In the years after the English Reformation the Church of England was part of Reformed Christianity. [1]
During the reign of Edward VI, Henry VIII's son, the Forty-two Articles were written in 1552 under the direction of the Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who was moderately Calvinist. [2] It was in this document that Calvinist thought reached the zenith of its influence in the English Church. These articles were never put into action, owing to Edward VI's death and the reversion of the English Church to Catholicism under Henry VIII's elder daughter, Mary I. The Elizabethan Thirty-Nine Articles affirmed a number of Calvinist views, although also borrowing some Lutheran language. [3]
As with Lutheranism, the Church of England retained elements of Catholicism such as bishops and vestments, thus sometimes being called "but halfly Reformed" or a middle way between Lutheranism and Reformed Christianity, being closer liturgically to the former and theologically aligned with the latter. [4] Beginning in the 17th century, Anglicanism broadened to the extent that Reformed theology is no longer the sole dominant theology of Anglicanism. [5]
There was a Puritan reaction within Anglicanism that although in the reign of Elizabeth I aimed mostly at perceived retained Catholic practices in worship (many of which were in Cathedrals), although there was also some opposition to Bishops.
The Westminster Confession, which was produced during the First English Civil War put the Church of England in firm Puritan control in a confession that is still regarded as a statement of Orthodox Calvinism.
When James I, who was already king of Presbyterian Scotland and raised a Calvinist, arrived in London to take become King of England, the Puritan clergy presented him with the Millenary Petition, allegedly signed by a thousand English clergy, to abolish items such as wedding rings as "outward badges of Popish errours". [6] [7] James, however, equated English Puritans with Scottish Presbyterians and, after banning religious petitions, told the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 that he preferred the status quo [8] with the monarch ruling the church through the bishops saying that if bishops were put out of power, "I know what would become of my supremacy, No bishop, no King. When I mean to live under a presbytery I will go to Scotland again. [9]
During the reign of Charles I the Calvinist Puritans had taken up opposition to bishops with both petitions and riots against them. [10]
William III, although also a Calvinist, kept bishops in the Church of England, partly through political calculation but also through an interpretation of his Coronation Oath that obliged him to defend the "Protestant Reformed Religion Established by Law". However his government did end Episcopacy in Scotland, but due to political calculation rather than personal belief.
One commentator has said, "If one looks at the two main confessional documents of the English Reformation, the (39) Articles of Religion, and the Book of Common Prayer, a series of propositions emerge that definitely put the Church of England into that strand of the Augustinian Theological tradition which we call 'Protestantism' and furthermore, to put it into the subset known as 'Reformed" [11]
William Monter describing the Church of England as "a unique style of Protestantism, a via media between the Reformed and Lutheran traditions." MacCulloch has described Cranmer as seeking a middle way between Zurich and Wittenberg but elsewhere remarks that the Church of England was "nearer Zurich and Geneva than Wittenberg. [12]