Western Liturgical Family, Part II: Anglicanism

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3 Western Liturgical Family, Part II: Anglicanism

THE EMERGENCE OF INDEPENDENT ANGLICANISM

ENGLAND AFTER ELIZABETH I

THE WORLDWIDE ANGLICAN COMMUNION

WOMEN AND ANGLICANISM

ANGLICANISM IN AMERICA

TRADITIONALIST ANGLICANISM

HOMOSEXUALITY

SOURCES

Intrafaith Organizations

Anglican Churches

Christianity probably entered the British Isles in the second century, as there was an organized church among the Celtic tribes by the third century. In the fifth century, the Romans withdrew and the southern half of what became England was invaded by a Germanic people (Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) who pushed the Celts westward. Though initially resistant, the Anglo-Saxon tribes were evangelized both by Celts under St. Aidan (d. 651) (Ireland and Wales had been Christianized in the fifth century) and Roman Catholics under St. Augustine (d. 604). In the seventh century, the British formalized their incorporation into Roman Catholicism.

The eastern shore was subject to Danish invasions through the eighth and ninth centuries, adding a new element into the church’s membership. In the eleventh century, a singularly new element was added to the mix with the conquest of England by Norman forces under William the Conqueror (c. 1028–1087). The coming of the Normans also strengthened British ties to the church in Rome. Over the next centuries, the British church served as a unifying force among the various tribal strains significantly present in the emerging nation. However, there were also repeated controversies over the extent of papal authority and its intrusion into British affairs both secular and ecclesiastical.

Had the continental Reformation under Martin Luther (1483–1546) not occurred, there is reason to believe England would have continued as a branch of the Roman Church that, like the French, German, or American church, has its own characteristics. However, the challenges to church authority across northern Europe provided an environment in which England could challenge Rome’s hegemony, though it moved in a very different direction from that articulated by the continental reformers.

England, of course, had its own prophets of reform. John Wycliffe (c. 1330–1384) challenged the church’s abuse of wealth and power, and he attacked the church’s doctrine of transubstantiation, the idea that the elements in the Mass actually change substantively into the body and blood of Christ. He believed that this kind of magical notion merely assisted the clergy in holding onto unscriptural authority. To back his arguments he translated, published, and preached from a new edition of the scripture in the vernacular.

THE EMERGENCE OF INDEPENDENT ANGLICANISM

Under King Henry VIII (1491–1547), the Church of England came into open conflict with papal authority. The conflict did not concern doctrinal problems, however, as Henry (r. 1509–1547) was a staunch Catholic and anti-Protestant. In fact, in 1521 Henry had taken the time to author a refutation of one of Martin Luther’s writings, and as a result of his volume, Assertion of the Seven Sacraments against Luther, the pope awarded him the title “Defender of the Faith.” But two issues of central importance to him as the king of England would undo his cordial relationship with Rome: his desire for a male heir and his financial needs.

The pope had sanctioned Henry’s marriage to his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536), who also happened to be the daughter of Spanish rulers Ferdinand II (1452–1516) and Isabella (1451–1504), and her relatives ruled both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. When Henry became concerned that she had produced no male heir, he moved against Catherine. Of the six children she bore, only one, Mary (1516–1558), survived. Henry asked for a divorce, an act that would call the papacy’s relationships with Catherine’s powerful relatives into question, and the pope refused. Eventually, the Church of England renounced allegiance to the pope and accepted Henry’s supremacy over ecclesiastical law. The church backed its position by withholding money that was traditionally paid annually to Rome. In 1533 Henry forced the selection of Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) as the new archbishop of Canterbury (the most powerful office in the Church of England), and Cranmer in turn declared the marriage with Catherine null and void. Anne Boleyn (1507–1536) became Henry’s new wife.

Though the pope threatened excommunication, the British Parliament passed a series of acts that finalized the independence of the Church of England. The initial measure forbade payment to Rome, denied appeals to Rome, and placed powers heretofore exercised by the pope into the hands of the archbishops of Canterbury and York. The Act of Succession (1534) declared Mary illegitimate and named Elizabeth (1533–1603), Anne Boleyn’s daughter, as heir. Later that year, the Act of Supremacy made it a crime punishable by death to not accept the Act of Succession or to fail to acknowledge the supremacy of the king.

