Anglicanism

The term Anglican (from Medieval Latin ecclesia anglicana, meaning 'the English Church') is used to describe the people, institutions and churches as well as the liturgical traditions and theological concepts developed by the state established Church of England, the Anglican Communion. Though disputed by the Anglican Communion, the term is also claimed by followers of the Continuing Anglican Churches: a loosely affiliated group of independent churches which have seceded from the Anglican Communion as a result of doctrinal and liturgical differences within its various provinces. The Episcopal Church in the United States of America and the Scottish Episcopal Church are members of the Anglican Communion, but do not use the term Anglican in their names.

The Anglican Communion considers itself to be part of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church and as being both Catholic and Reformed. For some adherents it represents a non-papal Catholicism, for others Protestantism without a dominant figure such as a Luther, Knox, Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, or Wesley.^[1] For many Anglicans self-identity represents some combination of the two. The communion is a theologically broad and often divergent affiliation of thirty-eight provinces that are in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Anglican Communion is one of the largest Christian denominations in the world, with approximately 73 million members.^[2]

History

Main articles: Religion in the United Kingdom, History of the Church of England, and Scottish Episcopal Church

Pre-Reformation

Anglicans traditionally date the origins of their Church to the arrival in England of the first Archbishop of Canterbury, Saint Augustine of Canterbury at the end of the 6th century. However, the origins of the English Church extend farther back, Christianity having first gained a foothold during the Roman occupation prior to the 5th century, possibly as early as the 1st century. The first recorded Christian martyr in Britain, Saint Alban, is thought to have lived in the early 4th century, and his prominence in Anglican hagiography is reflected in the number of parish churches of which he is patron. Irish Anglicans also trace their origins back to the founding saint of Irish Christianity (Saint Patrick) who was a Roman Briton and pre-dated Anglo-Saxon Christianity.

Anglicans consider Celtic Christianity a forerunner of their church, since the re-establishment of Christianity in the early sixth century came via Irish and Scottish missionaries, notably Saint Patrick and Saint Columba.^[3] This distinctive form of Catholic Christianity remained, even after the Synod of Whitby in 664 decided that the church throughout Britain should conform to the contemporary Roman customs introduced by Augustine and other missionaries to the Anglo-Saxons. This persistence of Celtic traditions, along with the implementation of Pope Gregory I's instructions to Augustine to incorporate pagan customs and festivals into religious life and practice, meant that English Christianity assumed a distinctive indigenous character^[4]

Reformation

Main article: English Reformation

While Anglicans acknowledge that the repudiation of papal authority by Henry VIII of England led to the Church of England existing as a separate entity, they also believe that it is in continuity with the pre-Reformation Church of England. Quite apart from its distinct customs and liturgies (such as the Sarum rite), the organizational machinery of the Church of England was in place by the time of the Synod of Hertford in 672–673 when the English bishops were for the first time able to act as one body under the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry's Act in Restraint of Appeals (1533) and the Acts of Supremacy (1534) declared that the English crown was "the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England, called Ecclesia Anglicana," in order "to repress and extirpate all errors, heresies, and other enormities and abuses heretofore used in the same." The development of the Thirty-Nine Articles of religion and the passage of the Acts of Uniformity culminating in the Elizabethan Religious Settlement resulted in a Church that describes itself as both Catholic and Reformed with the English monarch as its Supreme Governor.

The English Reformation was initially driven by the dynastic goals of Henry VIII, who, in his quest for a consort who would bear him a male heir, found it expedient to replace papal authority with the supremacy of the English crown. The early legislation focused primarily on questions of temporal and spiritual supremacy, however subsequent legislation put a decidedly Protestant spin on Henry's agenda. The introduction of the Great Bible in 1538 brought a vernacular translation of the Scriptures into churches. The Dissolution of the Monasteries and the seizure of their assets by 1540 brought huge amounts of church land and property under the jurisdiction of the Crown, and ultimately into the hands of the English nobility. This simultaneously removed the greatest centres of loyalty to the Pope and created vested interests which made a powerful material incentive to support a separate Christian church in England under the rule of the Crown.

