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Prior to the formaton of the Anglican Church, the role of Archbishop of Canterbury existed as a regular hierarchical role service the Catholic diocese of Canterbury.

Background

In 1527, Henry VIII was desperate for a male heir and asked Pope Clement VII to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. When the pope refused, Henry used Parliament to assert royal authority over the English church. In 1533, Parliament passed the Act in Restraint of Appeals, barring legal cases from being appealed outside England. This allowed the Archbishop of Canterbury to annul the marriage without reference to Rome. In November 1534, the Act of Supremacy formally abolished papal authority and declared Henry Supreme Head of the Church of England.

Henry's religious beliefs remained aligned to traditional Catholicism throughout his reign, albeit with reformist aspects in the tradition of Erasmus and firm commitment to royal supremacy. In order to secure royal supremacy over the church, however, Henry allied himself with Protestants, who until that time had been treated as heretics. The main doctrine of the Protestant Reformation was justification by faith alone rather than by good works. The logical outcome of this belief is that the Mass, sacraments, charitable acts, prayers to saints, prayers for the dead, pilgrimage, and the veneration of relics do not mediate divine favour. To believe they can would be superstition at best and idolatry at worst.

Between 1536 and 1540, Henry engaged in the dissolution of the monasteries, which controlled much of the richest land. He disbanded religious houses, appropriated their income, disposed of their assets, and provided pensions for the former residents. The properties were sold to pay for the wars. Historian George W. Bernard argues:

The dissolution of the monasteries in the late 1530s was one of the most revolutionary events in English history. There were nearly 900 religious houses in England, around 260 for monks, 300 for regular canons, 142 nunneries and 183 friaries; some 12,000 people in total, 4,000 monks, 3,000 canons, 3,000 friars and 2,000 nuns....one adult man in fifty was in religious orders.

In the reign of Edward VI (1547–1553), the Church of England underwent an extensive theological reformation. Justification by faith was made a central teaching. Government-sanctioned iconoclasm led to the destruction of images and relics. Stained glass, shrines, statues, and roods were defaced or destroyed. Church walls were whitewashed and covered with biblical texts condemning idolatry. The most significant reform in Edward's reign was the adoption of an English liturgy to replace the old Latin rites. Written by the Protestant Reformer Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the 1549 Book of Common Prayer implicitly taught justification by faith, and rejected the Catholic doctrines of transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the Mass. This was followed by a greatly revised 1552 Book of Common Prayer, which propounded a Reformed view of the Lord's Supper (cf. Lord's Supper in Reformed theology). Along with The Book of Common Prayer, The Thirty-nine Articles and The Books of Homilies, assembled through the efforts of the Reformer Thomas Cranmer, became the basis of Anglican doctrine after the English Reformation.

During the reign of Mary I (1553–1558), England was briefly reunited with the Catholic Church. Mary died childless, so it was left to the new regime of her half-sister Queen Elizabeth I to resolve the direction of the Church. The Elizabethan Religious Settlement returned the Church to where it stood in 1553 before Edward's death. The Act of Supremacy made the monarch the Church's Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The Act of Uniformity restored a slightly altered 1552 Book of Common Prayer. In 1571, the Thirty-nine Articles received parliamentary approval as a doctrinal statement for the Church. The settlement ensured the Church of England was Protestant, but it was unclear what kind of Protestantism was being adopted. Anglicanism was said to be a via media between two forms of Protestantism, Lutheranism and Reformed Christianity though more aligned with the latter than the former. The prayer book's Reformed eucharistic theology posited a real spiritual presence (pneumatic presence), since Article 28 of the Thirty-nine Articles taught that the body of Christ was eaten "only after an heavenly and spiritual manner". Nevertheless, there was enough ambiguity to allow later theologians to articulate various versions of Anglican eucharistic theology.

The Church of England was the established church (constitutionally established by the state with the head of state as its supreme governor). The exact nature of the relationship between church and state would be developed over the next century. Notably, the Act of Settlement 1701, which remains in force today, stipulates that the monarch (who serves as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England) be a Protestant, maintain the Protestant succession, and "join in communion with the Church of England as by law established." The Coronation Oath Act 1688 (reiterated in the Act of Settlement 1701) requires the rising Sovereign to take an oath to maintain "the true Profession of the Gospel and the Protestant Reformed Religion Established by Law" in the United Kingdom.

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See also

• Archbishop of Canterbury

References

1. Shagan 2017, pp. 29–31. sfn error: no target: CITEREFShagan2017 (help)
2. Shagan 2017, p. 32. sfn error: no target: CITEREFShagan2017 (help)
3. Hefling 2021, p. 96. sfn error: no target: CITEREFHefling2021 (help)
4. Hefling 2021, p. 97. sfn error: no target: CITEREFHefling2021 (help)
5. Marshall 2017a, p. 126. sfn error: no target: CITEREFMarshall2017a (help)
6. G. W. Bernard, "The Dissolution of the Monasteries", History (2011) 96#324 p. 390.
7. Marshall 2017a, p. 308. sfn error: no target: CITEREFMarshall2017a (help)
8. Duffy, Eamon (2005). The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400 – c. 1580 (2nd ed.). Yale University Press. pp. 450–454 and 458. ISBN 978-0-300-10828-6.
9. Shagan 2017, pp. 41. sfn error: no target: CITEREFShagan2017 (help)
10. Jeanes, Gordon (2006). "Cranmer and Common Prayer". In Hefling, Charles; Shattuck, Cynthia (eds.). The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey. Oxford University Press. p. 30. ISBN 978-0-19-529756-0.
11. MacCulloch 1996, pp. 412, 414. sfn error: no target: CITEREFMacCulloch1996 (help)
12. ^ Strout, Shawn O. (29 February 2024). Of Thine Own Have We Given Thee: A Liturgical Theology of the Offertory in Anglicanism. James Clarke & Company. pp. 35–36. ISBN 978-0-227-17995-6.
13. Cite error: The named reference Samuel2020 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
14. Marshall 2017b, pp. 49–51. sfn error: no target: CITEREFMarshall2017b (help)
15. Cite error: The named reference HSEC2003 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
16. Marshall 2017b, pp. 50–51. sfn error: no target: CITEREFMarshall2017b (help)
17. Marshall 2017b, p. 51. sfn error: no target: CITEREFMarshall2017b (help)
18. Eberle, Edward J. (2011). Church and State in Western Society. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 2. ISBN 978-1-4094-0792-8. Retrieved 9 November 2012. The Church of England later became the official state Protestant church, with the monarch supervising church functions.
19. Fox, Jonathan (2008). A World Survey of Religion and the State. Cambridge University Press. p. 120. ISBN 978-0-521-88131-9. Retrieved 9 November 2012. The Church of England (Anglican) and the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) are the official religions of the UK.
20. Ferrante, Joan (2010). Sociology: A Global Perspective. Cengage Learning. p. 408. ISBN 978-0-8400-3204-1. Retrieved 9 November 2012. the Church of England , which remains the official state church
21. ^ Doe, Norman; Coleman, Stephen (22 February 2024). The Legal History of the Church of England: From the Reformation to the Present. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 104. ISBN 978-1-5099-7317-0.

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