Having already taken steps to separate from Rome, Henry also saw in the church, which possessed great wealth through its extensive landholdings, a means of supplementing his always tenuous treasury. Henry ordered the new archbishop of Canterbury to survey the many monasteries across the

Western Liturgical Family: Anglicanism Chronology
1533British King Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn following Abp. Thomas Cranmer’s declaration of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon null and void. As a result of his marriage, Pope Clement VII excommunicates him.
1534British Parliament passes the Act of Supremacy that names the king the “Protector and only Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy of England.” In the wake of the abrogation of Papal authority, the clergy are obliged to swear allegiance to Henry as the new head of the Church of England.
1547–53During the brief reign of Edward VI, every effort is made to Protestantize the Church in England. The Book of Common Prayer (1549) supplies the new outline for worship, and the Catholic Mass abandoned.
1553Mary Tudor becomes Queen of England and attempts to return England to the Roman Catholic fold.
1559–63Following her coronation, Elizabeth I outlines a via media between Puritanism and Roman Catholicism by issuing the Act of Uniformity (1559), publishing a new edition of the Prayer Book (1559), and promulgating a revised doctrinal statement, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1563).
1583Episcopal priest Erasmus Stourton settles in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
1587First Anglican services in British American colonies are held at the Roanoke Colony in Virginia.
1588Defeat of the Spanish Armada.
1692The Church of England forces the opening of King’s Chapel in Puritan-dominated Boston, Massachusetts.
1696Bishop of London appoints Thomas Bray commissary for the American colonies. He subsequently founds the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (1698) and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (1701).
1776As the American Revolution begins, Anglican establishments exist, at least formally, in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
1774The Continental Congress chooses Rev. Jacob Duche to open its sessions with prayer.
1781With the British defeat in the Revolution, most Anglican priests return to England.
1784Samuel Seabury consecrated by bishops of the Episcopal Church of Scotland.
1787Charles Inglis of Halifax, Nova Scotia, consecrated as the Anglican bishop of Canada.
The bishop of London consecrates William White and Samuel Provost as bishops for the new Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America.
1789The U.S. Senate elects Episcopal bishop Samuel Provost as its first chaplain.
George Washington is inaugurated as President of the United States, the first of 12 Episcopalians to hold that office.
1816Archbishop of Canterbury launches a mission in the Hawaiian Islands.
1855Bishop of Maryland sets apart two women as deaconesses.
1873Low-church dissidents leave to found the Reformed Episcopal Church.
1886Episcopal Church’s House of Bishop approves four-point statement of essential beliefs which includes the Holy Scriptures as the word of God, the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds as the rule of Faith, the two commonly accepted Sacraments (baptism and Holy Communion), and the historical episcopate. Later approved by the 1888 Lambeth conference, the statement becomes known as the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral.
1928Episcopal Church issues new edition of the Book of Common Prayer.
1958Episcopal Theological School admits women to ministerial studies program.
1965Deaconess Phyllis Edwards recognized as deacon by Bp. James Pike, San Francisco.
1970Women admitted to General Convention as lay deputies.
1972House of Bishops votes 74–61 in favor of ordaining women priests.
1974Eleven women deacons ordained to priesthood by two retired and one resigned bishop in Philadelphia on July 29.
1975Anglican Church of Canada approves ordaining women.
House of Bishops censures all bishops who have participated in the ordaining of women.
1976General Convention approves the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate.
Conservative members of the Episcopal Church gather in St. Louis in opposition to the proposed new edition of the Book of Common Prayer (ultimately adopted in 1979) and the admission of women to the priesthood. The St. Louis Congress leads to the formation of the first of several dozen new small denominations representing the Continuing Anglican movement.
1989Barbara C. Harris, an African American woman, is consecrated as an Episcopal bishop.
2003Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, was elected bishop-designate of New Hampshire. Outraged conservative Anglican Churches around the world begin still as-yet-unresolved multi-level controversy threatening unity of the Anglican Communion.
2006The Episcopal Church elects Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori as Presiding Bishop and Primate.

country. Cranmer reported that extensive corruption was found, and in 1536 Henry closed most of the monasteries and pocketed the income from the sale of their lands.

Through the 1540s Henry married several more times, finally had a son, Edward (1537–1553), and ended his reign by moving against the Protestants who had begun to surface. While breaking with Rome under Henry, the Church of England retained its structure, with bishops, clergy, church buildings, and congregations, but it continued under the archbishop of Canterbury rather than the pope. The church was also still completely Roman in doctrine, liturgy, and organization.

