History of the Anglican Communion

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The history of the Anglican Communion may be attributed mainly to the worldwide spread of

British culture associated with the British Empire. Among other things the Church of England
spread around the world and, gradually developing autonomy in each region of the world, became the communion as it exists today.

Origins

St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin in Dublin.
Part of a series on the
History of the Church of England
Westminster Abbey (1749) by Canaletto
Middle Ages (597–1500)
Dissolution of the Monasteries
  • Thomas Cranmer
  • Book of Common Prayer (1549)
  • Edwardine Ordinals
  • Book of Common Prayer (1552)
  • Forty-two Articles
  • Martyrs
  • Marian exiles
    		•
    Elizabethan Church (1558–1603)
    Jacobean period (1603–1625)
    Caroline period (1625–1649)
    1649–1688
    1700–1950

    The only

    Presbyterian and for some years in the late 17th and early 18th centuries the Scottish Episcopal Church, despite its similarities to the Church of England, was regarded with some suspicion because of its occasional associations with Jacobite opposition to the House of Hanover
    .

    Although

    Church of Rome
    in the 1530s, he strongly resisted thereafter associating the English Church with the Continental Protestant Reformation.
    Reformed churches.[2] Cranmer's ambitions, however, were not widely shared amongst the bulk of laity and clergy; and accordingly, the return to the religious forms of traditional Roman Catholicism under Queen Mary
    was widely welcomed.

    The

    Real Presence and to the continuation of worship in more traditional forms.[4] Only one of Mary's English and Welsh bishops conformed to the Elizabethan settlement, though all save 300 of the parish clergy subscribed. In Ireland the position was reversed; all bishops save two accepted the Elizabethan Settlement, but the bulk of parish clergy and laity remained loyal to the pope. In the period since 1553, Continental Reformed Protestantism had itself continued to develop, especially in Geneva and Heidelberg, but English divines who wished the Elizabethan church to take part in these developments were to be bitterly disappointed; Elizabeth refused any further change to the forms or structures of religion established in 1559.[5] In particular, Protestant controversialists began to attack the episcopal polity, and the defined liturgy of the Elizabethan Church as incompatible with the true Reformed tradition; and, in response, defenders of the established church began, from the early 17th Century onwards, to claim these specific features as positively desirable, or indeed essential.[6]

    The attempt to impose in Scotland a Prayer Book on the English model, drove the three kingdoms into

    dissenting Protestant congregations were to be found throughout England, and the established church no longer claimed or sought to comprehend all traditions of Protestant belief. In Ireland and in many of England's American Colonies, the numbers who subscribed to Presbyterian congregations formed the majority of the Protestant population; while in Scotland from 1689, following the accession of William and Mary
    , Presbyterian church polity was revived, and constituted in that kingdom, the established church; so that those ministers and congregations who continued to subscribe to the Anglican Episcopalian traditions eventually became a dissenting minority.

    In the 18th and 19th centuries, divines of the Church of England increasingly differentiated their faith from that of the Protestant churches. Controversy broke out into the open after 1829, with the removal of religious restrictions on political rights in the United Kingdom, following which elected members of the UK Parliament (the legal authority in England for definitions of religious faith), might include both Roman Catholics and Dissenters. The

    John William Colenso appointed to the Bishopric of Natal in 1853. When Bishop Colenso published commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans and on the Pentateuch that questioned traditional teachings, he was deprived of his see by the bishops of the South African church in 1863; but then re-instated on appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1866. Whatever the merits of the Colenso case, the implied action of a British court in constraining matters of faith and discipline in a church outside the United Kingdom was instrumental in the decision to summon the first Lambeth Conference
    in 1867.

    As Britain's worldwide colonial empire grew, the Church of England began to spread with it. But at first no bishops were sent overseas; all colonial churches reported back to the Bishop of London. At the time of the American Revolution, there had already been considerable American demand for a local bishop; and after that event the Church of England in the new United States certainly needed to organize itself on a local basis.

    Anglicanism in the colonies

    The first Anglican service in North America was conducted in California in 1579 by the chaplain accompanying Sir Francis Drake on his voyage around the globe. The first baptisms were held in Roanoke, North Carolina, by the ill-fated Roanoke colony. The continuous presence of Anglicanism in North America, however, begins in 1607 with the founding of Jamestown, Virginia. By 1700 there were more than 100 Anglican parishes in British colonies on the mainland of North America, the largest number in Virginia and Maryland. The American War for Independence resulted in the formation of the first independent national church in the Anglican tradition.