By 1549, the process of creating a new and distinct national church was fully initiated by the publication of the first vernacular prayer book, the Book of Common Prayer, and the enforcement of the Acts of Uniformity, establishing English as the language of public worship. The theological justification for Anglican distinctiveness was begun by the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, the principal author of the first Prayer Book, and continued by other thinkers such as Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes. Cranmer had studied in Europe and was influenced by the ideas of the Reformers John Calvin and Martin Bucer, as well as the Roman Catholic theologian Desiderius Erasmus.

During the short reign of Edward VI, Henry's son, Cranmer and others moved the Church of England significantly towards a more Protestant Calvinist and Zwinglian position, which was reflected in the development of the second Prayer Book (1552) and of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (originally numbering forty-two). This reform was reversed abruptly in the subsequent reign of Queen Mary, a Roman Catholic who re-established communion with Rome. Under Queen Elizabeth I the English church incorporatied aspects of Protestant theology, and at the time it was regarded as a Protestant body mid-way between Zwinglianism and Lutheranism.

Post-Reformation

In the 16th century, religious life was an important part of the cement which held society together and formed an important basis for extending and consolidating political power. Differences in religion were likely to lead to civil unrest at the very least, with treason and foreign invasion acting as real threats. Elizabeth's solution to the problem of minimising bloodshed over religion in her dominions was the religious settlement most compellingly articulated in the development of the 1559 Book of Common Prayer. This version of the prayer book combined elements of the Calvinist, Zwinglian 1552 version with the more apparently Catholic 1549 version (which had made generous use of the traditional Sarum liturgy). The prayer book revision was buttressed by a revision of the Articles of Religion and mediating rubrics concerning vestments and liturgy.Many believe that Elizabeth's goal was a church with a fixed form of worship in which everybody was expected to participate, but a belief system that was formulated in such a way that most in the theological spectrum would be able to give assent. Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, by the use of negative terminology, subtly inverted the Protestant principle that all things must be proved from the Scriptures so that only those things which could be proved by an appeal to the Scriptures must be believed as articles of the faith. The bulk of the population acceded to Elizabeth's religious settlement with varying degrees of enthusiasm or resignation, but more militant Protestants (the so-called Puritans) and those who continued to recognise papal supremacy opposed it and were executed and cracks in the façade of religious unity in England appeared.

For the next century, through the reigns of James I and Charles I, and culminating in the English Civil War and the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, there were significant swings back and forth between two factions: the Puritans (and other radicals) who sought more far-reaching reform, and the more conservative churchmen who aimed to keep closer to traditional beliefs and practices. The failure of political and ecclesiastical authorities to submit to Puritan demands for more extensive reform was one of the causes of open warfare. By continental standards the level of violence over religion was not high, but the casualties included a king, Charles I and an Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. Under the Protectorate of the Commonwealth of England from 1649 to 1660, Anglicanism was disestablished, presbyterian ecclesiology was introduced as an adjunct to the episcopal system, the Articles were replaced with the Westminster Confession, and the Book of Common Prayer was replaced by the Directory of Public Worship. Despite this, about one quarter of English clergy refused to conform.

With the Restoration of Charles II, Anglicanism too was restored in a form not far removed from the Elizabethan version. One difference was that the ideal of encompassing all the people of England in one religious organisation, taken for granted by the Tudors, had to be abandoned. The religious landscape of England assumed its present form, with an Anglican established church occupying the middle ground, and Roman Catholics and those Puritans who dissented from the establishment, too strong to be suppressed altogether, having to continue their existence outside the national church rather than controlling it. Restrictions and continuing official suspicion with some persecution continued well into the nineteenth century. The Elizabethan Settlement failed in that it was never able to win the assent of the entire English people, let alone the other peoples of the British Isles. Yet as the Anglican form of Christianity is now found all over the world it may possibly have succeeded beyond the wildest expectations of anybody alive in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Spread of Anglicanism outside England

The history of Anglicanism since the 17th century has been one of greater geographical and cultural expansion and diversity, accompanied by a concomitant diversity of liturgical and theological profession and practice.