Under Edward VI (r. 1547–1553), who ascended the throne at the age of ten, England began to align outwardly with the reformers. The Council of Regency, appointed to administer the country until Edward came of age, was dominated by people with Protestant leanings. Cranmer published a thoroughly Protestant Book of Common Prayer for use in all the churches, and Parliament passed a series of decrees that changed the face of the church over the next three years. Exponents of the Reformed Church were brought to England to teach, and Cranmer authored a doctrinal statement, the Forty-two Articles, that embodied the Reformed position.

England might have come into the Reformed camp at that point had it not been for the sickliness of Edward, who passed away before reaching adulthood. He was succeeded by his older sister Mary (r. 1553–1558), a devout Roman Catholic with a memory of the indignities heaped upon her mother. She married a Spaniard, abolished Cranmer’s prayer book, and moved against the Protestant church leaders. The extensive nature of her persecutions, which included a number of executions at the stake, earned her the long-term enmity of Protestants and the label “Bloody Mary.” The country was on the verge of revolution when Mary died after only five years on the throne.

Mary’s death brought Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603) to the throne. Her half-century of rule is remembered as one of the great eras in England’s history. It was during this time that the distinctions of the Anglican tradition were developed. Seeking to create a strong and peaceful nation, she forced a compromise of the positions of the two warring factions. A new Prayer Book was issued, and a set of Thirty-nine Articles, derived from the Forty-two Articles, was promulgated. Some of the articles, which continued to embody the Reformed theological perspective, condemned specific Roman Catholic practices. Purgatory, indulgences, venerating saints’ relics, and celebrating the liturgy in any tongue other than the vernacular were among the Roman elements condemned. However, Elizabeth retained the traditional episcopal structure.

Elizabeth I, aware that Edward and Mary had strong support for their choices of religions, adopted what became known as the via media (middle way), blending Roman Catholic and Protestant elements.

Opposition to the compromises came from both sides, but Elizabeth was affected most by the objections of the Roman Catholics. In 1570 she was excommunicated by the pope. She uncovered several plots to have her assassinated and replaced with Mary Queen of Scots (1542–1587). She gradually gave up any hope of reconciling with the pope, who in 1588 supported the building and launching of the Spanish Armada against England. The defeat of the armada remains one of the crucial turning points of European history. In one of the final acts against Elizabeth, in 1596 the pope declared that the Anglican’s episcopal orders were seriously flawed and hence were not valid.

Early in Elizabeth’s reign, a number of Roman Catholic bishops resigned. In response, Archbishop Matthew Parker (1504–1585) moved to fill the vacant seats, a major point in Rome’s conclusion that the Anglicans had lost their apostolic succession. This action soured Anglican/Roman Catholic relations into the twentieth century. They have yet to be fully resolved, but initial steps at healing the Roman-Anglican split were taken in the atmosphere of goodwill generated by the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).

The Book of Common Prayer, the Anglican liturgical book that replaced the Roman missal, has gone through several editions. The edition published during Elizabeth’s reign is crucial: it makes concrete the distinctive character of Anglicanism that has continued to this day. That edition includes the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the ancient Christian creeds, a church calendar, and texts of liturgical services. Material on the sacraments in that edition is somewhat vague, thus allowing various interpretations of the Eucharist. Anglicans recognize only two sacraments: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Anglican doctrine on the church shifted from the Roman emphasis on the bishop to the Calvinist emphasis on the congregation. The Book of Common Prayer asserts that the church exists where the Word of God is preached, the sacraments are duly administered, and the faithful are gathered.

A certain Anglophilia characterizes the Church of England. When Rome commissioned St. Augustine to be a missionary in England in 597, he found Christians already in England. Over the centuries, since the final break with Rome, many Anglicans have insisted that their church was not formed by Rome and that the Anglican Church in England predates the arrival of the Roman Catholic Church to the British Isles. Anglicanism is thus a tradition separated from Roman Catholicism by its liturgical differences, its condemnation of some Roman beliefs and practices, and its alignment with this pre-Roman British Christian “Celtic” tradition. With the expansion of England in the seventeenth century, the Anglican tradition spread throughout the world.

