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Church Of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England, and acts as the 'mother' and senior branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion, as well as a founding member of the Porvoo Communion. Porvoo Communions, many with histories stretching back centuries.]]

Theology and sociology

The Church of England considers itself to stand both in a reformed tradition and in a catholic (but not Roman Catholic) church tradition: Reformed insofar as many of the principles of the Protestant Reformation have influenced it, and insofar as it does not accept Papal authority; Catholic, in that it views itself as the 'unbroken continuation of the early apostolic and later medieval' "universal church", rather than as a 'new formation'. In its practices, furthermore, the Church of England remains closer to Roman Catholicism than most Protestant Churches. It holds many relatively conservative theological beliefs, its liturgical form of worship can feature tradition and ceremony, and its organisation embodies a belief in apostolic succession through the historical episcopal hierarchy of archbishops, bishops, and dioceses. In many people's eyes, however, the Church of England has as its primary distinguishing mark its breadth and 'open-mindedness'. In addition to the traditional mainstream, the church has long included "high church" and "low church" factions with their own particular preferences. Today, practices range from those of the Anglo-Catholics, who emphasise liturgy and sacraments, to the far less ceremonial services of Evangelicals and Charismatics. But this "broad church" faces various contentious doctrinal questions raised by the development of modern society, such as conflicts over the ordination of women as priests (accepted in 1992 and begun in 1994), and the status of noncelibate homosexual clergy (still unsettled today). In July 2005, the divisions were once again apparent, as the General Synod voted to "set in train" the process of allowing the ordination of women as bishops, scheduling debate on the specific legislation for February, 2006.

Governance and administration

The British monarch (at present, Elizabeth II), has the constitutional title of "Supreme Governor of the Church of England". In practice, however, the effective leadership falls to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The worldwide Anglican Communion of independent national or regional churches recognises the Archbishop of Canterbury as a kind of 'symbolic' leader. Dr Rowan Douglas Williams has served as Archbishop of Canterbury since 2002. The Church of England has a legislative body, the General Synod. However, fundamental legislation still has to pass through the UK Parliament. The church has its own judicial branch, known as the Ecclesiastical courts, which likewise form a part of the UK court system. In addition to England proper, the jurisdiction of the Church of England extends to the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. In recent years, expatriate congregations on the continent of Europe have become the Diocese in Europe.

History

Main article: History of the Church of England The Church of England traces its formal corporate history from the 597 Augustinian mission, stresses its continuity and identity with the primitive universal Western church, and notes the consolidation of its particular independent and national character in the post-Reformation events of Tudor England. Christianity arrived in Britain in the first or second centuries (probably via the tin trade route through Ireland and Spain), and existed independently of the Church of Rome, as did many other Christian communities of that era. Records note British bishops as attending the Council of Arles in 314. The Pope sent Saint Augustine from Rome in the 6th century to evangelise the Angles in (597). With the help of Christians already residing in Kent, he established his church in Canterbury, the capital of Kent, and became the first in the series of archbishops of Canterbury. Simultaneously, the Celtic Church of St.Columba continued to evangelise Scotland. The Celtic Church of North Britain submitted in some sense to the 'authority' of Rome at the Council of Whitby in 644. Over the next few centuries, the Roman system introduced by Augustine gradually absorbed the pre-existing Celtic Christian churches. England remained a Roman Catholic country for nearly a thousand years, but then the church separated itself from Rome in 1534, during the reign of King Henry VIII, though it briefly rejoined Rome during the reign of Queen Mary I, in 1555. Since that time, England has been known as a 'stronghold' of Protestantism, and of world-wide Christian evangelism, eventually being eclipsed in these activities during the twentieth century by one of her former colonies, the United States.

Related churches

In Scotland, the Church of Scotland is recognised in law (Church of Scotland Act 1921) as the "national church", but since 1929 it has not been "established" in the same manner as the Church of England. In particular, the state 'recognises' the independence of the Church of Scotland in matters spiritual, thus no ministers are appointed by the Crown or the State. The Church of Scotland has a Presbyterian system of government. A smaller Anglican church also exists in Scotland, known as the Scottish Episcopal Church, which is in full communion with the Church of England. The Church in Wales underwent disestablishment in 1920, and became an independent member of the Anglican Communion. The Church of Ireland had official established church status in Ireland until 1871, although the bulk of the Irish people in practice remained mostly Roman Catholic. The Church of England stands in full communion with the other churches in the Anglican Communion, and separately with the other signatories of the Porvoo Communion. The Church of England is also a full member of the Conference of European Churches.

Financial situation

The Church of England, although an established church, does not receive any direct government support. Donations comprise its largest source of income, though it also relies heavily on the income from its various historic endowments. As of 2005, the Church of England had estimated total [http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/funding/ outgoings] of around £900 million. Historically, individual parishes both raised and spent the vast majority of the Church's funding, meaning that clergy pay depended on the wealth of the parish, and parish advowsons (the right to appoint clergy to particular parishes) could become extremely valuable gifts. Individual dioceses also held considerable assets: the Diocese of Durham possessed such vast wealth and temporal power that its Bishop became known as the 'Prince-Bishop'. Since the mid-19th century, however, the Church has made various moves to 'equalise' the situation, and clergy within each diocese now receive standard stipends paid from diocesan funds. Meanwhile, the Church moved the majority of its income-generating assets (which in the past included a great deal of land, but today mostly take the form of financial stocks and bonds) out of the hands of individual clergy and bishops to the care of a body called the Church Commissioners, which uses these funds to pay a range of non-parish expenses, including clergy pensions, and the expenses of cathedrals and bishops' houses. These [http://www.cofe.anglican.org/about/churchcommissioners/annualreport/ funds] amount to around £3.9 billion, and generate income of around £164 million each year (as of 2003), around a fifth of the Church's overall income. The Church Commissioners give some of this money as 'grants' to local parishes; but the majority of the financial burden of church upkeep and the work of local parishes still rests with individual parish and diocese, which meet their requirements from donations. Direct donations to the church (not including legacies) come to around £460 million per year, while parish and diocese reserve funds generate another £100 million. Funds raised in individual parishes account for almost all of this money, and the majority of it remains in the parish which raises it, meaning that the resources available to parishes still vary enormously, according to the level of donations they can raise. Most parishes give a portion of their money, however, to the diocese as a 'quota'. While this is not a compulsory payment, dioceses strongly encourage and rely on it being paid; it is usually only withheld by parishes either if are unable to find the funds or as a specific act of protest. As well as paying central diocesan expenses such as the running of diocesan offices, these diocesan funds also provide clergy pay and housing expenses (which total around £260 million per year across all dioceses), meaning that clergy living conditions no longer depend on parish-specific fundraising. Although asset-rich, the Church of England has to look after and maintain its thousands of churches nationwide — the lion's share of England's built heritage. As current congregation numbers stand at relatively low levels and as maintenance bills increase as the buildings grow older, many of these churches cannot maintain economic self-sufficiency; but their historical and architectural importance make it difficult to sell them. In recent years, cathedrals and other famous churches have met some of their maintenance costs with grants from organisations such as English Heritage; but the Church Commissioners and [http://www.churchcare.co.uk/fundraising.html local fundraisers] must foot the bill entirely in the case of most small parish churches. (The government, however, does provide some assistance in the form of tax breaks, for example a 100 percent VAT refund for renovations to religious buildings.) In addition to consecrated buildings, the Church also controls numerous ancillary buildings attached to or associated with churches, including a good deal of clergy housing. As well as vicarages and rectories, this housing includes residences (called 'palaces') for each of the Church's 114 bishops. In some cases, this name seems entirely apt; buildings such as Archbishop of Canterbury's Lambeth Palace in London and Old Palace at Canterbury have truly palatial dimensions, while the Bishop of Durham's Auckland Palace has 50 rooms, a banqueting hall and 30 acres (120,000 m²) of parkland. However, many bishops have found the older palaces inappropriate for today's lifestyles, and some bishops' 'palaces' are simply ordinary 4-bedroomed houses. Many dioceses which have retained large palaces now employ part of the space as administrative offices, while the bishops and their families live in a small apartment within the palace; and in recent years some dioceses have managed to put their palaces' excess space and grandeur to profitable use as conference centres. The size of the bishops' households has also shrunk dramatically and their budgets for entertaining and servants form a tiny fraction of their pre-20th-century levels.

