pull England more completely in line with the new doctrines of the Protestant Reformers in Europe; and a more catholic party (the Anglo-Catholics), on the other hand, which accepted aspects of the Reformation critique regarding Church order and authority, while rejecting the extreme break with traditional understandings of Christian doctrine that the Reformers made. The Caroline Divines, the Non-Jurors, and later the Oxford Movement all reflect the reassertion of catholic doctrine and ecclesiology (church order) against extreme expressions of Protestantism within the English Church. Sometimes the tensions within Anglicanism between evangelicals and catholics were too great to overcome, and those with more evangelical Protestant leanings left the English church to establish decisively Protestant churches. This, for example, is what the Puritans did, and it is also how the Methodist Church first came into being.

Anglo-Catholics, for their part, have historically been particularly interested in the writings of the Early Church Fathers, and in recapturing the unity of Christianity as it stood through the seven great Ecumenical Councils of the undivided Church, and before the Great Schism between Rome and Constantinople in 1054 AD. For this reason, Anglo-Catholic theologians have long enjoyed fruitful discussions with both their Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox counterparts. Anglo-Catholicism does not offer a distinct body of theological doctrine of its own as an alternative to either Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic doctrine. We stand instead for the re-establishment of Church unity on the basis of a return to shared understandings of both Christian doctrine and Church order as they existed before the schism between the Western and Eastern Church in 1054 AD. Because we are historically part of the Western Church, most Anglo-Catholic efforts to reunify the one Church of Jesus Christ have focused on dialog with Rome. However, there has also been a long and fruitful history of conversation between Anglo-Catholic and Orthodox theologians on many matters. We essentially view ourselves as the faithful continuation of the Western Church as it existed in England up to the Great Schism of 1054, without either subsequent Roman additions or Protestant detractions.

During the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, as the British Empire expanded, Anglican Christianity was carried to all parts of the globe. Today some 75 million Christians around the world call themselves "Anglican." Towards the end of the 19th century an effort was made to bring together independent national churches around the world that share an Anglican heritage. Eventually this effort resulted in the formation of the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Communion is a loose grouping of those national churches of Anglican heritage in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leading bishop of the Church of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury has no authority beyond Great Britain, but he does act as the symbolic head of a global group of independent national Anglican churches that are in communion with him. Every ten years bishops of the Anglican Communion gather to discuss matters of mutual concern. These conferences are held at Lambeth Palace, the home and office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and are referred to as the Lambeth Conferences. The first Lambeth Conference was held in 1867 and the most recent one will be held in July, 2008. Today the historic Anglican Communion is deeply divided between member churches, known as provinces, which wish to remain true to the historic faith and order of the universal Church, and those member churches which hope to revise that faith to make it more "acceptable" to modern sensibilities. Those committed to changing the historic faith of the Church are referred to as "revisionists."

Historically, the American expression of Anglicanism was the Episcopal Church (designated historically by the acronyms PECUSA, ECUSA, and now simply as the TEC). Over the past several decades, however, the American Episcopal Church has embraced radical new ideas in its theology and understanding of Church order, which are completely alien to the catholic faith. Following the deviation of the American Episcopal Church from the historic faith and doctrine of the universal Church in 1976, many faithful Anglican Christians left the Episcopal Church and sought to continue the historic faith and order of the Church in its Anglican expression. In 1977 a North American conference of over 3,000 concerned Anglican clergy and lay theologians met in St. Louis, Missouri and adopted a statement known as the Affirmation of St. Louis. That historic document set forth the principals and beliefs that would guide the continuation of historic Anglican Christianity. The "Continuing Movement," also referred to simply as "the Continuum," today embraces thousands of orthodox Anglicans.

Although the Continuum itself became tragically divided institutionally into a host of different church jurisdictions in the years after 1977, there are many hopeful signs today of a return to unity among all orthodox Anglicans. Meanwhile, the claims of ECUSA/TEC, and other revisionist Anglicans to still be part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ are no longer viewed as credible by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, or by any orthodox Anglicans who reject these "modern innovations" as heretical. Unfortunately, the fact that some churches no longer adhering to the historic catholic faith of the Church still identify themselves as "Anglican" does make matters confusing. However, if you examine what they actually do, as opposed to what they say, it's really fairly simple to separate those Anglican churches which are true to the historic catholic faith of the universal Church from those which are not.

For a fuller discussion of Anglo-Catholicism, please refer to this classic essay on the topic at Project Canterbury and read our essay on "What We Believe."