ENGLAND AFTER ELIZABETH I

The development of the Church of England did not cease with the imposition of the via media, and Elizabeth’s long reign and ability to triumph over her enemies did much to set it firmly in place. Elizabeth never married, and hence had no children to succeed her. She was succeeded by James I (1566–1625), the son of Mary Queen of Scots. During his two decades on the throne (1603–1625), James’s Catholic tendencies were stymied by the discovery of plots to assassinate him. Instead of giving in to the demands of his Roman Catholic subjects, he supported the new Puritan translation of the Bible, and a series of laws restricting Roman Catholic participation in various activities. He then tested the Puritan strength with a refusal to allow further revisions of the Prayer Book.

The reign of James’s successor, Charles I (1600–1649), saw the rise to power of Archbishop William Laud (1573– 1645). Charles was a champion of Anglicanism and initiated policies that infuriated the Puritans (Protestants in the Reformed tradition), so-called for their desires to further “purify” the Church of England of its Roman remnants. Protestants largely controlled Parliament, with whom Charles found himself in a continuing contest of wills. Matters came to a head when the Scots (who had by this time established Presbyterianism as the country’s faith) revolted. Parliament used the situation to assert its control. In the end, Parliament called for an assembly of Puritan clergy to meet at Westminster and advise the Parliament. They proceeded to write what were to become the defining documents of British Presbyterianism, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Directory of Worship, and the Catechism. In 1645 Parliament forbade the continued use of the Prayer Book and outlawed Anglicanism with its Catholic remnants.

The civil war that followed brought Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) to power. He articulated a policy of religious toleration (Roman Catholics and Anglicans excepted), and then through a Commission of Triers he began to systematically move the British church toward the austere Reformed faith demanded by the Puritan leaders. But a number of his reforms went against the heart of the popular exercise of faith. For example, he outlawed dancing and Christmas and other festivals. He also saw to the dismantling of numerous ornate church altar areas. Each act cost him valuable support. He was able to hold the country together while alive, but his son was driven from power, and Charles II (1630–1685), a Roman Catholic, ascended the throne.

Under Charles II (r. 1660–1685), the Anglican Church resumed its place as the national Church of England, a position it has not since relinquished, and the real struggle among the Christians of the British Isles shifted to finding some means of accommodating the many dissenting groups that were present in the culture. A major landmark was the Toleration Act of 1689, which granted liberty of worship to all the various Protestant dissenting groups, though it did not yet expand that toleration to Roman Catholics, Jews, and Unitarian Christians (who did not affirm the Christian doctrine of the Trinity).

THE WORLDWIDE ANGLICAN COMMUNION

While Britons were trying to decide who would rule and what kind of government would direct the country, they were also pursuing an expansionist policy in regard to the New World across the Atlantic. Beginning in the eighteenth century, the British actively settled the East Coast of the North American continent. Some Anglicans responded in 1649 by founding the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England. The society picked up the support of John Eliot (1604–1690), already in Massachusetts working among the Native Americans. Its efforts were supplemented by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), founded in 1698, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), founded in 1701. The majority of the Anglican clergy operating in North America prior to the American Revolution (1775–1783) was sent through the SPG.

The American Revolution had a marked effect on the spread of Anglicanism. The missionary societies withdrew from the new United States, and redirected their efforts elsewhere. By that time, England was establishing the first centers of what would become its vast colonial empire of the nineteenth century. Joined by the Church Missionary Society and the London Missionary Society, both founded in 1795, the SPG set to the tasks of providing church life for British colonists (and expatriates around the world in noncolonial settings) and evangelizing non-Christian populations that came under the hegemony of the British government.

The nineteenth century was the era for the massive expansion of Christianity in all parts of the world, carried in large part by the European colonial enterprise. Anglicanism became a worldwide faith centered upon the colonists that responded to the efforts of the missionaries in setting up the Church of England everywhere the British erected settlements. Given the extensive nature of the British Empire, it is not surprising that by the beginning of the twentieth century Anglicanism had established itself throughout the Orient, across India and Africa, and to a lesser extent in South America.

Just as the previous two centuries had seen the vast expansion of the British colonial empire, the twentieth century saw a major change in England’s relationships with colonial states, signaled in 1931 by the formation of the British Community (or Commonwealth) of Nations. Among the first acts of the Commonwealth was the reordering of relations through the granting of independence to Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. India and Pakistan gained independence in 1947, and during the next decade most of the former colonies also either gained independence through armed conflict or were granted it. Most recently changing status was Hong Kong, which in 1997 again became part of China. Many former colonies chose to remain part of the Commonwealth, but others went their own ways.