External link

- [http://www.cofe.anglican.org/ Church of England website] ja:イギリス国教会 Category:Church of England Category:Religion in the United Kingdom Category:State churches (Christian)

Established church

A state religion (also called an established church or state church) is a religious body or creed officially endorsed by the state. The term state church is associated with Christianity, and is sometimes used to denote a specific national branch of Christianity. Closely related to state churches are what sociologists call ecclesiae, though the two are slightly different. State religions are examples of the official or government-sanctioned establishment of religion, as distinct from theocracy.

Types of state churches

The degree and nature of state backing for denomination or creed designated as a state religion can vary. It can range from mere endorsement and financial support, with freedom for other faiths to practice, to prohibiting any competing religious body from operating and persecuting the followers of other sects. In Europe, competition between Catholic and Protestant denominations for state sponsorship in the 16th century evolved the principle cuius regio eius religio ("states follow the religion of the ruler") embodied in the text of the treaty that marked the Peace of Augsburg, 1555. In some cases, a state may have a set of state-sponsored religious denominations that it funds; such is the case in Alsace-Moselle in France, following the pattern in Germany. In some communist states, notably the People's Republic of China, the state sponsors religious organizations, and activities outside those state-sponsored religious organizations are met with various degrees of official disapproval. In these cases, state religions are widely seen as efforts by the state to prevent alternate sources of authority.

Sociology of state churches

Sociologists refer to mainstream non-state religions as denominations. State religions tend to admit a larger variety of opinion within them than denominations. Denominations encountering major differences of opinion within themselves are likely to split; this option is not open for most state churches, so they tend to try to integrate differing opinions within themselves. An exception to this is the Church of Scotland which has split several times in the past for doctrinal reasons. Its largest offshoots were the Free Church of Scotland and the United Free Church of Scotland. These offshoots lost the established status of their parent, but since 1929 the reunited Church of Scotland has considered itself to be a "national church" rather than an established church, as it is entirely independent of state control in matters spirtitual. Increasingly, sociologists of religion are using the concept of monopolies in economics as an analogy for state churches. State religions typically exist in countries or jurisdictions where they the majority of residents are considered adherents; however much of this support is little more than nominal, with many members of the church rarely attending it. But the population's allegiance towards the state religion is often strong enough to prevent them from joining competing religious groups. Sociologists put this forward as an explanation for the religious differences between the United States and Europe: many sociologists theorise that the continuing vitality of religion in American life, compared to many European countries, is due to the lack of a state church at all during much of American history. A denomination's status as official religion does not universally imply that the jurisdiction prohibits the existence or operation of other sects or religious bodies. It all depends upon the government and the level of tolerance the citizens of that country have for each other. Some countries with official religions have laws that guarantee the freedom of worship, full liberty of conscience, and places of worship for all citizens and implement those laws in society better than countries that do not have an official or established state religion.

Disestablishment

See also secular state. Disestablishment is the process of divesting a church of its status as an organ of the state. In Britain there was a campaign by Liberals, dissenters and nonconformists to disestablish the Church of England in the late 19th century; it failed in England, but demands for the measure persist to this day. The Church of Ireland was disestablished in 1869 and the Church of England was disestablished in Wales in 1920, becoming the Church in Wales. Those who wish to continue with an established church take a position of antidisestablishmentarianism. The First Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly bans the federal government from setting up a state church. This did not, when ratified, prevent state governments from establishing a church, and Connecticut continued to do so until she replaced her colonial Charter with the Connecticut Constitution of 1818. The Fourteenth Amendment forbids the states to violate the rights of citizens of the United States, those rights defended by the Constitution against the Federal Government; and thus prohibits state establishments also. The exact boundaries of this prohibition are still disputed and are a frequent source of cases before the US Supreme Court, especially as the court must reconcile the establishment clause of the First Amendment with the clause that prohibits restraints on the free exercise of religion. All present State Constitutions also include a clause parallel to the First Amendment.

Christian countries

The following states recognize some form of Christianity as their official religion (by denomination):

Roman Catholic

Jurisdictions which recognize Catholicism as their official religion:
- Andorra
- Argentina
- Bolivia
- Costa Rica
- El Salvador
- Liechtenstein
- Malta
- Monaco
- Paraguay
- Peru
- Some cantons of Switzerland
- Vatican City

Eastern Orthodox

Jusrisdictions which recognize one of the Eastern Orthodox Churches as their official religion:
- Cyprus
- Finland (along with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland)
- Greece The Russian Federation recognizes the Russian Orthodox Church, the main sub-branch of the greater Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam as all "official" and "indigenous" to Russian soil.

Oriental Orthodox

Jurisdictions which recognize one of the Oriental Orthodox Churches as their official religion:
- Armenia

Lutheran

Jurisdictions which recognize a Lutheran church as their official religion:
- Denmark
- Iceland
- Norway
- Finland (along with the Finnish Orthodox Church) Until 2000, Sweden had the localized Lutheran Church as a state church. The Church of Sweden has now been relegated to the status of a national church.

Anglican

Jurisdictions which recognise an Anglican church as their state religion:
- England (as part of the greater United Kingdom) - Church of England

Reformed

Jurisdictions which recognize a Reformed church as their official religion:
- Some cantons of Switzerland The Church of Scotland, which is Presbyterian, is the national church in that country. Priot to 1929, it was also the established church.

Islamic states

Countries which recognize Islam as their official religion:
- Afghanistan
- Algeria
- Azerbaijan
- Bahrain
- Bangladesh
- Brunei
- Comoros
- Egypt - recognises Islamic Shari'a as the main source of legislation however makes no mention of Islam as the state religion.
- Iran
- Iraq
- Jordan
- Kuwait
- Libya
- Malaysia
- Maldives
- Mauritania
- Morocco
- Oman
- Pakistan
- Qatar
- Saudi Arabia
- Somalia
- Tunisia
- United Arab Emirates
- Yemen States which recognize specifically Sunni Islam as their official religion:
- Algeria
- Saudi Arabia (as state-sanctioned religion)
- Somalia States which recognize specifically Shia Islam as their official religion:
- Azerbaijan
- Iran (as state-sanctioned religion) The Republic of Lebanon specifies both Sunni Islam and Shia Islam, along with the syncretist marginal Islam, known as the Druze religion, as all official religions.

Buddhist states

Countries which recognize Buddhism as their official religion:
- Bhutan (Lamaistic Buddhism as state-sanctioned religion)
- Cambodia (Theravada Buddhism)
- Myanmar, or formerly Burma (Theravada Buddhism, as the only legal, state-sanctioned religion)
- Thailand (Theravada Buddhism)
- Tibet (government-in-exile) (Tibetan Buddhism)

Hindu states

Country which recognizes Hinduism as their official religion:
- Nepal

Jewish states

- Israel Note: Officially, Israel has no state religion or established church. A few personal status laws, in particular regarding marriage and divorce, are governed by state-recognized Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Druze authorities. As the Jewish state, however, its de facto state religion is Judaism.