At the same time as the English reformation, the Church of Ireland was also separated from Rome and adopted articles of faith similar to England's Thirty-Nine Articles. However, unlike England, the Anglican church there was never able to capture the loyalty of the majority of the population (who still adhered to Roman Catholicism). As early as 1582, the Scottish Episcopal Church was inaugurated when James VI of Scotland sought to reintroduce bishops when the Church of Scotland became fully presbyterian (see Scottish reformation). The Scottish Episcopal Church enabled the creation of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America after the American Revolution, by consecrating in Aberdeen the first American bishop, Samuel Seabury, who had been refused consecration by bishops in England, due to his inability to take the oath of allegiance to the English crown prescribed in the Order for the Consecration of Bishops. The polity and ecclesiology of the Scottish and American churches, as well as their daughter churches, thus tends to be distinct from those spawned by the English church - reflected, for example, in their looser conception of provincial government, and their leadership by a presiding bishop or primus rather than by a metropolitan or archbishop. The names of the Scottish and American churches inspire the customary term Episcopalian for an Anglican; the term being used in these and other parts of the world. See also: American Episcopalians, Scottish Episcopalians

At the time of the Reformation the four (now six) Welsh dioceses were all part of the Province of Canterbury, and remained so until 1920 when the Church in Wales was created as a province of the Anglican Communion. The intense interest in the Christian faith which characterised the Welsh in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not present in the sixteenth, and most Welsh people went along with the Reformation more because the English government was strong enough to impose its wishes in Wales, rather than out of any real conviction.

Anglicanism spread outside of the British Isles by means of emigration as well as missionary effort. English missionary organisations such as USPG - then known as the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and the Church Missionary Society (CMS) were established in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to bring Anglican Christianity to the British colonies. By the nineteenth century, such missions were extended to other areas of the world. The liturgical and theological orientations of these missionary organisations were diverse. The SPG, for example, was influenced by the Catholic Revival in the Church of England, while CMS was influenced by the Evangelicalism of the earlier Evangelical Revival. As a result, the piety, liturgy, and polity of the indigenous churches they established came to reflect these diverse orientations.

The growth of the twin "revivals" in nineteenth century Anglicanism - Evangelical and Catholic - were hugely influential. The Evangelical Revival informed important social movements such as the abolition of slavery, child welfare legislation, prohibition of alcohol, the development of public health and public education. It also led to the creation of the Church Army, an evangelical and social welfare association and informed piety and liturgy, most notably in the development of Methodism. The Catholic Revival, arguably, had a more penetrating impact. It succeeded in transforming the liturgy of the Anglican Church, repositioning the Eucharist as the central act of worship in place of the daily offices, and reintroducing the use of vestments, ceremonial, and acts of piety (such as Eucharistic adoration) that had long been prohibited in the English church and (to a certain extent) in its daughter churches. It also had an impact on Anglican theology, through John Henry Newman, Philip Pusey, and the Christian socialism of Charles Gore, as well as influencing other non-tractarian figures such as FD Maurice .

Organization

Principles of governance

Contrary to popular misconception, the British monarch is not the constitutional "Head" but in law "The Supreme Governor" of the Church of England, nor does he or she have any role in provinces outside England and Wales. The role of the crown in the Church of England is practically limited to the appointment of bishops, including the Archbishop of Canterbury. This process is accomplished through collaboration with and consent of ecclesial representatives (see Ecclesiastical Commissioners). The monarch has no constitutional role in Anglican churches in other parts of the world, although the prayer books of several countries where she is head of state maintain prayers for her as sovereign.

A characteristic of Anglicanism is that it has no international juridical authority. All thirty-nine provinces of the Anglican Communion are independent, each with their own primate and governing structure. These provinces may take the form of national churches (such as in Canada, Uganda, or Japan) or a collection of nations (such as the West Indies, Central Africa, or South Asia), or geographical regions (such as Vanuatu and Solomon Islands) etc. Within these Communion provinces may exist subdivisions called ecclesiastical provinces, under the jurisdiction of a metropolitan. All provinces of the Anglican Communion consist of dioceses, each under the jurisdiction of a bishop. In the Anglican tradition, bishops must be consecrated according to the strictures of apostolic succession, which Anglicans consider one of the marks of catholicity. Apart from bishops, there are two other orders of ordained ministry: deacon and priest. No requirement is made for clerical celibacy and women may be ordained as deacons in almost all provinces, as priests in some, and as bishops in a few provinces. Anglican religious orders and communities, suppressed in England during the Reformation, have re-emerged since the mid-nineteenth century, and now have an international presence and influence.

Government in the Anglican Communion is synodical, consisting of three houses of laity (usually elected parish representatives), clergy, and bishops. National, provincial, and diocesan synods maintain different scopes of authority, depending on their canons and constitutions. Anglicanism is not congregational in its polity: It is the diocese, not the parish church, which is the smallest unit of authority in the church, and bishops must give their assent to resolutions passed by synods. (See Episcopal polity).