The dismantling of the empire was in some cases anticipated by the reordering of the relationships within the Church of England internationally. Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, church names began to change; for example, the Church of England in Canada became the Anglican Church in Canada, which was later granted independent status and joined the worldwide Anglican Communion as a sister church. Such changes were most frequently accompanied by the development of an indigenous leadership, the organization of dioceses and archdioceses, and the naming of a primate (leading bishop) from among the country’s citizens.

The Protestant Episcopal Church (now known simply as the Episcopal Church) in the United States was the first church granted recognition as an independent body, a decision made after and in light of the success of the American Revolution. The first Anglican bishop outside of the British Isles was named for Canada in 1787: Charles Inglis (1734– 1816), bishop of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Through the next century, missions were established and grew into dioceses, but each diocese operated autonomously and reported directly to England. Finally, in 1861, the first provincial synod for the Church of England in Canada met. That church continued to evolve, and finally emerged in 1897 as an autonomous body.

Around the world, the story of the emergence of the various independent jurisdictions that now comprise worldwide Anglicanism is distinct for each nation or region. The first to attain independent status was New Zealand (1857), but the overwhelming majority of the autonomous provinces were created after World War II (1937–1945). Many arose not only in the rush to end colonialism, but in the euphoria of the mid-twentieth-century ecumenical movement. In a variety of countries where Christianity was a minority movement, Anglicans joined Congregationalists, Methodists, and Presbyterians to create national Protestant churches, the most prominent being the Church of North India, the Church of South India, the Church of Pakistan, and the Church of Bangladesh.

Of particular interest because of its intrusion into Anglican affairs in the last generation is the church in the Philippines. The Philippine Independent Church (PIC) emerged out of the Spanish-American War (1898) in which the United States took over the island nation; the indigenous PIC created a schism between it and the Roman Catholic Church. The PIC founder led the church into Unitarianism, a trend that was checked by his successor, and in 1947 the church officially accepted a Trinitarian creed and was accepted by the Episcopal Church (in the United States) as a sister church. In the meantime, a Philippine Episcopal Church had been established in the common pattern to service British expatriates and missionize the indigenous population. Both churches continue to the present.

WOMEN AND ANGLICANISM

In the last decades of the twentieth century, possibly the most significant issue before Anglicanism worldwide was the admission of females to the ordained ministry—an issue squarely placed before the worldwide communion by the ordinations of women in Hong Kong in 1971 and in the American Episcopal Church in 1974. A few churches followed suit in the early 1980s, and by the time of the meeting of the Lambeth Conference in 1988, it had become the single most divisive issue before the international gathering of Anglican bishops. They established a commission to deal with any potential schisms resulting from the spreading acceptance of women in the ministry.

By the next meeting of the Lambeth Conference in 1998, the issue had been largely settled. Not only have additional provinces around the world moved to ordain women, but in 1989 the American church consecrated its first female bishop, Barbara Harris (b. 1930), an African American. There were eleven female bishops in attendance at the 1998 Lambeth Conference. They came from the United States (eight), Canada (two), and New Zealand (one). The vote of the church in Korea that same year to ordain women meant that the majority of provinces now accepted women into the ministry. This trend culminated in 2006 when the Episcopal Church elected Katharine Jefferts Schori (b. 1954) as its presiding bishop.

While the majority of the Anglican Communion has shifted in favor of the ordination of females, it is by no means unanimous, and the growing presence of women in the hierarchy has raised repeated threats of schism. In 2000 the bishops of Singapore and Rwanda consecrated Chuck Murphy and John Rodgers as bishops to lead what has been termed the Anglican Mission to America. The pair has been vigorous in setting up congregations and dioceses by drawing conservatives who oppose not only female ordination but other actions resulting from positions assumed by the Episcopal Church.

ANGLICANISM IN AMERICA

The Anglican tradition entered North America with the coming of the British explorers in the sixteenth century. Worship according to the Church of England was established at St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1583, where the Reverend Erasmus Stourton (1603–1658) became the first Anglican minister to reside in North America, though Anglican services had been held for the first time in what is now the United States on August 13, 1587, at the ill-fated Roanoke colony in Virginia. Anglican services were permanently established in 1607 in Jamestown. The first minister at Jamestown was Robert Hunt (1568–1608), who died soon after his arrival in America. His efforts were followed by the more substantive career of Alexander Whitaker (1585–c. 1614), who served the colony as pastor of Henrico, the second church in Virginia.