    The 1609 wreck of the flagship of the Virginia Company, the Sea Venture, resulted in the settlement of Bermuda by the company. This was made official in 1612 when the town of St. George's, now the oldest surviving English settlement in the New World, was established. It is the location of St. Peter's Church, the oldest-surviving Anglican church outside of the British Isles (Britain and Ireland) and the oldest surviving non-Roman Catholic church in the New World, also established in 1612. It remained part of the Church of England until 1978 when the Anglican Church of Bermuda was formed. The Church of England was the state church in Bermuda and a system of parishes was set up for the religious and political subdivision of the colony (they survive, today, as both civil and religious parishes).

    The parish of

    Anglican townsfolk of St. John's and sent to the Bishop of London, Henry Compton. In this petition the people also requested help in the rebuilding of their church, which had been destroyed, along with the rest of the city, in 1696 by the French under the command of General Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville
    .

    On August 12, 1787,

    William Broughton was sent out to work as the Archdeacon of Australia.[7] The first Anglican church in Latin America, St. John's Cathedral (Belize City), was built in the colony of British Honduras (Belize
    ) in 1812.

    Soon afterwards, in 1835 and 1837, the sees of

    Madras and Bombay were founded, while in 1836 Broughton himself was consecrated as the first Bishop of Australia. Thus down to 1840 there were but ten colonial bishops; and of these several were so hampered by civil regulations that they were little more than government chaplains in episcopal orders. In April of that year, however, Bishop Blomfield of London published his famous letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, declaring that "an episcopal church without a bishop is a contradiction in terms" and strenuously advocating a great effort for the extension of the episcopate.[7]

    The plan was taken up with enthusiasm and, in 1841, the bishops of the

    George Augustus Selwyn was chosen as the first bishop. Moreover, in many cases bishops were sent to inaugurate new missions, as in the cases of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, Lebombo, Corea and New Guinea; and the missionary jurisdictions so founded developed in time into dioceses.[8]

    It was only very gradually that these dioceses acquired legislative independence and a determinate organization. At first, sees were created and bishops were nominated by the crown by means of letters patent; and in some cases an income was assigned out of public funds. Moreover, for many years all bishops were consecrated in England, took the customary "oath of due obedience" to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and were regarded as his extraterritorial suffragans. But by degrees changes were made on all these points.[9]

    America

    In 1783 the parishes of

    Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America in 1787 and James Madison, Bishop of Virginia
    in 1790.

    The Protestant Episcopal Church held its first General Convention in 1785, and organized using a system of state conventions in place of dioceses. They adopted a constitution and canons and approved an American version of the Book of Common Prayer in 1789 in Philadelphia. William White, who had served as presiding officer of General Convention in 1785 and 1786, was also elected presiding officer of the 1789 convention. He was the first bishop to preside over the convention. When in a second session of the 1789 convention, Bishop Seabury was seated and the New England churches acceded to the constitution. The bishops then withdrew and Bishop Seabury became the first bishop to preside over a separate House of Bishops. The American church officially adopted the term "diocese" in 1839 with the formation of a second diocese in the state of New York.

    Provincial organization

    Local conditions soon made a

    Lambeth Conferences on the subject. The constitution of these provinces was not uniform. In some cases, as South Africa, New South Wales, and Queensland, the metropolitan see was fixed. Elsewhere, as in New Zealand
    , where no single city can claim pre-eminence, the metropolitan was either elected or else was the senior bishop by consecration. Two further developments must be mentioned:

    Freedom from state control

    By degrees, also, the colonial churches were freed from their rather burdensome relations with the state. The Church of the West Indies was disestablished in 1868.[9] Other colonial churches followed suit over the next few decades.

    In 1857 it was decided, in Regina v. Eton College, that the Crown could not claim the presentation to a living when it had appointed the former incumbent to a colonial bishopric, as it does in the case of an English bishopric. In 1861, after some protest from the crown lawyers, two missionary bishops were consecrated without letters patent for regions outside British territory:

    J. C. Patteson for Melanesia, by the metropolitans of Cape Town and New Zealand respectively.[9]

    In 1863 the privy council declared, in Long v. The Bishop of Cape Town, that "the Church of England, in places where there is no church established by law, is in the same situation with any other religious body." In 1865 it adjudged Bishop Gray's letters patent, as metropolitan of Cape Town, to be powerless to enable him "to exercise any coercive jurisdiction, or hold any court or tribunal for that purpose," since the Cape colony already possessed legislative institutions when they were issued; and his deposition of Bishop Colenso was declared to be "null and void in law" (re The Bishop of Natal). With the exception of Colenso the South African bishops forthwith surrendered their patents, and formally accepted Bishop Gray as their metropolitan, an example followed in 1865 in the province of New Zealand.[9]