Focus of Unity: The Archbishop of Canterbury

The Archbishop of Canterbury has a precedence of honour over the other primates of the Anglican Communion, and for a province to be considered a part of the Communion means specifically to be in communion with the See of Canterbury. The Archbishop is, therefore recognised as primus inter pares, or first amongst equals even though he does not exercise any direct authority in any province outside England, of which he is chief primate. The current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, as former Archbishop of Wales, is the first appointed from outside the Church of England since the Reformation.

As "spiritual head" of the Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury maintains a certain moral authority, and has the right to determine which churches will be in communion with his See. He hosts and chairs the Lambeth Conferences of Anglican Communion bishops, as well as the Anglican Communion Primates' Meeting. He acts as president of the secretariat of the Anglican Communion Office, and its deliberative body, the Anglican Consultative Council.

Instruments of unity

The Anglican Communion has no international juridical organisation. All international bodies are consultative and collaborative, and their resolutions are not legally binding on the independent provinces of the Communion. There are three international bodies of note.

1. The Lambeth Conference is the oldest international consultation. It was first convened by Archbishop Charles Longley in 1867 as a vehicle for bishops of the Communion to "discuss matters of practical interest, and pronounce what we deem expedient in resolutions which may serve as safe guides to future action." Since then, it has been held roughly every ten years. Invitation is by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
2. The Anglican Consultative Council was created by a 1968 Lambeth Conference resolution, and meets biennially. The council consists of representative bishops, clergy, and laity chosen by the thirty-eight provinces. The body has a permanent secretariat, the Anglican Communion Office, of which the Archbishop of Canterbury is president.
3. The Anglican Communion Primates' Meeting is the most recent manifestation of international consultation and deliberation, having been first convened by Archbishop Donald Coggan in 1978 as a forum for "leisurely thought, prayer and deep consultation."

United Churches

In the Indian subcontinent most Anglican churches have entered into formal union with Protestant denominations while remaining part of the Anglican Communion. These agreements, which date from the 1940s and 1950s, led to the creation of the Church of North India, the Church of South India, the Church of Pakistan and the Church of Bangladesh. The united churches maintain an episcopal and synodical structure and consecrate bishops in apostolic succession. As a percentage of the total population in the region, these united churches are not significant, but aside from Bangladesh, they are numerically very substantial.

Those which did not join with the union agreements in South Asia retained the name Anglican Church of India or adopted a similar one using the word "Anglican." The total membership of these churches has been estimated at 800,000. Most have recently entered into communion with churches of the Continuing Anglican Movement and have North American parishes.

Anglican Churches outside the Communion

There are a number of jurisdictions which identify themselves as "Anglican" but are not in communion with Canterbury. They therefore are outside the Anglican Communion. Several, such as the Free Church of England and the Reformed Episcopal Church in the United States left the Anglican Communion in the 1800s in reaction to the inroads of the Catholic Revival and the controversy over ritualism which it produced in the church.

Later, during the 1960s and 1970s, disagreements with certain provincial bodies — chiefly in North America and in the United Kingdom — over such issues as prayer book revision, the remarriage of divorced persons, the ordination of women, and the acceptance by the church of homosexual relationships led to another and quite different schism. These Anglican churches are usually termed "Continuing Anglican churches" because of their determination to preserve (or "continue") the episcopate in Apostolic Succession, as well as the faith, worship and teaching of traditional Anglicanism and historical Christianity which they believe the Anglican Communion to have deviated from. The older Reformed Episcopal churches maintained the lineage of bishops without accepting the idea that sacraments are valid only if administered by clergy in such a lineage.

There are also independent jurisdictions unrelated to the preceding schisms. The Church of England in South Africa is conservative, long-established, and has a substantial membership. It is separate from the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, which is part of the Anglican Communion. Other churches, however, have adopted the Anglican name, the Book of Common Prayer, Anglican vestments, and — in some cases — the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion, but have no historic connection to the Anglican Communion. Unlike the socially conservative Continuing Anglican churches and the Church of England in South Africa, some of these tiny jurisdictions are openly oriented towards the Gay and Lesbian community and do ordain women clergy.