Throughout the 1600s, the Church of England spread through British North America, finally entering Puritan Boston in 1692. It was given a significant boost in 1701 by the establishment of the SPG as the foreign missionary arm for the Church of England, and by the arrival of society founder Thomas Bray (1658–1630). Appointed commissioner, with some of the powers of a bishop, Bray settled in Maryland and directed the missionary endeavor. The work in Canada expanded immensely in the late eighteenth century, following a series of events beginning with the British seizure of Quebec (1759) and the subsequent Treaty of Paris (1763), which gave Canada to the British. The American Revolution then sent large numbers of British loyalists northward. The growth is no better symbolized than by the placing of Charles Inglis, a former parish priest from New York, in Halifax as the first bishop of the Church of England in Canada in 1787.

While aiding church growth in Canada, the American Revolution almost destroyed Anglicanism in the American colonies. Identified as antipatriotic by the public, the Church of England in America also lost its legal status, most of its priests (who returned to England), and its financial base. The church was virtually cut off from the homeland because the bishops in England initially refused to pass along episcopal orders. Samuel Seabury (1729–1796), elected bishop by the remaining priests in Connecticut, was consecrated by Scottish bishops in 1784. It was not until 1787, the same year a bishop was placed in Nova Scotia, that William White (1748–1836) and Samuel Provost (1742–1815) were consecrated in London and a working accord was reached between the new Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States and the Church of England.

While the church in America grew as an independent body, the church in Canada prospered as a missionary branch of the Church of England and was officially designated as the Church of England in Canada; it changed its name to the Anglican Church in Canada in 1955.

TRADITIONALIST ANGLICANISM

The Protestant Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church in Canada, the Reformed Episcopal Church (a nineteenth-century evangelical splinter group), and a few congregations of the Philippine Independent Church provided the main substance of the Anglican tradition for North America until the mid-1960s. There had been several smaller schisms, but not until the 1960s did the Episcopal Church suffer its first widespread losses from members withdrawing in protest over modernist changes in the church. It was primarily related to a shifting moral code (manifest in new attitudes toward sexuality), revisions of the Prayer Book, and the acceptance of females into the priesthood. The initial schism of 1964 and the subsequent formation of the Anglican Orthodox Church brought widespread unrest that heightened in 1976 after women were ordained in both Canada and the United States.

The Anglican Catholic Church (ACC) and the Anglican Catholic Church in Canada (ACCC) are the two largest bodies of the 20 or more churches formed among dissenting Anglicans. As they were formed, each of the new jurisdictions faced the problem of apostolic succession. The Anglican Orthodox Church had accepted old Catholic and independent Orthodox orders. In the 1970s, ACC and ACCC leaders turned to the international Anglican Communion for support, and found it in the Philippine Independent Church.

Bishop Francisco Pagtakhan, the PIC missionary bishop whose jurisdiction covered North America, performed the initial consecrations. As additional new Anglican jurisdictions were established, Pagtakhan was joined by two colleagues, Bishops Sergio Mondala and Lupe Rosete, and together they performed a series of consecrations during the early 1980s. As a result of these and other actions, Pagtakhan faced severe disagreements with the church in the Philippines in the mid-1980s, and eventually left to form the Philippine Independent Catholic Church, which has now established parishes in North America.

The independent Anglicans who emerged in the 1970s have been the most conservative wing of Anglicanism. While most are concentrated in the few larger churches that grew out of the 1976 meeting in St. Louis, Missouri (especially the Anglican Catholic Church and the Anglican Catholic Church in Canada), the number of new jurisdictions has continued to increase and the overall situation remains in flux.

A new phase of the controversy opened in 2000, when two conservative Anglican bishops, one from Rwanda and one from Singapore, consecrated two American Episcopalians, Chuck Murphy and John Rodgers, as bishops of new Anglican work in the United States. The act of setting up the Anglican Mission to America severely strained relationships in the worldwide Anglican Communion with the invasion of personnel authorized by one bishop in the jurisdictions of another. Implicit in the action was the questioning of the legitimacy of the Episcopal Church by the leadership of other provinces. While the Anglican Mission to America has yet to draw the various jurisdictions founded since 1976 into it, it has that potential, as well as drawing conservative congregations still within the Episcopal Church.