    In 1862, when the Diocese of Ontario was formed, the bishop was elected in Canada, and consecrated under a royal mandate, letters patent being by this time entirely discredited. And when, in 1867, a coadjutor was chosen for the bishop of Toronto, an application for a royal mandate produced the reply from the colonial secretary that "it was not the part of the Crown to interfere in the creation of a new bishop or bishopric, and not consistent with the dignity of the Crown that he should advise Her Majesty to issue a mandate which would not be worth the paper on which it was written, and which, having been sent out to Canada, might be disregarded in the most complete manner."[9]

    And by the turn of the century the colonial churches  were entirely free in this matter. This, however, was not the case with the Church in India. Here the bishops of sees founded down to 1879 received a stipend from the revenue (with the exception of the bishop of

    Tinnevelly, it could only be secured by the consecration of two assistant bishops, who worked under a commission for the Archbishop of Canterbury which was to expire on the death of the bishop of Madras. Since then, however, new sees were founded which are under no such restrictions.[9]

    Autonomy

    By degrees, also, the relations of colonial churches to the Archbishop of Canterbury changed. Until 1855 no colonial bishop was consecrated outside the British Isles, the first instance being Bishop MacDougall of Labuan, consecrated in India under a commission from the Archbishop of Canterbury; and until 1874 it was held to be unlawful for a bishop to be consecrated in England without taking the suffragan's Oath of Due Obedience. This necessity was removed by the Colonial Clergy Act of 1874, which permitted the Archbishop of Canterbury at his discretion to dispense with the oath.[9]

    But the most complete autonomy did not involve isolation. The churches were in full communion with one another and acted together in many ways; missionary jurisdictions and dioceses were mapped out by common arrangement and even transferred if it seems advisable; e.g., the Diocese of Honolulu (Hawaii), previously under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury, was transferred in 1900 to the

    Episcopal Church in the United States of America on account of political changes.[9]
    Missionary activity of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America resulted in creation of other provinces of the communion, including Brazil, Mexico, Central America, the Philippines and Japan. In Brazil and Japan the Church of England also had a presence, but the Episcopal Church work was more extensive and the Episcopal Church consecrated the first bishops.

    Though the See of Canterbury claims no primacy over the Anglican Communion analogous to that exercised over the

    Roman Catholic Church by the Pope, it is regarded with a strong affection and deference, which shows itself by frequent consultation and interchange of greetings.[9]
    By this the Archbishop of Canterbury is held as the titular and spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, but his role is strictly an honorary one.

    Lambeth Conferences

    The conference of Anglican bishops from all parts of the world, instituted by Archbishop Longley in 1867 and known as the

    Lambeth Conferences, though even for the Anglican Communion they have not the authority of an ecumenical synod and their decisions are rather of the nature of counsels than commands, have done much to promote the harmony and co-operation of the various churches within Anglicanism.[10]

    An even more imposing manifestation of this common life was given by the great

    Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and was endorsed by a resolution of the United Boards of Mission in 1903.[11]

    As the result of negotiations and preparations extending over five years, 250 bishops, together with delegates, clerical and lay, from every diocese in the Anglican Communion, met at

    marriage laws or that of socialism, followed much the same lines. The conference had no power to decide or to legislate for the church, its main value being in drawing its scattered members closer together, in bringing the newer and more isolated parts into consciousness of their contact with the parent stem, and in opening the eyes of the Church of England to the point of view and the peculiar problems of the daughter-churches.[11]

    Bonn Agreement

    In 1931 the Anglican Communion and the

    Bonn Agreement
    . Both the Old Catholics and the Anglicans agree on several key points:

    1. Each communion recognises the catholicity and independence of the other and maintains its own.
    2. Each communion agrees to permit members of the other communion to participate in the sacraments.
    3. Inter-communion 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.

    With this new inter-communion cross-episcopal ordinations began, further endorsing the apostolic succession within Anglicanism.

    Modern history

    Meetings began in 1937 about inter-communion between the

    Presbyterians.[citation needed] After two years these talks arrived at no concrete conclusion because the Episcopalians insisted on the historic episcopate. The Presbyterians backed out of the talks in 1940.[citation needed
    ]

    See also

    References

    1. ISBN 0-7139-9370-7
      .
    2. ISBN 0-7139-9370-7
      .
    3. ISBN 0-7139-9370-7
      .
    4. ISBN 0-7139-9370-7
      .
    5. ISBN 0-7139-9370-7
      .
    6. ISBN 0-7139-9370-7
      .
    7. ^ a b Chisholm 1911, p. 19.
    8. ^ Chisholm 1911, pp. 19–20.
    9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Chisholm 1911, p. 20.
    10. ^ Chisholm 1911, pp. 20–21.
    11. ^ a b Chisholm 1911, p. 21.
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