Secular states

Secular states do not profess any state religion and attempt to treat all religions equally. Countries which are officially secular:
- Australia
- France
- India
- Japan
- Turkey
- United States of America

Established churches and former state churches in Europe

Note 1: In 1967, the Albanian government made atheism the "state religion". This designation remained in effect until 1991.
Note 2: Finland's State Church was the Church of Sweden until 1809. As an autonomous Grand Duchy under Russia 1809-1917, Finland retained the Lutheran State Church system, and a national church separate from Sweden was established. Since the independence in 1917, both the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the Finnish Orthodox Church have got a constitutionally established special status.

Former state churches in British North America

Note 1: In several colonies, the establishment ceased to exist in practice at the Revolution, about 1776; this is the date of legal abolition. Note 2: Replaced by a system which required every man to belong to a church, and permitted each church to tax its members. This was not, in theory, an establishment; but was sufficiently oppressive in practice, to be abolished in 1833.

Church

:This article is about the Christian buildings of worship. For other uses of the word, see Church (disambiguation). A church building (or simply church) is a building used in Christian worship. See also altar, altar rails, apse, confessional, dome, lych gate, nave, narthex, pew, pulpit, sanctuary.

Etymology

sanctuary The word church is derived through Middle and Old English cirice, circe from the Greek κυριακον "Lord's". However, most English versions of the New Testament use the word church to translate ecclesia, in Greek ἐκκλησία, literally "the called out" referring to those who are saved and not to a religious assembly. The Scots and Scottish English word kirk has a related etymology and is a cognate. In English, the word can be used in reference to a gathering of people for a religious meeting but is sometimes used to refer to a building or group of buildings. It is also used to refer to a denomination that places the leadership of all congregations in a central location, such as the "Roman Catholic Church"; in this context it is usually capitalized. It can also be used in an institutional sense to refer to all churches, such as "the church today". Although the Christian Bible says that the church is actually the body of believers, in Jewish times, the temple at Jerusalem held the presence of God in a place called the Holy of Holies. After the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Bible says that the Holy Spirit (the presence of God) dwells within each believer.

Origins of Christian places of worship

The architecture of Christian worship space grew out of the regular meetings of the followers of Christianity in private houses and synagogues, and occasionally in catacombs when necessary. When either the size of the community outgrew the space or the complexity of the uses of the space outpaced the architectural adaptation of houses, buildings began to be built specifically for worship. This became much more feasible and common when Constantine stopped the Roman persecution of Christians by issuing the Edict of Milan in 313.

In the first century

The first Christians were, like Jesus, Jews resident in Palestine who worshipped on occasion in the Temple in Jerusalem and weekly in local synagogues. Temple worship was a ritual involving sacrifice, occasionally including the sacrifice of animals in atonement for sin, offered to Yahweh. The New testament includes many references to Jesus visiting the Temple, the first time as an infant with his parents. The early history of the synagogue is controverted, but it seems to be an institution developed for public Jewish worship during the Babylonian captivity when the Jews did not have access to the Jerusalem Temple for ritual sacrifice. Instead, to give a rough summary, they developed a daily and weekly service of readings from the Torah or the prophets followed by commentary. This could be carried out in a house if the attendance was small enough, and in many towns of the Diaspora that was the case. In others more elaborate architectural settings developed, sometimes by converting a house and sometimes by converting a previously public building. The minimum requirements seem to have been a meeting room with adequate seating, a case for the Torah scrolls, and a raised platform for the reader and preacher. Diaspora] Jesus himself participated in this sort of service as a reader and commentator (see Gospel of Luke 4: 16-24) and his followers probably remained worshippers in synagogues in some cities. However, following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70, the new Christian movement and Judaism increasingly parted ways. The Church became overwhelmingly Gentile sometime in the second century. For the history of how services take place within a church, see worship or do a search on any particular religious denomination that you might be interested in.

Early examples of church architecture

religious denominationThe Syrian city of Dura-Europos on the West bank of the Euphrates was an outpost town between the Roman and Parthian empires. During a siege by Parthian troops in A.D. 257 the buildings in the outermost blocks of the city grid were partially destroyed and filled with rubble to reinforce the city wall. Thus were preserved and securely dated the earliest decorated church and a synagogue decorated with extensive wall paintings. Both had been converted from earlier private buildings. The church at Dura Europos has a special room dedicated for baptisms with a large baptismal font. A common architecture for churches is the shape of a cross (a long central rectangle, with side rectangles, and a rectangle in front for the altar space or sanctuary). These churches also often have a dome or other large vaulted space in the interior to represent or draw attention to the heavens. Other common shapes for churches include a circle, to represent eternity, or an octagon or similar star shape, to represent the church's bringing light to the world. Another common feature is the spire, a tall tower on the "west" end of the church or over the crossing.

Compare

- Basilica
- Cathedral
- Monastery
- Temple
- Chapel
- Parish
- Particular church
- House church
- Stave church
- Church in a pub
- Storefront church
- Double Church

External links

- [http://www.goarch.org/access/Companion_to_Orthodox_Church/art_and_architecture.html Orthodox Art and Architecture]
- [http://followchrist.info/e_church.html The Church]
- [http://www.soca.cjb.net The Syrian Orthodox Church]
- [http://st-takla.org/Coptic-church-1.html The Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt]
- Category:Christianity ja:教会 simple:Church

Anglican Communion

; in the center is a cross of St. George recalling the communion's origins in the Church of England. The Greek motto, Ἡ ἀλήθεια ἐλευθερώσει ὑμᾶς ("The truth will set you free") is a quotation from John 8:31.]] The Anglican Communion is a world-wide organization of Anglican Churches. There is no single "Anglican Church" since each national or regional church has full autonomy; as the name suggests, rather, the Anglican Communion is an association of these churches in full communion with each other and particularly with the Church of England, which may be regarded as the "mother church" of the worldwide communion. For membership, see the box at the bottom of this page. As a result, all rites conducted in one member church are to be recognized by the others. Some of these churches are known as Anglican, explicity recognizing the link to England; others prefer a less specific name. Each church has its own doctrine and liturgy, based in most cases on that of the Church of England; and each church has its own legislative process and overall episcopal leadership from a local primate. The Archbishop of Canterbury, religious head of the Church of England, has no formal authority outside that country; but is recognized as a symbolic head for the worldwide communion. Among the other primates, he is primus inter pares, or "first among equals." If the Archbishop of Canterbury is compared with other religious leaders such as the Pope, therefore, it is only because of his prominent figurehead role in the media. Some non-Anglican churches have entered into full communion with the Anglican Communion and are treated as members despite having non-Anglican origins and traditions. There are also a number of Anglican bodies which separated from a member church of the Anglican Communion and are no longer in communion with the Church of England. They are usually known as "continuing churches."

What holds the Communion together?