HOMOSEXUALITY

While the issue of woman as bishops was disturbing the Anglican Communion globally, the growing acceptance of homosexuality among members and clergy hovered in the background. As early as 1957, England had taken the lead in decriminalizing homosexual activity. Even earlier, homosexual men had found a haven within the all-male clergy of the Church of England, a fact that was periodically acknowledged when individual actions became the focus of public scandal. As the gay movement came to prominence in the Christian world in the 1970s, American Episcopalian lesbians and gay men founded Dignity, an organization to foster their presence within the church.

The Episcopal Church began to address the issues raised by Dignity as early as 1988 when a group of the church’s bishops issued a statement recognizing the presence and contributions of homosexuals who had served in the priesthood and declaring their opposition to the church’s recently stated position of refusing to ordain anyone who was having sexual relations outside of a heterosexual marriage. Through the 1990s, the subject of homosexuality was widely debated, and the church’s official position was often honored by being ignored. A number of homosexuals and a few lesbians were quietly ordained. Many parishes accepted priests living openly with a gay partner.

The ongoing debate within the Episcopal Church reached a peak in 2003 when V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay priest, was elected bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire on June 7, 2003. He had previously served for some 17 years as the bishop’s assistant. His consecration set off an intense debate within the church, with those who had been opposed to women in the priesthood gaining significant strength. Not only did a number of parishes take steps to withdraw from the church (with the issue of who retains the deed to parish property remaining in doubt), but several bishops threatened to withdraw their dioceses from the church.

While debate raged within the American church, Robinson’s election also evoked responses from Anglican churches internationally. Bishops from around the world, especially central Africa, demanded that the American church be cast out of the Anglican Communion, or they would take their churches out of it. The ongoing situation has placed the diplomatic skills of the archbishop of Canterbury at the center of the international crisis, the resolution of which remains elusive.

SOURCES

Anglican historical studies are brought together by the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church, PO Box 2247, Austin, TX 78768. The Historical Society publishes the quarterly journal Anglican and Episcopal History. In addition to the society’s archives in Austin, other significant archival deposits are found at the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut; the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York City; and the Episcopal Church headquarters in New York City.

Church of England and the Worldwide Anglican Communion

Avis, Paul. The Identity of Anglicanism: Essentials of Anglican Ecclesiology. Edinburgh, U.K.: Clark, 2008. 201 pp.

Chapman, Mark. Anglicanism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 168 pp.

Dart, J. L. C. The Old Religion: An Examination into the Facts of the English Reformation. London: S.P.C.K., 1956. 210 pp.

Flindall, R. P., ed. The Church of England, 1815–1948. London: S.P.C.K., 1972. 497 pp.

Hardy, E. R., Jr., ed. Orthodox Statements on Anglican Orders. New York: Morehouse-Gorham, 1946. 72 pp.

Holloway, Richard, ed. The Anglican Tradition. Wilton, CT: Morehouse-Barlow, 1984. 129 pp.

Neill, Stephen. Anglicanism. Rev. ed. London: Mowbrays, 1977. 421 pp.

Wand, J. W. C. What the Church of England Stands For: A Guide to Its Authority in the Twentieth Century. London: Mowbray, 1951. 131 pp.

Whale, John. The Anglican Church Today: The Future of Anglicanism. London: Mowbray, 1988. 102 pp.

Wingate, Andrew, et al. Anglicanism: A Global Communion. London: Mobray, 1998. 416 pp.

Anglicanism in North America

Addison, James Thayer. The Episcopal Church in the United States, 1789–1931. New York: Scribner’s, 1951. 400 pp.

DeMille, George E. The Episcopal Church since 1900: A Brief History. New York: Morehouse-Gorham, 1955. 223 pp.

Hein, David, and Gardniner H. Shattuck Jr. The Episcopalians. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. 361 pp.

Herklots, H. G. G. The Church of England and the American Episcopal Church. London: Mowbray, 1966. 183 pp.

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Kew, Richard, and Roger J. White. New Millennium, New Church: Trends Shaping the Episcopal Church for the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 1992. 177 pp.

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