Hi! Can you help me understand the Anglican Church?

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I honestly don’t know. The English Reformation is not my forte.
@GKmotley @QContinuum may be able to help in this matter.
 
You are very welcome. I am sure you could find a mix that would be a match. I don’t recommend trying it, but I’m not all that fond of the scope of the motleyness. merely an observer of it.
 
If you are, or wish to be RC, and come from an Anglican background, it’s worth exploring.
 
The establishment of the Church in England (as opposed to the formal CoE) dates from centuries before Augustine’s mission. Scholars differ on the precise point, but early 3rd century is most likely.

The 2nd para is not comprehensible. The 3rd is similar.

Added: Should have read your reply to PickyPicky before posting. That much history had been left out was my main point here. That the last 2 paras seem little …incomprehensible, as read, is still true. But clearer, now.
 
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7_Sorrows said:
King Henry VIII defintely started a church in England in whch he was the head and was not part of Rome. so whatever church he began and named did start with him.
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What do you mean? The Archbishop of Canterbury crowned Henry as King iirc. Bishops were among his important advisors and had seats in the House of Lords because they were bishops. Those traditions went back several hundred years, so I do not see why it is appropriate to say he “began” a Church, and I doubt that he named it.

St Thomas Becket struggled with Henry II over how much power over the Church should be given to the monarch, 400 years before Henry VIII. Henry I & II would probably have been comfortable with Head of the Church as a title.

The Church Henry VIII was baptized into continued in the Church he headed, with people going to the same buildings where they had attended for years. There were disruptions certainly, changes in liturgy and language as well as in politics and wars. Catholics and Anglicans can easily have differing opinions on whether the Church continued in a sacramental sense, but as a social entity, the Church in England before Henry continued in the Church of England after.
 
Pre-Henry, reference might have been made to the Catholic Church in England, I would suppose, Or even, in some sense, the Catholic Church of England. But it would not have been to distinguish it from the Catholic Church of which it was a part, just identifying which part of that Church was being discussed: the part across the Channel.

What Henry did was take that part and make it separate: a schism. And hence now the Church of England, in today’s sense…
 
Sorry to be incomprehensible lol. One of my strengths!

The second paragraph was to say some revaluated the Church in England as not in continuity with the Church before Henry, esp in Rome but some in England also.

Third paragraph stresses the latitudinarian strain, which in some ways is pervasive throughout Anglicanism. If someone wants to find a dogmatic backbone for the Church of England, it is that they accomodate a diversity of viewpoints. That dogma, that we can worship together, is more important than other controversial doctrines.

Of course, you can correct me. I am not an Anglican. I heard George Carey, abp of Canterbury at the time, give a series of lectures on CofE and have been interested over the years. But don’t blame him for mistakes I have made!
 
This is a rather Anglican way of looking at it all. Not that that’s a bad thing: I do it too.

Henry II and a Beckett was one point. The history ran forward from there, until it reached the Henrician Acts. And a split, over power relationships in the Realm. Henry, in the Act of Supremacy, was called the supreme head of the Church of England (Anglicana Ecclesia).
 
I can agree with much here. The broad spectrum, for doctrine in the Church, post the Elizabethan Settlement, was an artifact of Elizabeth’s determination to rule a fractious Church which might well have torn itself and the country asunder. Centuries later, the latitudinarism has reached the point that it is doing the same thing.
 
GKMotley said:
Pre-Henry, reference might have been made to the Catholic Church in England, I would suppose, Or even, in some sense, the Catholic Church of England
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It was certainly called the English Church in Magna Carta and that seems the same (to me) as Church of England.
 
It says:

1. In primis concessisse Deo et hac presenti carta nostra confirmasse, pro nobis et heredibus nostris in perpetuum quod Anglicana ecclesia libera sit, et habeat jura sua integra, et libertates suas illesas; et ita volumus observari; quod apparet ex eo quod libertatem electionum, que maxima et magis necessaria reputatur Ecclesie Anglicane, mera et spontanea voluntate, ante discordiam inter nos et barones nostros motam, concessimus et carta nostra [illa carta data 21É novembris anno Domini 1214; …
 
I can ask my daughter, she of the Latin classics degree and mind-numbing academic record.
 
GKMotley said:
Henry, in the Act of Supremacy, was called the supreme head of the Church of England ( Anglicana Ecclesia ).
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This same phrase is used in the Magna Carta, so that would seem to answer the question. Nuances like Church in England, Church of England, English Church, etc. are later.

Interesting bit in Magna Carta. Was Henry III giving up his power over Church that he had as head of state? Or guaranteeing freedom Church already had by right?
 
In the US, Anglican is the Episcopal Church.

Don’t know if it has already been said, but the late comedian Robin Williams was an Episcopalian. When asked about religion he said, “Episcopalian is Catholic Light, same rituals, half the guilt.”

Don’t know how much truth there is to that. Shame Robin isn’t around to explain it a little better. 😯
 
As always. I was no slouch myself, in the day. but she left me in the dust. She should be in the area in a month or so, on her way to some odd sort of thing at a well-known university up in the northeast. I understand little of all of it.
 
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