The Anglican Communion has no official legal existence nor any formal governing structure. (There is an "Anglican Communion Office" in London, under the aegis of the Archbishop of Canterbury; but it serves merely a supporting and organizational role.) Some have asked what holds the communion together. The first attempt at an answer was the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1888. Proposed by the American Episcopal Church in 1886 and adopted by the Lambeth Conference of 1888, it set out four principles for future Christian unity. Although wider union has not followed, the quadrilateral has been useful within the communion itself. The quadrilateral, according to the wording adopted in Lambeth ([http://anglicansonline.org/basics/Chicago_Lambeth.html]), consists of: # "The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as 'containing all things necessary to salvation', and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith." # "The Apostles' Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith." # "The two Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself--Baptism and the Supper of the Lord--ministered with unfailing use of Christ's words of Institution, and of the elements ordained by Him." # "The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church." This, then, is the theoretical basis for unity. But what holds it together organizationally? In the last few years people have began to refer to four "Instruments of Unity", which are effectively symbols to which all the churches of the communion can feel tied. In order of antiquity, they are:
- The Archbishop of Canterbury (ab origine)
- The Lambeth Conference (first held in 1867)
- The Anglican Consultative Council (first met in 1971)
- The Primates' Meeting (first met in 1979) Since each province is legally independent and free to chart its own course, the stress on these instruments of unity can easily be imagined. In recent years, for example, some Anglicans (particularly in Africa and Asia) have been displeased with the American and Canadian branches, upset by their welcoming attitudes towards homosexuals, and by the confident way the changes have been made — the conservatives condemmed the action as unilateral and called for wider consultation within the communion before such steps were taken. After the North American churches reaffirmed their belief that their actions had been righteous and "prophetic", they were asked to withdraw their delegates from the 2005 meeting of the Anglican Consultive Council. They were permitted at the meeting with voice, but no vote. But they have not been expelled or even suspended from the communion; indeed, no church ever has. It is unclear, moreoever, how such an expulsion could ever be carried out, since the communion is such a theoretical construct.

History

Main article: see History of the Anglican Communion The Anglican Communion is a relatively recent concept. Ever since the Church of England (which until the 20th century included the Church in Wales) broke from Rome in the reign of Henry VIII, it has thought of itself not as a new foundation but rather as a reformed continuation of the ancient "English church" and a reassertion of that church's rights. As such it was a distinctly local phenomenon. Thus the only members of the present Anglican Communion existing by the late 18th century were the Church of England, its closely-linked sister church, the Church of Ireland (which also broke from Rome under Henry VIII), and the Scottish Episcopal Church, which for parts of the 17th and 18th centuries was partially underground (it was suspected of Jacobite sympathies). However, the enormous expansion in the 18th and 19th centuries of the British Empire brought the church along with it. At first all these colonial churches were under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London. After the American Revolution, the parishes in the newly independent country found it necessary to break formally from a church whose earthly head was (and remains) the British monarch. Thus they formed their own dioceses and national church, the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, in a mostly amicable separation. At about the same time, in the colonies which remained linked to the crown, the Church of England began to appoint colonial bishops. In 1787 a bishop of Nova Scotia was appointed with a jurisdiction over all of British North America; in time several more colleagues were appointed to other cities in present-day Canada. In 1814 a bishop of Calcutta was made; in 1824 the first bishop was sent to the West Indies and in 1836 to Australia. By 1840 there were still only ten colonial bishops for the Church of England; but even this small beginning greatly facilitated the growth of Anglicanism around the world. In 1841 a "Colonial Bishoprics Council" was set up and soon many more dioceses were created. In time, it became natural to group these into provinces, and a metropolitan appointed for each province. Although it had at first been somewhat established in many colonies, in 1861 it was ruled that, except where specifically established, the Church of England had just the same legal position as any other church. Thus a colonial bishop and colonial diocese was by nature quite a different thing from their counterparts back home. In time bishops came to be appointed locally rather than from England, and eventually national synods began to pass ecclesiastical legislation independent of England. A crucial step in the development of the modern communion was the idea of the Lambeth Conferences. In 1867, at the suggestion of the Canadian synod, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Thomas Langley, invited a great conference of bishops to meet with him at Lambeth Palace. By inviting the bishops of the Churches of England and Ireland, those of the semi-autonomous colonial churches, and those of the fully autonomous Episcopal Church in the United States of America, he set a precedent that they all could meet together despite the absence of universal legal ties. Some bishops were initially reluctant to attend, fearing that the meeting would declare itself a council with power to legislate for the church; but it agreed to pass only advisory resolutions. These Lambeth Conferences have been held decennially since 1878 (the second such conference), and remain the most visible coming-together of the whole communion.

Recent controversies

Recent disagreements over homosexuality have strained the unity of the communion as well as its relationships with other Christian denominations; see Anglican views of homosexuality.

Relationship with the Roman Catholic Church

Efforts have been underway at least since 1966 to effect a reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church, focusing on theological issues [http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/angl-comm-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_19660324_paul-vi-ramsey_en.html] and ways "to further the convergence on authority in the Church. Without agreement in this area we shall not reach the full visible unity to which we are both committed." [http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/angl-comm-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_19961205_jp-ii-carey_en.html]

External links

- [http://www.anglicancommunion.org/ Official website]
- [http://anglican.org/church/NoCentral.html Decentralised nature of worldwide Anglicanism]
- [http://www.gshep.org/information/vocabulary.htm Comprehensive Anglican vocabulary]
- [http://www.anglican.tk/ the conservative Classical Anglican Net News website]
- [http://www.anglicanchurchofindia.org Anglican Church of India]
- [http://www.anglicansonline.org/ Anglicans Online] Category:Anglicanism Category:Christian group structuring ja:アングリカン・コミュニオン

Porvoo Communion

The Porvoo Communion is an agreement between 12 European Protestant churches establishing full communion. The agreement was negotiated in 1994 in the town of Porvoo (Borgå) in Finland. The churches involved are the Anglican churches of the British Isles, the Lutheran state churches of the Nordic countries, and the Lutheran churches of the Baltic states. Later negotiations brought the Episcopal churches of the Iberian peninsula into the agreement. Signatories of the Porvoo Communion:
- The Church of England
- The Church of Ireland
- The Scottish Episcopal Church
- The Church in Wales
- The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland
- The Church of Iceland
- The Church of Norway
- The Church of Sweden
- The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Estonia
- The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Lithuania
- The Lusitanian Catholic Apostolic Evangelical Church of Portugal
- The Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church Other churches involved in the negotiations:
- The Church of Denmark
- The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia

External links

- [http://www.porvoochurches.org/ Official website of the Porvoo Communion] Category:Christian group structuring

Protestant Reformation

: The word Reformation links here. For other uses of the term, please see Reformation (disambiguation). The Protestant Reformation was a movement which emerged in the 16th century as a series of attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church in Western Europe. The main front of the reformation was started by Martin Luther and his 95 Theses. The reformation ended in division and the establishment of new institutions, most importantly Lutheranism, the Reformed churches, and Anabaptists, a radical branch which name means "those who baptize again". It also led to the Counter-Reformation within the Roman Catholic Church, which theological draft and background were drawn up with the Council of Trent (1548–1563), when Rome struck back against the fundamental ideas defended by the Reformers, like Luther.