Given the range of concerns and the grounds for schism, there is as much diversity in the theological and liturgical orientations of the Free Churches, the Continuing Anglican churches, and the independent Anglican bodies as there is among churches of the Anglican Communion. Some are Evangelical, others charismatic and Evangelical, and yet others are Anglo-Catholic. What they have in common is a conviction that mainstream Anglicanism in North America, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere has departed from acceptable principles of belief and/or practice.

Doctrine

Main article: Anglican doctrine

Catholic and Reformed

In the time of Henry VIII rather than theological disagreement, the origin of Anglicanism was based on questions of jurisdiction - namely, the belief of the Crown that national churches should be autonomous. The effort to create a national church in legal continuity with its traditions, but inclusive of the doctrinal and liturgical belief of the Reformers was joined by a real concern to make the institution as hospitable as possible to people of different theological inclinations, so as to maintain social peace and cohesion. The result has been a movement with a distinctive self-image among Christian movements. The question often arises whether the Anglican Communion should be identified as a Protestant or Catholic church, or perhaps a distinct branch of Christianity altogether.

The distinction between Protestant and Catholic, and the coherence of the two, is routinely a matter of debate both within specific Anglican Churches and throughout the Anglican Communion by members themselves. Since the Oxford Movement of the mid-19th century, many churches of the Communion have embraced and extended liturgical and pastoral practices dissimilar to most Reformed Protestant theology. This extends beyond the ceremony of High Church services to even more theologically significant territory, such as sacramental theology (see Anglican sacraments). Nevertheless, while Anglo-Catholic practices, particularly liturgical ones, have become much more mainstream within the denomination over the last century, there remain many areas where practices and beliefs remain on the more Protestant or Evangelical side.

Guiding principles

Unlike other Christian movements, Anglican doctrine is neither established by a magisterium, nor derived from the theology of an eponymous founder (such as Lutheranism or Calvinism), nor summed up in a confession of faith (beyond those of the creeds). Instead, the earliest Anglican theological documents are its prayer books, which were themselves the products of profound theological reflection and compromise. It is within the Book of Common Prayer that Anglican doctrine was originally expressed in the selection, arrangement, and composition of prayers and exhortations, the selection and arrangement of daily scripture readings (the lectionary), and in the stipulation of the rubrics for permissible liturgical action and any variations in the prayers and exhortations. The principle of looking to the prayer books as a guide to the parameters of belief and practice is called by the Latin name lex orandi, lex credendi ("the law of prayer is the law of belief"). Within the prayer books are the so-called fundamentals of Anglican doctrine: The Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, the scriptures (via the lectionary), the sacraments, daily prayer, the catechism, and apostolic succession in the context of the historic threefold ministry.

Beyond the prayer books of various provinces, however, there are other important principles that have had an impact on Anglican belief. The earliest are contained within the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, as they appear in their final, 1604 form. Historically, Anglican clergy had to take an oath of subscription to the Articles, although the practice has become uncommon. Despite this, they have never been considered binding, but rather advisory. The degree to which each of the articles has remained influential varies. Arguably, the most influential of them has been Article VI on the "sufficiency of Scripture," which states that "Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation." This article has informed Anglican biblical exegesis and hermeneutics since earliest times.

Anglicans also look for authority in their so-called "standard divines" (see below). Historically, the most influential of these - apart from Cranmer - has been the sixteenth century cleric and theologian Richard Hooker. Hooker's description of Anglican authority as being derived primarily from Scripture, informed by reason (the intellect and the experience of God) and tradition (the practices and beliefs of the historical church), has influenced Anglican self-identity and doctrinal reflection perhaps more powerfully than any other formula. The analogy of the "three-legged stool" of scripture, reason and tradition is often incorrectly attributed to Hooker.

