Central Churchmanship

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Central Churchmanship describes those who adhere to the middle way in the Anglican Communion of the Christian religion and other Anglican church bodies, being neither markedly high church/Anglo-Catholic nor low church/evangelical Anglican in their liturgical preferences. The term is used much less frequently than some others. In The Claims of the Church of England, Cyril Garbett, Archbishop of York, uses the term along with Anglo-catholic, Liberal, and Evangelical as a label for schools within the Church of England, but also states:

Anglican Communion International association of churches

The Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion. Founded in 1867 in London, England, the communion currently has 85 million members within the Church of England and other national and regional churches in full communion. The traditional origins of Anglican doctrines are summarised in the Thirty-nine Articles (1571). The Archbishop of Canterbury in England acts as a focus of unity, recognised as primus inter pares, but does not exercise authority in Anglican provinces outside of the Church of England.

High church christian ideology and movement

The term "high church" refers to beliefs and practices of ecclesiology, liturgy, and theology, generally with an emphasis on formality and resistance to "modernisation". Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term originated in and has been principally associated with the Anglican/Episcopal tradition, where it describes Anglican churches using a number of ritual practices associated in the popular mind with Roman Catholicism. The opposite is low church. Contemporary media discussing Anglican churches tend to prefer evangelical to "low church", and Anglo-Catholic to "high church", though the terms do not exactly correspond. Other contemporary denominations that contain high church wings include some Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches.

Low church

The term "low church" refers to churches which give relatively little emphasis to ritual, sacraments and the authority of clergy. The term is most often used in a liturgical context.

Within the Anglican Church are Anglo-Catholics, Evangelicals, Liberals and the great mass of English Churchmen who are content to describe themselves as Churchmen without any further label. ( Garbett :13 & 26)

The term came into use in the late nineteenth century when traditional High Churchmen decided to distance themselves from Anglo-Catholicism and Ritualism ( Chadwick :357)). Central Churchmen value both the official liturgies of the Church of England, which they clothe in a moderate amount of ceremony and a characteristically Anglican way of doing theology that is rooted in the Bible and the Creeds of the Early Church, whilst also valuing the contribution made by the English Reformation. In their theological thinking, they steer a middle course between the Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical parties,( MacGrath :112) both of which are perceived as being extreme by Central Churchmen. F. A. Iremonger places William Temple among this group emphasizing that Temple had a firm hold on the articles of the historic creeds and a conviction that what is best in each school of thought within the Church is worth conserving.( Iremonger :494)

Anglo-Catholicism refers to people, beliefs and practices within Anglicanism which emphasise the Catholic heritage

Anglo-Catholicism, Anglican Catholicism, or Catholic Anglicanism comprises people, beliefs and practices within Anglicanism that emphasise the Catholic heritage and identity of the various Anglican churches.

Church of England Anglican state church of England

The Church of England is the established church of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the most senior cleric, although the monarch is the supreme governor. The Church of England is also the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain by the third century, and to the 6th-century Gregorian mission to Kent led by Augustine of Canterbury.

Creed Statement of belief

A creed is a statement of the shared beliefs of a religious community in the form of a fixed formula summarizing core tenets.

Perhaps the best known exponent of the Central Churchman position in the twentieth century was Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1945 to 1961. Many other well-known English bishops, including Robert Stopford, Henry Montgomery Campbell, and Mervyn Haigh also favoured a Central Churchmanship approach, as a way of defusing tensions within their dioceses, and as a way of promoting a so-called "brand image" for the Church of England.

Archbishop of Canterbury senior bishop of the Church of England

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Justin Welby, who was enthroned at Canterbury Cathedral on 21 March 2013. Welby is the 105th in a line which goes back more than 1400 years to Augustine of Canterbury, the "Apostle to the English", sent from Rome in the year 597. Welby succeeded Rowan Williams.

Robert Stopford Bishop of Fulham; Bishop of Peterborough; Bishop of London; Bishop of Jerusalem; Bishop of Bermuda

Robert Wright Stopford, was a British Anglican bishop.

Henry Montgomery Campbell Church of England priest

Henry Colville Montgomery Campbell was a Church of England bishop. He was ordained in 1910 and served as vicar or rector in a number of London parishes before being consecrated as a bishop in 1940, holding, successively, the suffragan bishoprics of Willesden and Kensington and the diocesan bishoprics of Guildford and London until his retirement in 1961.