History and origins

Roots and precursors: 14th Century and 15th Century

- Anti-hierarchical movements: Catharism, Waldensianism, and others
- Avignon Papacy ("Babylonian Captivity of the Church"), Avignon, Great Schism
- Jan Hus, John Wycliffe, William Tyndale
- Northern Renaissance Unrest in the Western Church and Empire culminated in the Avignon Papacy (1308–1378), and the papal schism (1378–1416), excited wars between princes, uprisings among the peasants, and widespread concern over corruption in the monastic system. A new nationalism also challenged the relatively internationalist medieval world. One of the most disruptive and radical of the new perspectives came first from John Wycliffe at Oxford University, then from Jan Hus at the University of Prague. The Roman Catholic Church officially concluded this debate at the Council of Constance (1414–1418). The conclave condemned Jan Hus, who was executed (he had come under a promise of safe-conduct) and posthumously burned Wycliffe as a heretic. Constance confirmed and strengthened the traditional medieval conception of church and empire. It did not address the national tensions, or the theological tensions which had been stirred up during the previous century. The council could not prevent schism and the Hussite Wars in Bohemia. Historical upheaval usually yields a lot of new thinking as to how society should be organized. This was the case leading up to the Protestant Reformation. Following the breakdown of monastic institutions and scholasticism in late medieval Europe, accentuated by the ‘Babylonian Captivity’ of the Avignon Papacy, the Great Schism, and the failure of conciliar reform, the sixteenth century saw the fermenting of a great cultural debate about religious reforms and later fundamental religious values. Historians would generally assume that the failure to reform (too many vested interests, lack of coordination in the reforming coalition) would eventually lead to a greater upheaval or even revolution, since the system must eventually be adjusted or disintegrate, and the failure of the Conciliar movement led to the Protestant Reformation in the European West. These frustrated reformist movements ranged from nominalism, modern devotion, to humanism occurring in conjunction with economic, political and demographic forces that contributed to a growing disaffection with the wealth and power of the elite clergy, sensitizing the population to the financial and moral corruption of the secular Renaissance church. The outcome of the Black Death encouraged a radical reorganization of the economy, and eventually of European society. In the emerging urban centers, however, the calamities of the fourteenth and early fifteenth century, and the resultant labor shortages, provided a strong impetus for economic diversification and technological innovations. Following the Black Death, the initial loss of life due to famine, plague, and pestilence contributed to an intensification of capital accumulation in the urban areas, and thus a stimulus to trade, industry, and burgeoning urban growth in fields as diverse as banking (the Fugger banking family in Augsburg and the Medici family of Florence being the most prominent); textiles, armaments, especially stimulated by the Hundred Years War, and mining of iron ore due, in large part, to the booming armaments industry. Accumulation of surplus, competitive overproduction, and heightened competition to maximize economic advantage, contributed to civil war, aggressive militarism, and thus to centralization. As a direct result of the move toward centralization, leaders like Louis XI of France (1461-1483), the “spider king,” sought to remove all constitutional restrictions on the exercise of their authority. In England, France, and Spain the move toward centralization begun in the thirteenth century was carried to a successful conclusion. But as recovery and prosperity progressed, enabling the population to reach its former levels in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the combination of both a newly-abundant labor supply as well as improved productivity, were 'mixed blessings' for many segments of Western European society. Despite tradition, landlords started the move to exclude peasants from 'common lands'. With trade stimulated, landowners increasingly moved away from the manorial economy. Woolen manufacturing greatly expanded in France, Germany, and the Netherlands and new textile industries began to develop. The 'humanism' of the Renaissance period stimulated unprecedented academic ferment, and a concern for academic freedom. Ongoing, earnest theoretical debates occurred in the universities about the nature of the church, and the source and extent of the authority of the papacy, of councils, and of princes.

16th century

- Martin Luther, Johann Tetzel, Philipp Melanchthon, Indulgences, 95 Theses, Nicolaus Von Amsdorf
- Exsurge Domine, Diet of Worms (1521), Peasants' War
- Huldrych Zwingli and Zürich
- John Calvin and Geneva
- John Knox and Scotland
- Radical Reformers — Müntzer, Anabaptists, Menno Simons
- Reformation in France — Huguenots, Pierre Viret Protestants generally trace their separation from the Roman Catholic Church to the 16th century, which is sometimes called the magisterial Reformation because the movement received support from the magistrates, the ruling authorities (as opposed to the radical Reformation, which had no state sponsorship). The protest erupted suddenly, in many places at once but particularly in Germany, during a time of threatened Islamic invasion¹ which distracted German princes in particular. To some degree, the protest can be explained by the events of the previous two centuries in Western Europe. The protest began in earnest when Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and professor at the University of Wittenberg, called in 1517 for reopening of debate on the sale of indulgences. Tradition holds that he nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle's Church, which served as a pin board for university-related announcements. Luther's dissent marked a sudden outbreak with new and irresistible force of discontent which had been pushed underground but not resolved; the quick spread of discontent occurred to a large degree because of the printing press and the resulting swift movement of both ideas and documents (such as the 95 Theses). It is noteworthy that the Reformation foundations were engaged by an Augustianism trend that marked both the mindset of Luther and Calvin, and oriented them to set forth thesis and ideas that pinpointed deeply their thought, heavily linked with the theologic teaching of the Doctor of Church (Aurelius Augustus of Hyppo), the well-known African Bishop of Hyppo, during the IV century. The Augustianism of the Reformers struggled against the Pelagianism, an insistent heresy officially banished from the Church since St. Augustin's early days. Parallel to events in Germany, a movement began in Switzerland under the leadership of Huldrych Zwingli. These two movements quickly agreed on most issues, as the recently introduced printing press spread ideas rapidly from place to place, but some unresolved differences kept them separate. Some followers of Zwingli believed that the Reformation was too conservative, and moved independently toward more radical positions, some of which survive among modern day Anabaptists. Other Protestant movements grew up along lines of mysticism or humanism (cf. Erasmus), sometimes breaking from Rome or from the Protestants, or forming outside of the churches. After this first stage of the Reformation, following the excommunication of Luther and condemnation of the Reformation by the Pope, the work and writings of John Calvin were influential in establishing a loose consensus among various groups in Switzerland, Scotland, Hungary, Germany and elsewhere. The separation of the Church of England from Rome under Henry VIII, beginning in 1529 and completed in 1536, brought England alongside this broad Reformed movement. However, religious changes in the English national church proceeded more conservatively than elsewhere in Europe. Reformers in the Church of England alternated for centuries, between sympathies for catholic traditions and Protestantism, progressively forging a stable compromise between adherence to ancient tradition and Protestantism, which is now sometimes called the via media.

