What is the Church of England, and who are the Anglicans?

CNA Staff, Nov 13, 2024 / 15:05 pm (CNA).

Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican Communion, resigned on Tuesday over his handling of a high-profile abuse case. 

A position with deep Catholic roots, the archbishop of Canterbury is considered “first among equals” among Anglicans worldwide and has the important role of anointing the new British monarch during coronations. 

In recent years, Pope Francis has made ecumenical gestures toward the Anglican church, traveling with Welby and a Scottish Protestant leader to South Sudan in 2023 and allowing Welby to celebrate an Anglican liturgy earlier this year in Rome’s Basilica of St. Bartholomew as part of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

Here’s what you need to know about the Church of England, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Anglicanism. 

What is the Church of England?

Simply put, the Church of England is the United Kingdom’s official church, with the British monarch serving as its supreme governor. 

King Charles III’s official title is “Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England,” and since the 16th century each new monarch has sworn an oath to uphold the Protestant religion. 

Since the Synod of Whitby in 664, the Church of England has been divided into two provinces — Canterbury and York — each with its own archbishop, as well as numerous dioceses each with a bishop. Canterbury is currently vacant following Welby’s resignation; the current archbishop of York, whose cathedral is York Minster, is Stephen Cottrell. 

Like all Protestants, adherents to the Church of England hold the Bible in highest regard, though a variety of worship styles exist within the Church of England and in Anglicanism at large.

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer, still in use today, codified the liturgical practices and doctrines — replacing the Catholic ones — of the newly established church. It remains a “permanent feature of the Church of England’s worship and a key source for its doctrine,” the church’s website says. 

How did the Church of England come about?

Amid the chaos wrought by the Protestant Reformation, the Church of England broke away from the Catholic Church under King Henry VIII, who in 1527, desiring a male heir, wanted to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon but failed to secure a papal annulment.

Parliament subsequently passed laws abolishing papal authority and declaring King Henry the head of the Church of England. St. Thomas More, a lawyer, author, and high-ranking member of the king’s cabinet, was martyred for opposing Henry’s plan, as was St. John Fisher, a Catholic cardinal, for similar reasons.

A time of brutal persecution for Catholics, the English Reformation, followed. Despite a brief return to papal submission under Queen Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I reversed this when she became queen in 1558.

The Reformation saw monasteries destroyed, Catholic churches including Westminster Abbey taken over, and the witness of such martyrs as St. Margaret Clitherow, who in 1586 was pressed to death upon sharp rocks after refusing to renounce her Catholic faith. 

Following the English Civil War of 1642–1651 and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the constitutional position of the Church of England since 1689 establishes for the church “a range of legal privileges and responsibilities, but with ever-increasing religious and civil rights being granted to other Christians, those of other faiths, and those of no faith at all,” the Church of England website says. 

The restoration of Catholicism’s legal status was not fully accomplished in Britain until the 19th century. 

Why Canterbury?

St. Augustine of Canterbury, whom Catholics honor on May 27, founded the See of Canterbury in the last years of the sixth century. He continued to preach the Catholic faith to the country’s Anglo-Saxon pagans during the late sixth and early seventh centuries, under the direction of Pope Gregory I (St. Gregory the Great). 

(He is not to be confused with St. Augustine of Hippo, who is a doctor of the Church, the son of St. Monica, and the author of the “Confessions.”) 

Likely born in Rome to a noble family on an unknown date, Augustine joined the newly-founded Benedictine order, entering a community founded by the future Pope Gregory, who maintained a friendship with Augustine. Later on, in 595, Pope Gregory set about planning to re-evangelize England; the island’s Celtic inhabitants had accepted Christianity centuries before, but the country had been dominated by Anglo-Saxon invaders since the mid-fifth century. 

Pope Gregory chose a group of about 40 monks, including Augustine, to set sail for England in spring 597. After arriving they gained an audience with pagan King Ethelbert of Kent, who would later convert and become a saint after Augustine’s powerful and straightforward presentation of the Gospel message. He allowed the monks to settle in Canterbury and to evangelize. 

Augustine was later consecrated a bishop, and by Christmas 597, over 10,000 people were actively seeking baptism from the missionaries.

Augustine died in 604, and Canterbury remained the seat of English Catholicism for nearly 1,000 years, until the Reformation. 

What is the Anglican Communion?

Founded in 1867, the Anglican Communion is a collection of churches around the world that recognize the archbishop of Canterbury as “first among equals” — a spiritual leader and unifying figure but not a central authority like the pope. 

Each church is distinct and autonomous, but all share a history and beliefs with the Church of England. The Anglican Communion describes itself as “a family of 42 autonomous and independent-yet-interdependent national, pan-national, and regional churches in communion with the See of Canterbury.” 

These churches include the U.S.-based Episcopal Church, which originally separated from the Church of England after the American Revolution. 

The Anglican Communion is governed by bishops who convene at various levels in regular meetings known as synods — a familiar word to members of the Catholic Church, which also convenes synods, most recently the Synod on Synodality. 

In the Anglican Communion, synods take place at the diocesan level, where bishops, clergy, and laity discuss local administrative and pastoral matters; and at the provincial or national level, which see participants divided into a kind of bicameral structure: a House of Bishops and a House of Representatives composed of clergy and laity. Binding decisions are often made at these provincial or national synods via vote. 

Finally, the highest level of meeting is that of the Lambeth Conference, a once-a-decade convention that provides an opportunity for Anglican leaders — specifically bishops — to discuss the major issues facing the church and the world. It’s a consultative meeting, led by the archbishop of Canterbury, but the assembled body has no legislative power. 

Collectively, the Anglican Communion represents the third-largest branch of established Christianity in the world after the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, with an estimated 110 million members worldwide. 

The Anglican Communion has been in tension in recent years over LGBT issues, especially since 2003, when the Episcopal Church voted to ordain as a bishop V. Gene Robinson, a gay man in a same-sex relationship. Such moves have drawn sharp criticism from Anglican communities elsewhere, particularly in Africa.