Finally, the extension of Anglicanism into non-English cultures, the growing diversity of prayer books, and the increasing interest in ecumenical dialogue has led to further reflection on the parameters of Anglican identity. Many Anglicans look to the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1888 as the "sine qua non" of Communal identity. In brief, the Quadrilateral's four points are the Holy Scriptures, as containing all things necessary to salvation; the Creeds (specifically, the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds), as the sufficient statement of Christian faith; the dominical sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion; and the historic episcopate,

Anglican divines

Within the Anglican tradition, there have been certain theological writers whose works have been considered standards for faith, doctrine, worship, and spirituality. While there is no authoritative list of these Anglican divines, there are some whose names would likely be found on most lists - those who are commemorated in lesser feasts of the Church, and those whose works are frequently anthologized.^[5]

The corpus produced by Anglican divines is diverse. What they have in common is a commitment to the faith as conveyed by Scripture and the Book of Common Prayer, thus regarding prayer and theology in a manner akin to that of the Apostolic Fathers.^[6] On the whole, Anglican divines view the via media of Anglicanism, not as a compromise, but "a positive position, witnessing to the universality of God and God's kingdom working through the fallible, earthly ecclesia Anglicana."^[7] These theologians regard Scripture as interpreted through tradition and reason as authoritative in matters concerning salvation. Reason and tradition, indeed, is extant in and presupposed by Scripture, thus implying co-operation between God and humanity, God and nature, and between the sacred and secular. Faith is thus regarded as incarnational, and authority as dispersed.

Among the early Anglican divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the names of Thomas Cranmer, John Jewel, Richard Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes, and Jeremy Taylor predominate. The influential character of Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity cannot be overestimated. Published in 1593 and subsequently, Hooker's eight volume work is primarily a treatise on Church-state relations, but it also deals comprehensively with issues of biblical interpretation, soteriology, ethics, and sanctification. Throughout the work, Hooker makes clear that theology involves prayer and is concerned with ultimate issues, and also that theology is relevant to the social mission of the church.

The eighteenth century saw the rise of two important movements in Anglicanism: Cambridge Platonism, with its mystical understanding of reason as the "candle of the Lord," and the Evangelical Revival, with its emphasis on the personal experience of the Holy Spirit. The Cambridge Platonist movement evolved into a school called Latitudinarianism, which emphasized reason as the barometer of discernment and took a stance of indifference towards doctrinal and ecclesiological differences. The Evangelical Revival, influenced by such figures as John Wesley and Charles Simeon, re-emphasized the importance of justification through faith and the consequent importance of personal conversion. Some in this movement, such as Wesley and George Whitefield, took the message to the United States, influencing the First Great Awakening, and also created an Anglo-American movement called Methodism that would eventually break away, structurally, from the Anglican churches after the American Revolution.

By the nineteenth century, there was a renewed emphasis on the teachings of the earlier Anglican divines: Theologians such as John Keble, Edward Bouverie Pusey, and John Henry Newman had widespread influence in the realm of polemics, homiletics, and theological and devotional works. Their work is largely credited with the development of the Oxford Movement, which sought to reassert Catholic identity and practice in the Anglican Church. Through such works as The Kingdom of Christ, Frederick Denison Maurice played a pivotal role in inaugurating another movement, Christian socialism. In this, Maurice transformed Hooker's emphasis on the incarnational nature of Anglican spirituality to an imperative for social justice. Also in the nineteenth century, Anglican biblical scholarship began to assume a distinct character, represented by the so-called "Cambridge triumvirate" of Joseph Lightfoot, F.J.A. Hort, and Brooke Foss Westcott. Their orientation is best summed up by Lightfoot's observation that "Life which Christ is and which Christ communicates, the life which fills our whole beings as we realise its capacities, is active fellowship with God."

The twentieth century is marked by figures such as Charles Gore, with his emphasis on natural revelation, William Temple's focus on Christianity and society, and J.A.T. Robinson's provocative discussions of deism and theism. Outside England, one sees such figures as William Porcher DuBose, William Meade, and Charles Henry Brent in the United States. More recently, theologians such as Jeffrey John, N.T. Wright, and Rowan Williams have added to the mix.

Ordained ministry

Main article: Anglican ministry

Like the Orthodox and Catholic churches (but unlike most Protestant churches), the Anglican Communion maintains the threefold ministry of deacons, priests, and bishops. Bishops of the church are members of the historic episcopate, and derive their authority through apostolic succession — an unbroken line of bishops that can be traced back to the apostles of Jesus of Nazareth. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches do not recognize the validity of Anglican ordinations and treat convert clergy as laypeople. In contrast, the Anglican Communion recognizes Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox ordinations as valid. Outside the Anglican Communion, Anglican ordinations (at least of male priests) are recognized by the Old Catholics, many Lutherans, other Protestants, and various Independent Catholic Churches.

Churchmanship