On the English Church

The Seventh Sunday after Trinity

LORD of all power and might, who art the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of thy great mercy keep us in the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Where should a blog like this begin? There are so many issues in Anglicanism that are in the news, either in the Anglican Journal or even in secular newspapers, that it's difficult to know what to comment on first. The reality is that this blog is not simply a mouthpiece for commentary on topical controversies. Any opinion that could be expressed here has probably been expressed elsewhere, and in a more eloquent and theologically grounded way to boot.

Rather, this blog will seek to express something of a journey of understanding of the Anglican tradition from the perspective of a Calgarian of the Anglo-Catholic persuasion. In that sense, the best place to start is not with what is in the news, but rather with the beginning. What is the English Church?

To many an outsider, the Church of England was formed by Henry VIII who wanted to make himself an English Pope so he could divorce and remarry (a few times). The reality of the English Church is much more complex, and far older. The entire history of the Church of England cannot be detailed in one post, so in this first part, the history of the English Church from the 3rd century through to the start of the 16th century will be detailed. The 16th century and the formation of the modern Church of England will be dealt with next week.

The origin of the English Church dates much further back than the early 16th century, and is fact noted to have existed in the 3rd and 4th centuries. St Alban's martyrdom in the 3rd century is recorded in St Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Records of the Council of Arles in 314 held in France list the names of the Bishop of York, the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Cærleon-on-Usk all in attendance from the British Province. Three more British bishops were also noted to have attended the Council of Ariminum in 360, and although they didn't attend the Council of Nicaea, the Nicene Creed's anti-Arian position was accepted by the British bishops, speaking to reasonably strong organization and contact with the rest of Western Christianity. A number of Celtic missionaries, notably St Patrick in Ireland and St Ninian in Scotland, were also active in the 4th and 5th centuries, establishing what would become the Celtic Christian tradition in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, which itself would have a significant influence on the English Church. It wasn't until 597 that a missionary arrived from Rome under the authority of the Pope.

As a Roman province, Britain was not exempt from the political turmoil unfolding on the continent. The Roman armies were withdrawn from Britain in the late 4th and early 5th centuries in order to defend the Empire on the continent from increasing barbarian activity. This had the effect of leaving the Roman province defenceless to barbarians arriving from northern Germany. Britain faced attacks from the Germanic Angles, Saxons and Jutes who largely destroyed the organization of the early Roman-English church in England as these three tribes carved out their own kingdoms in England. Contact between Britain and the continental church was largely lost during this period of strife and was not re-established until the arrival of St Augustine of Canterbury in 597.

As a result of the invasions, generally in south-eastern and central England, Roman Britons fled west to Wales and the Celtic lands where a distinctive brand of Christianity formed as British Christian traditions were fused with pagan Welsh practices, creating its own distinctive Welsh Christianity. While there was initially no effort to evangelize the Germanic invaders, that would change under evangelical monastic influence. Born to British parents, St Patrick eventually studied the monastic life in France before coming to Ireland where he evangelized the Irish people, establishing a number of monasteries and bishoprics throughout Ireland. Because of St Patrick's own monastic origins and due to the lack of previous contact with the continent where civil organization was strongly related to ecclesiastical organization of bishoprics, monasteries and abbots where the fundamental units of Celtic Christianity in Ireland. The evangelical nature of the monasteries led eventually to waves of missions to the mainland. St Columba arrived in Scotland in 563, and began a wave of conversions starting in the north of Britain and working south, such that when St Augustine arrived in 597 and began a second wave of conversions, there existed already many Christians in Britain.

St Augustine had been sent by the Pope, St Gregory the Great, to re-establish contact with Britain and convert the locals, particularly the Jute King of Kent, to Christianity. When St Augustine met with King Æthelbert, he found that the Queen was already Christian, and the King welcomed and supported St Augustine after his own conversion. In addition to his missional work, St Gregory is remembered for his liturgical revisions and standardizations. In acknowledgement of the existing status of Christianity in Britain, however, St Augustine was allowed to simply maintain a modified local liturgy, which was based primarily on the liturgy of St John, rather than of St Peter which was used in Rome. St Augustine founded a monastery at Canterbury which would become the eventual seat of British Christianity. Over the next century the waves of Christianizing influence would largely cover all of Britain to the point that conflicts between Christians and pagans soon began to be supplanted by conflicts between the northern Celtic Christians and the southern Roman Christians.

In 664 the Synod of Whitby was held in Northumbria to resolve some of the local differences between the Celtic and Roman traditions. A major consequence of the Synod was the establishment of the secondary seat of power of the Archbishop of York. While the Roman tradition had essentially won out at the Synod, the Celtic monastic tradition was allowed to continue.

The three streams of Christian history in England (the early Romano-British Church, preserved to a degree in Welsh Christianity, the Celtic monastic tradition and the later Roman tradition) had been fused to create what became termed the Ecclesia Anglicana, the English Church.

While the Church remained in full communion with the Pope and recognized his authority up until the 16th century, the English Church never lost its unique identity. Following the Great Schism in 1054, it would be common for English Christians to identify, as did other Western Christians, as being Catholic or Roman as opposed to Eastern Orthodox, but at no point did this change the reality of a distinctive English Church in communion with Rome, as opposed to what one might today think of as the Roman Catholic Church in England.