	The adjective "Anglican" comes from the Latin Anglicus, meaning English. When applied to a modern church, the term Anglican means that church traces its origins back to the Western Church as it developed historically in England. Historians believe that Christianity came to the British Isles as early as the third century AD. The first Archbishop of Canterbury was St. Augustine of Canterbury (served 597-604 AD). For nearly a thousand years the English Church remained in communion with Rome and was an integral part of the Western Church. The Protestant Reformation, which swept most of northern and central Europe during the sixteenth-century, affected England in a unique way. King Henry VIII had little sympathy for Martin Luther, or other Continental Protestant Reformers, on a theological level. However, Henry's political struggles with the Vatican, over his efforts to annul his marriages and secure a male heir to the English throne, led the king to repudiate papal jurisdiction over England in 1534. The decisive break between the English Church and Rome came in 1570. While neither Henry nor his ultimate successor, Queen Elizabeth I, were interested in major theological changes in the English Church, they were keen to assert the independence of the English Church from Roman authority for their own pragmatic political reasons. The leadership of the English Church was, meanwhile, deeply divided itself among those bishops who fully embraced the new Protestant doctrines emerging on the Continent, on the one hand, and those English bishops who rejected the theology of Luther, Calvin, and other Continental Protestant Reformers, on the other hand. However, even among those leaders of the English church who rejected most of the theological positions of the Reformers, there were many who were sympathetic to both their criticisms of institutional corruption in the Western Church, and to the increasing concentration of ecclesiastical and doctrinal authority in the hands of the Roman Pope. On one level the Protestant Reformation involved profound differences within Western Christianity about a series of complex questions of doctrine. On another level the Reformation and Counter-Reformation were aspects of an ancient struggle within the Church about authority, in particular, about the role and prerogatives of the Bishop of Rome (the Pope) in determining matters of doctrine for the entire Church. In the early Church decisions about what constituted heresy and what understandings constituted correct Christian doctrine were made by great councils of bishops and theologians who gathered together to debate and decide questions of doctrine when they arose. The understanding in the early Church was that the Holy Spirit guided the Church in defining Christian doctrine through these great gatherings of bishops known as Ecumenical Councils. Between 325 and 787 AD the unified Church held seven great Ecumenical Councils, which each played a role in hammering out and defining what constituted correct Christian doctrine in response to various heretical ideas as they arose within the Church. Long before the Protestant Reformation, therefore, there were tensions in the Church about the exact nature and extent of the authority of the Roman Pope in determining what was and what was not correct Christian doctrine. The Roman position was increasingly that the Pope had unique authority in determining matters of doctrine. Other leading bishops of the Church, however, disagreed and held that while the Bishop of Rome, as the successor of St. Peter, held a certain honorific position as leader in the Councils of the Church, ultimate authority in the Church lay not with any one bishop, but with the Council of bishops speaking as a whole. By the year 1054 AD tensions within the Church over this question of authority became so great that the unified Church split between the Eastern and Western Church. This split in the Church is known as the Great Schism, and it tragically still divides Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic Christians to this day. As the English church became fully separated from Rome after 1570 AD, Anglican theologians began to re-examine the issue of authority in the Early Church before the Great Schism of 1054, and they ultimately came to the conclusion that the position of the Eastern Church in this critical question of authority was correct. While acknowledging the important symbolic headship of the Bishop of Rome in the Councils of the Church, Anglican theologians rejected the idea that the Pope had unilateral authority to determine the correctness of doctrine for the Church. That authority, they argued, lay ultimately with the Ecumenical Councils of the Church as a whole, and not with any one bishop -- not even the Pope. Like the Eastern Orthodox churches, therefore, Anglican Christianity holds that ultimately Church authority in matters of doctrine is conciliar (i.e., it relies on councils), not pontifical in nature. In other words, we are distinguished from Roman Catholics in that while we greatly respect and acknowledge the priority of the Pope in the councils of the Church, we do not assign to the Bishop of Rome the level of unilateral authority in establishing Church doctrine that Roman Catholics acknowledge. We thus stand for a return to ancient and traditional Christian understandings of Church authority. As Anglicanism evolved, however, it too was shaped by its own internal frictions and divisions. Most notably, much of Anglican history has been characterized by a historic tension between a more militantly pro-Protestant tendency (usually identified as "evangelical"), on the one hand, which sought to pull England more completely in line with the new doctrines of the Protestant Reformers in Europe; and a more catholic party (the Anglo-Catholics), on the other hand, which accepted aspects of the Reformation critique regarding Church order and authority, while