Humanism to Protestantism

The frustrated reformism of the humanists, ushered in by the Renaissance, contributed to a growing impatience among reformers. Erasmus and later figures like Luther and Zwingli would emerge from this debate and eventually contribute to the second major schism of Christendom. Unfortunately for the church, the crisis of theology beginning with William of Ockham in the fourteenth century was occurring in conjunction with the new burgher discontent. Since the breakdown of the philosophical foundations of scholasticism, the new nominalism did not bode well for an institutional church legitimized as an intermediary between man and God. New thinking favored the notion that no religious doctrine can be supported by philosophical arguments, eroding the old alliance between reason and faith of the medieval period laid out by Thomas Aquinas. The major individualistic reform movements that revolted against medieval scholasticism and the institutions that underpinned it were: humanism, devotionalism, and the observatine tradition. In Germany, “the modern way” or devotionalism caught on in the universities, requiring a redefinition of God, who was no longer a rational governing principle but an arbitrary, unknowable will that cannot be limited. God was now an unknowable absolute ruler, and religion would be more fervent and emotional. Thus, the ensuing revival of Augustinian theology, stating that man cannot be saved by his own efforts but only by the grace of God, would erode the legitimacy of the rigid institutions of the church meant to provide a channel for man to do good works and get into heaven. Humanism, however, was more of an educational reform movement with origins in the Renaissance's revival of classical learning and thought. A revolt against Aristotelian logic, it placed great emphasis on reforming individuals through eloquence as opposed to reason. The European Renaissance laid the foundation for the Northern humanists in its reinforcement of the traditional use of Latin as the great unifying cultural language. The polarization the scholarly community in Germany over the Reuchlin (1455-1522) affair, attacked by the elite clergy for his study of Hebrew and Jewish texts, brought Luther fully in line with the humanist educational reforms who favored academic freedom. At the same time, the impact of the Renaissance would soon backfire against Southern Europe, also ushering in an age of reform and a repudiation of much of medieval Latin tradition. Led by Erasmus, the humanists condemned various forms of corruption within the Church, forms of corruption that might not have been any more prevalent than during the medieval zenith of the church. Erasmus held that true religion was a matter of inward devotion rather than an outward symbol of ceremony and ritual. Going back to ancient texts, scriptures, from this viewpoint the greatest culmination of the ancient tradition, are the guides to life. Favoring moral reforms and de-emphasizing didactic ritual, Erasmus laid the groundwork for Luther. Humanism's intellectual anticlericalism would profoundly influence Luther. The increasingly well-educated middle sectors of Northern Germany, namely the educated community and city dwellers would turn to Luther's rethinking of religion to conceptualize their discontent according to the cultural medium of the era. The great rise of the burghers, the desire to run their new businesses free of institutional barriers or outmoded cultural practices, contributed to the appeal of humanist individualism. To many, papal institutions were rigid, especially regarding their views on just price and usury. In the North burghers and monarchs were united in their frustration for not paying any taxes to the nation, but collecting taxes from subjects and sending the revenues disproportionately to the Pope in Italy. These trends heightened demands for significant reform and revitalization along with anticlericalism. New thinkers began noticing the divide between the priests and the flock. The clergy, for instance, were not always well-educated. Parish priests often did not know Latin and rural parishes often did not have great opportunities for theological education for many at the time. Due to its large landholdings and institutional rigidity, a rigidity to which the excessively large ranks of the clergy contributed, many bishops studied law, not theology, being relegated to the role of property managers trained in administration. While priests emphasized works of religiosity, the respectability of the church began diminishing, especially among well educated urbanites, and especially considering the recent strings of political humiliation, such as the apprehension of Pope Boniface VIII by Philip IV of France, the “Babylonian Captivity,” the Great Schism, and the failure of Conciliar reformism. In a sense, the campaign by Pope Leo X to raise funds to rebuild the St. Peter's Basilica was too much of an excess by the secular Renaissance church, prompting the high-pressure sale of indulgences that rendered the clerical establishments even more disliked in the cities. Luther, taking the revival of the Augustinian notion of salvation by faith alone to new levels, borrowed from the humanists the sense of individualism, that each man can be his own priest (an attitude likely to find popular support considering the rapid rise of an educated urban middle class in the North), and that the only true authority is the Bible, echoing the reformist zeal of the Conciliar movement and opening up the debate once again on limiting the authority of the Pope. While his ideas called for the sharp redefinition of the dividing lines between the laity and the clergy, his ideas were still, by this point, reformist in nature. Luther's contention that the human will was incapable of following good, however, resulted in his rift with Erasmus finally distinguishing Lutheran reformism from humanism.

Religious Influences for the Reformation

While there were some parallels between certain movements within humanism and teachings later common among the Reformers, the main influence was the Bible itself. The Roman Catholic Church had itself been the main purveyor in Europe of humanism for centuries: the neo-Platonism of the scholastics and the neo-Aristotelianism of Thomas Aquinas and his followers had made humanism part of church dogma. Thus, when Luther and the other reformers adopted the standard of sola scriptura, making the Bible the sole measure of theology, that made the Reformation a reaction against the humanism of that time. Previously, the Scriptures had been seen as the pinnacle of a hierarchy of sacred texts. Luther himself had been trained as a professor of the Bible and was teaching Bible at the University of Wittenberg when the Bible changed him. He later lamented that he wished he had learned the Bible earlier instead of spending so much time studying classical humanistic authors such as Plato and Aristotle. It appears that he was not familiar with the writings of earlier people who called for reformation, for example, he did not know the teachings of Jan Hus until he was introduced to them by a taunt from Johann Eck that he was teaching the same doctrines. The Protestants emphasized such concepts as Justification by "faith alone" (not faith and good works or infused righteousness), "Scripture alone" (the Bible as the sole rule of faith, rather than the Bible plus Tradition), "the priesthood of all believers" (eschewing the special authority and power of the Roman Catholic sacramental priesthood), that all people are individually responsible for their status before God such that talk of mediation through any but Christ alone is unbiblical. Because they saw these teachings as stemming from the Bible, they encouraged publication of the Bible in the common language and universal education, for how can people avail themselves of the knowledge of their salvation without the ability to read the Bible? Part of the revolt was an iconoclasm, seen in John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli, but particularly amongst the radical reformers. Iconoclastic riots took place in Zürich (in 1523), Copenhagen (1530), Münster (1534), Geneva (1535), Augsburg (1537) and Scotland (1559). The Reformation did not happen in a vacuum, as there were movements for centuries calling for a return to Biblical teachings, the most famous being from Wyclif and Jan Hus. It is no surprise that their teachings were later found in the Reformation, as they imbibed from the same source. While it is true that there were calls for religious and doctrinal and moral reformation within and without the institutional church for centuries, apparently it was the invention of the printing press which allowed quick broadcasting of ideas, the rise in nationalistic fervor and popular discontent at the moral corruption in the church to coalesce in support for a reformation as never before. But the spark that started the Reformation and keeps it going even today is the doctrinal issues brought up by the Bible.

The Radical Reformation

Unskilled laborers and peasants recently squeezed from the countryside embraced the most radical theological options opened up by the religious revolution. Peasants and new migrants to the cities had little understanding of economics, so they had no understanding of the increasingly discredited just price concept and the influence of capitalism and mercantilism. They believed that higher prices were the result of unjust, parasitic, and immoral behavior. Discontented and morally righteous, the lower classes were ready to follow leaders, who urged them to band together against immorality and decadence. They preached against landowners who took control of increasing areas, kings centralizing control and princes looking for increased tax revenues to fund their growing states. The disadvantaged peasantry turned to radical leaders, to people like the Drummer of Niklashausen and later the Anabaptist preachers. Many of the Anabaptist preachers belonged to the peasant and laboring class. The Anabaptists and other radical leaders were condemned by the Lutherans and nationalistic Germans. Nearly every country in Europe saw a flare up of failed peasant revolts motivated by religious concerns and executed according to religious doctrine. The Hungarian Peasants' War(1514), the revolt against Charles V in Spain (1520), the discontent of the lower classes in France with the excessive taxes levied by Louis XI, and the secret associations which prepared the way for the great Peasants' War of the lower classes in Germany (1524), show that discontent was not confined to any one country in Europe.

Lutheranism adopted by the German Territorial Princes

Luther, like Erasmus, in the beginning favored maintaining the bishops as an elite class for administrative purposes, though he denied that their succession from the Apostles gave their consecration any special sacramental value. And while Luther rejected many of the Catholic sacraments, as well as salvation by grace alone through both faith and good works (as opposed to the Protestant "faith alone") and indulgences, he firmly upheld the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. Luther favored a reformed theology of the Eucharist called consubstantiation, a doctrine of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist which depended on the faith of the congregation. Traditionally, the consecrated bread and wine were held to become, substantially, the body and blood of Christ (transubstantiation). Transubstantiation was most fully spelled out by the medieval scholastics, who agreed that the elements, once consecrated, remained the body and blood of Christ and could be worshipped as such. According to the doctrine of consubstantiation, the substances of the body and the blood of Christ and of the bread and the wine were held to coexist together in the consecrated Host during the communion service. However, any consecrated bread or wine left over would revert to its former state the moment the service ended. Luther, along with his colleague Philipp Melanchthon, emphasized this point in his plea for the Reformation at the Reichstag in 1529 amid charges of heresy. But the changes he proposed were of such a fundamental nature that by their own logic they would automatically overthrow the old order; neither the Emperor nor the Church could possibly accept them, as Luther well knew. As was only to be expected, the edict by the Diet of Worms (1521) prohibited all innovations. Meanwhile, in these efforts to retain the guise of a Catholic reformer as opposed to a heretical revolutionary, and to appeal to German princes with his religious condemnation of the peasant revolts backed up by the Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, Luther's growing conservatism would provoke more radical reformers. At a religious conference with the Zwinglians in 1529, Melanchthon joined with Luther in opposing a union with Zwingli. There would finally be a schism in the reform movement due to Luther's belief in consubstantiation. His original intention was not schism, but with the Reichstag of Augsburg (1530) a separate Lutheran church finally emerged. In a sense, Luther would take theology further in its deviation from established Catholic dogma, forcing a rift between the humanist Erasmus and Luther. Similarly, Zwingli would further repudiate ritualism, and break with the increasingly conservative Luther. While it would be an understatement to state that Erasmus, Luther, Zwingli, and Melanchthon regarded the fundamental theological questions quite seriously, their followers tended to split along socio-economic lines. Luther found great support from the new bourgeoisie in Germany's urban centers to overthrow the power of the landowning aristocracy and the Latin clergy, rooted in their control of land and peasant labor, which were the central means of production of the time. And up-and-coming merchants, not yet part of the ruling elite, rallied to Luther's cause. Zwingli, however, appealed to poorer segments of society who lacked the stake in German proto-nationalism among the ambitious, consolidating princes and the new bourgeoisie. Aside from the enclosing of the lower classes, the middle sectors of Northern Germany, namely the educated community and city dwellers, would turn to religion to conceptualize their discontent according to the cultural medium of the era. The great rise of the burghers, the desire to run their new businesses free of institutional barriers or outmoded cultural practices contributed to the appeal of individualism. To many, papal institutions were rigid, especially regarding their views on just price and usury. In the North, burghers and monarchs were united in their frustration for not paying any taxes to the nation, but collecting taxes from subjects and sending the revenues disproportionately to Italy. In Northern Europe Luther appealed to the growing national consciousness of the German states because he denounced the Pope for involvement in politics as well as religion. Moreover, he backed the nobility, which was now justified to crush the Great Peasant Revolt of 1525 and to confiscate church property by Luther's Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms. This explains the attraction of some territorial princes to Lutheranism, especially its Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms. However, the Elector of Brandenburg, Joachim I, blamed Lutheranism for the revolt and so did others. In Brandenburg, it was only under his successor Joachim II that Lutheranism was established, and the old religion was not formally extinct in Brandenburg until the death of the last Catholic bishop there, Georg von Blumenthal. With the church subordinate to and the agent of civil authority and peasant rebellions condemned on strict religious terms, Lutheranism and German nationalist sentiment were ideally suited to coincide. Though Charles V fought the reformation, it is no coincidence either that the reign of his nationalistic predecessor Maximilian I saw the beginning of the Reformation. While the centralized states of western Europe had reached accords with the Vatican permitting them to draw on the rich property of the church for government expenditures, enabling them to form state churches that were greatly autonomous of Rome, similar moves on behalf of the Reich were unsuccessful so long as princes and prince bishops fought reforms to drop the pretension of secular universal empire.

English Reformation

See articles at :Category:English Reformation
Political Reformation
The course of the Reformation was different in England. There had long been a strong strain of anti-clericalism, and England had already given rise to the Lollard movement, which had inspired the Hussites in Bohemia. By the 1520s, however, the Lollards were not an active force, or, at least, certainly not a mass movement. The different character of the English Reformation came rather from the fact that it was driven initially by the political necessities of Henry VIII. Henry had once been a sincere Catholic and had even authored a book strongly criticizing Luther, but he later found it expedient and profitable to break with the Papacy. In 1534 The Act of Supremacy put Henry at the head of the church in England (that is, not the Church of England). Between 1535 and 1540, under Thomas Cromwell, the policy known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries was put into effect. The veneration of Saints, pilgrimages and pilgrim shrines were also attacked. Huge amounts of church land and property passed into the hands of the crown and ultimately into those of the nobility and gentry. The vested interest thus created made for a powerful force in support of the dissolutions. There were many notable opponents to the Henrician Reformation, such as Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher, who were executed for their opposition. But there was also a growing party of Protestants who were imbued with the Zwinglian and Calvinistic doctrines now current on the Continent. When Henry was destruction of images, and the closing of the chantries. Following a brief Roman Catholic reaction during the reign of Mary 1553-1558, a loose consensus developed during the reign of Elizabeth I, though this point is one of considerable debate among historians. Yet it is the so-called Elizabethan Settlement to which the origins of Anglicanism are traditionally ascribed. The compromise was uneasy and was capable of veering between extreme Calvinism on the one hand and Arminianism on the other, but compared to the bloody and chaotic state of affairs in contemporary France, it was relatively successful until the Puritan Revolution or English Civil War in the seventeenth century. The success of the Counter-Reformation on the Continent and the growth of a Puritan party dedicated to further Protestant reform polarised the Elizabethan Age, although it was not until the 1640s that England underwent religious strife comparable to that which her neighbours had suffered some generations before.
Early Puritan Movement
The early Puritan Movement (late 16th century-17th century) was Reformed or Calvinist and was a movement for reform in the Church of England. Its origins lay in the discontent with the Elizabethan Religious Settlement. The desire was for the Church of England to resemble more closely the Protestant churches of Europe, especially Geneva. The Puritans objected to ornaments and ritual in the churches as idolatrous (vestments, surplices, organs, genuflection), which they castigated as "popish pomp and rags." (See Vestments controversy.) They also objected to ecclesiastical courts. They refused to endorse completely all of the ritual directions and formulas of the Book of Common Prayer; the imposition of its liturgical order by legal force and inspection sharpened Puritanism into a definite opposition movement. The later Puritan movement were often referred to as Dissenters and Nonconformists and eventually led to the formation of various reformed denominations.
Resources

Printed Resources

- Belloc, Hilaire (1928), How the Reformation Happened, Tan Books & Publishing. ISBN 0-89555-465-8 (a Roman Catholic Perspective)
- Braaten, Carl E. and Robert W. Jenson. The Catholicity of the Reformation. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996. ISBN 0-8028-4220-8
- Cameron, Euan. The European Reformation. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991. (A standard textbook).
- Estep, William R. Renaissance & Reformaton. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986. ISBN 0-8028-0050-5
- Gonzales, Justo. The Story of Christianity, Vol. 2: The Reformation to the Present Day. San Francisco: Harper, 1985. ISBN 0060633166
- Pelikan, Jaroslav. Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700). Chicago: U Chicago Press, 1984 (focuses on religious teachings)
- Kolb, Robert. Confessing the Faith: Reformers Define the Church, 1530-1580. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1991. ISBN 0-570-04556-8
- MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History. New York: Penguin 2003.
- Spitz, Lewis W. The Protestant Reformation: Major Documents. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1997. ISBN 0-570-04993-8
- Spitz, Lewis W. The Renaissance and Reformation Movements: Volume I, The Renaissance. Revised Edition. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1987. ISBN 0-570-03818-9
- Spitz, Lewis W. The Renaissance and Reformation Movements: Volume II, The Reformation. Revised Edition. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1987. ISBN 0-570-03819-7
Online Resources