rejecting the extreme break with traditional understandings of Christian doctrine that the Reformers made. The Caroline Divines, the Non-Jurors, and later the Oxford Movement all reflect the reassertion of catholic doctrine and ecclesiology (church order) against extreme expressions of Protestantism within the English Church. Sometimes the tensions within Anglicanism between evangelicals and catholics were too great to overcome, and those with more evangelical Protestant leanings left the English church to establish decisively Protestant churches. This, for example, is what the Puritans did, and it is also how the Methodist Church first came into being. Anglo-Catholics, for their part, have historically been particularly interested in the writings of the Early Church Fathers, and in recapturing the unity of Christianity as it stood through the seven great Ecumenical Councils of the undivided Church, and before the Great Schism between Rome and Constantinople in 1054 AD. For this reason, Anglo-Catholic theologians have long enjoyed fruitful discussions with both their Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox counterparts. Anglo-Catholicism does not offer a distinct body of theological doctrine of its own as an alternative to either Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic doctrine. We stand instead for the re-establishment of Church unity on the basis of a return to shared understandings of both Christian doctrine and Church order as they existed before the schism between the Western and Eastern Church in 1054 AD. Because we are historically part of the Western Church, most Anglo-Catholic efforts to reunify the one Church of Jesus Christ have focused on dialog with Rome. However, there has also been a long and fruitful history of conversation between Anglo-Catholic and Orthodox theologians on many matters. We essentially view ourselves as the faithful continuation of the Western Church as it existed in England up to the Great Schism of 1054, without either subsequent Roman additions or Protestant detractions. During the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, as the British Empire expanded, Anglican Christianity was carried to all parts of the globe. Today some 75 million Christians around the world call themselves "Anglican." Towards the end of the 19th century an effort was made to bring together independent national churches around the world that share an Anglican heritage. Eventually this effort resulted in the formation of the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Communion is a loose grouping of those national churches of Anglican heritage in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leading bishop of the Church of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury has no authority beyond Great Britain, but he does act as the symbolic head of a global group of independent national Anglican churches that are in communion with him. Every ten years bishops of the Anglican Communion gather to discuss matters of mutual concern. These conferences are held at Lambeth Palace, the home and office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and are referred to as the Lambeth Conferences. The first Lambeth Conference was held in 1867 and the most recent one will be held in July, 2008. Today the historic Anglican Communion is deeply divided between member churches, known as provinces, which wish to remain true to the historic faith and order of the universal Church, and those member churches which hope to revise that faith to make it more "acceptable" to modern sensibilities. Those committed to changing the historic faith of the Church are referred to as "revisionists." Historically, the American expression of Anglicanism was the Episcopal Church (designated historically by the acronyms PECUSA, ECUSA, and now simply as the TEC). Over the past several decades, however, the American Episcopal Church has embraced radical new ideas in its theology and understanding of Church order, which are completely alien to the catholic faith. Following the deviation of the American Episcopal Church from the historic faith and doctrine of the universal Church in 1976, many faithful Anglican Christians left the Episcopal Church and sought to continue the historic faith and order of the Church in its Anglican expression. In 1977 a North American conference of over 3,000 concerned Anglican clergy and lay theologians met in St. Louis, Missouri and adopted a statement known as the Affirmation of St. Louis. That historic document set forth the principals and beliefs that would guide the continuation of historic Anglican Christianity. The "Continuing Movement," also referred to simply as "the Continuum," today embraces thousands of orthodox Anglicans. Although the Continuum itself became tragically divided institutionally into a host of different church jurisdictions in the years after 1977, there are many hopeful signs today of a return to unity among all orthodox Anglicans. Meanwhile, the claims of ECUSA/TEC, and other revisionist Anglicans to still be part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ are no longer viewed as credible by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, or by any orthodox Anglicans who reject these "modern innovations" as heretical. Unfortunately, the fact that some churches no longer adhering to the historic catholic faith of the Church still identify themselves as "Anglican" does make matters confusing. However, if you examine what they actually do, as opposed to what they say, it's really fairly simple to separate those Anglican churches which are true to the historic catholic faith of the universal Church from those which are not. For a fuller discussion of Anglo-Catholicism, please refer to this classic essay on the topic at Project Canterbury and read our essay on "What We Believe."
Home Page Our History What We Believe How We Worship Our Mission Statement