Historical Materials

- Timelines
- Timeline for Renaissance & Reformation
- Timeline of the Protestant Reformation in England
- History of Protestantism
- Middle Ages in history
- A list of Protestant reformers
Primary Materials

- [http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/web/ninetyfive.html Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses]
- The Book of Common Prayer
- The Book of Concord
External links

- [http://history.hanover.edu/early/prot.html Internet Archive of Related Texts and Documents]
- [http://www.lepg.org/religion.htm A summary of the Reformation]
- [http://www.newgenevacenter.org/west/reformation.htm An Overview of the Protestant Reformation] Category:Protestantism Category:History of Europe ko:종교 개혁 ja:宗教改革

Theology

Theology is reasoned discourse concerning God (Greek θεος, theos, "God", + λογος, logos, "word" or "reason"). It can also refer to the study of other religious topics. A theologian is a person learned in theology. religious topics

History of the term

The word "Theology" is derived from Hellenistic Greek, but its meaning has changed significantly through its use in the European Christian thought of the Middle ages and Enlightenment The term theologia is used in Classical Greek literature, with the meaning "discourse on the gods or cosmology" (see Lidell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon for references). Since the authority of Hellenistic city states was partly based on religious observance, those who first sought to ask difficult questions about the gods were often viewed as heretics, or in the language of the day "atheists". Socrates is famous for having been condemned to death for teaching youths atheism (though in fact he had not). Plato, his pupil, wrote several discourses on the gods, though his doctrine of forms and emanations would be more significant for later Theology. Aristotle divided theoretical philosophy into mathematice, phusike and theologike, with the latter corresponding roughly to metaphysics, which for Aristotle included discussion of the nature of the divine. The term has since been appropriated by a number of Eastern and Western religious traditions. Drawing on Greek sources, the Latin writer Varro influentially distinguished three forms of such discourse: mythical (concerning the myths of the Greek gods), rational (philosophical analysis of the gods and of cosmology) and civil (concerning the rites and duties of public religious observance). Christian writers, working within the Hellenistic mould, began to use the term to describe their studies. It appears once in some biblical manuscripts, in the heading to the book of Revelation: apokalupsis ioannou tou theologou, "the revelation of John the theologos". There, however, we are probably dealing with a slightly different sense of the root logos, to mean not "rational discourse" but "word" or "message": ho theologos here is probably meant to tell us that the author of Revelation has presented God's revealed messages – words of God, logoi tou theou – not that he was a "theologian" in the modern English sense of the word. Other Christian writers used the term with several different ranges of meaning. # Some Latin authors, such as Tertullian and Augustine followed Varro's threefold usage, described above. # In patristic Greek sources, theologia could refer narrowly to the discussion of the nature and attributes of God. # In other patristic Greek sources, theologia could also refer narrowly to the discussion of the attribution of divine nature to Jesus. (It is in this sense that Gregory Nazianzus was nicknamed "the theologian": he was a staunch defender of the divinity of Christ.) # In medieval Greek and Latin sources, theologia (in the sense of "an account or record of the ways of God") could refer simply to the Bible. # In scholastic Latin sources, the term came to denote the rational study of the doctrines of the Christian religion, or (more precisely) the academic discipline which investigated the coherence and implications of the language and claims of the Bible and of the theological tradition (the latter often as represented in Peter Lombard's Sentences, a book of extracts from the Church Fathers). It is the last of these senses which lies behind most modern uses (though the second is also found in some academic and ecclesiastical contexts), and while the term "theology" can refer to any discussion of the nature of God or the gods, or indeed the discussion of any religious topic, it is also regularly used to denote the academic study (in Universities, seminaries and elsewhere) of the doctrines of Christianity, or of any other religion, or of the relationships and contrasts between various different religions, although the latter is a field more usually termed "comparative religion."

A brief history of "Theologies"

::Main article: History of theology Classical Greek theology (c.700 BC to 323 BC). Various forms of systematic and philosophical reflection on Ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology arose in the classical period - from Hesiod's attempts to organise the diverse materials of mythology into a unified Theogony to the more properly philosophical analysis reportedly carried out by Socrates. Plato's Timaeus and Aristotle's Metaphysics Book Lambda are two of the most influential writings of Classical Greek theology. Hellenistic theology (323 BC to 529 AD). Philosophical reflection on the gods, on religion, and on the origins and governance of the Universe, flourished in the Hellenistic period amongst both Greek- and Latin-speaking thinkers. Amongst the very diverse movements of Hellenistic philosophy in which theological reflection could be found were Cynicism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Middle Platonism, and Neoplatonism. Influential texts include Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus, Cicero's de Natura Deorum, Lucretius' de Rerum Natura, Epictetus' Enchiridion, and Plotinus' Enneads. Hellenistic theology, which could be deemed to last until the suppression of the Athenian Academy in 529 by Justinian I, overlaps with early Jewish and early Christian theology (see below), and several strands of thought important particularly to early Christian thought arise within Hellenistic circles: attempts to explain the apparent caprice of the gods, Atheism, the development of monotheism, the idea of God as first cause or form of the Good, the dualism of spirit and matter in humanity, and redemption (the release of the spirit from its material prison to a higher spiritual world) through knowledge. See also Greek mythology - Hellenistic rationalism and Ancient Greek religion - Theology Early Jewish theology (to c.200 AD). Two strands of Jewish theology develop in this period. On the one hand, there are those oral traditions of Rabbinic exegesis (Midrash) and legal discussion (Mishnah) that eventually began to be written down towards the end of the 2nd Century AD. Important figures include Gamliel I, Yohanan ben Zakkai, Gamliel II, Rabbi Akiva, and Rabbi Judah haNasi. On the other hand, there is the attempt to accommodate traditional Jewish exegesis of the Jewish Scriptures and tradition with Greek philosophy - a strand of thought of which Philo is the best known proponent. The destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 AD and the dispersion of many Jews from Israel had a profound effect on Jewish Theology. Early Christian theology, coming partly from Hellenistic Judaism, therefore had no trouble in expressing itself in the Greek language (i.e. the New Testament). Whilst the conception of a canon of sacred books was inherited from Judaism, their interpretation soon came to be heavily influenced by Greek allegorical methods (e.g. Origen). Origen" during the long decline of the Roman Empire]] Patristic Theology (c. 100 – 500 AD) is so called because certain men (Fathers or "Patroi") concerned themselves with determining the degree to which the Christian faith could be accommodated to Hellenistic thought. Irenaeus of Lyons wrote to combat those who made Christianity into Gnostic Theology. Justin Martyr sought to use Hellenistic philosophy and Natural Theology to justify Christianity to the Romans. Later Theologians especially sought to show how three divine persons could be one in substance (the Trinity, see Council of Nicea) and how Jesus (a man of material flesh, see Council of Chalcedon) could at also be divine. These statements though held to be philosophically illogical were nevertheless held to be true, human reason being incapable of understanding them. This was an important development that would define the Theology of the Middle Ages in Islam as well as Christianity. Important theologians were Athanasius, Gregory of Nazanzius, Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome. The fall of the Roman empire affected Theology in two main ways; Firstly monasticism became more popular and ascetic, and mystical theology therefore became more prevalent. Secondly, the increasing influence of the Bishop of Rome (The Pope) in theological doctrine and cultural differences between the two remnants of the Roman empire caused the doctrine of apostolic succession to be more important. The two sides finally split in

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A brief history of "Theologies"