Since the 1970s Central Churchmanship as a distinct school of thought and practice within the Church of England has been in decline. This is mainly due[ dubious ] to the closure or merger of some theological colleges that used to favour the Central position—namely, Wells Theological College, Lincoln Theological College, and Tenbury Wells—and a drift towards theological Liberalism, or Affirming Catholicism in others.

Wells Theological College

Wells Theological College began operation in 1840 within the Cathedral Close of Wells Cathedral. It was one of several new colleges created in the nineteenth century to cater not just for non-graduates, but for graduates from the old universities who wished to receive specialist clerical training in preparation for ordination into the Church of England. It was founded by Bishop Law.

Lincoln Theological College

Lincoln Theological College was a theological college in Lincoln, United Kingdom.

Affirming Catholicism is a movement operating in several provinces of the Anglican Communion, including the UK, Ireland, Canada, and the United States. In the US, the movement is known as Affirming Anglican Catholicism or AAC. The movement represents a liberal strand of Anglo-Catholicism and is particularly noted for holding that Anglo-Catholic belief and practice is compatible with the ordination of women. It also generally supports ordination into the threefold ministry regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

Overlap with "Broad Church"

Traditionally "Broad Church" has been used to refer to a particular tendency within Anglicanism which flourished in the 19th Century ( Cross & Livingstone ); however, it has recently been used as a virtual synonym for Central Churchmanship ( Hylson-Smith :339) and it appears that this is fairly standard in the United States of America.

Anglicanism The practices, liturgy and identity of the Church of England

Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition which has developed from the practices, liturgy and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation.

United States federal republic in North America

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.

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Thirty-nine Articles doctrinal statement of the Church of England and other Anglican churches

The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion are the historically defining statements of doctrines and practices of the Church of England with respect to the controversies of the English Reformation. The Thirty-nine Articles form part of the Book of Common Prayer used by both the Church of England and the Episcopal Church. Several versions are available online.

History of the Church of England history

The formal history of the Church of England is traditionally dated by the Church to the Gregorian mission to England by Saint Augustine of Canterbury in AD 597. As a result of Augustine's mission, Christianity in England, from Anglican (English) perspective, came under the authority of the Pope. However, in 1534 King Henry VIII declared himself to be supreme head of the Church of England. This resulted in a schism with the Papacy. As a result of this schism, many non-Anglicans consider that the Church of England only existed from the 16th century Protestant Reformation.

The Continuing Anglican movement, also known as the Anglican Continuum, encompasses a number of Christian churches that are from the Anglican tradition but that are not part of the Anglican Communion. The largest of these are the Anglican Catholic Church, the Anglican Church in America, the Anglican Province of America, the Anglican Province of Christ the King, the Diocese of the Holy Cross, the Episcopal Missionary Church, and the United Episcopal Church of North America. These churches generally believe that traditional forms of Anglican faith and worship have been unacceptably revised or abandoned within some Anglican Communion churches in recent decades. They claim, therefore, that they are "continuing" or preserving the Anglican line of apostolic succession as well as historic Anglican belief and practice.

Anglican Diocese of Sydney Diocese in the Anglican Church of Australia

The Diocese of Sydney is a diocese within the Province of New South Wales of the Anglican Church of Australia. The majority of the diocese is evangelical and low church in tradition.

Broad church

Broad church is latitudinarian churchmanship in the Church of England in particular and Anglicanism in general. The term is often used for secular political organisations, meaning that they encompass a broad range of opinion.

Ritualism in the Church of England

Ritualism, in the history of Christianity, refers to an emphasis on the rituals and liturgical ceremony of the church, in particular of Holy Communion.

Churchmanship schools of thought within the Anglican Church

Churchmanship is a way of talking about and labelling different tendencies, parties, or schools of thought within the Church of England and the sister churches of the Anglican Communion.

Catholicity or catholicism is a concept that encompasses the beliefs and practices of numerous Christian denominations, most notably those that describe themselves as Catholic in accordance with the Four Marks of the Church, as expressed in the Nicene Creed of the First Council of Constantinople in 381: "[I believe] in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church."

Anglican eucharistic theology

Anglican eucharistic theology is diverse in practice, reflecting the comprehensiveness of Anglicanism. Its sources include prayer book rubrics, writings on sacramental theology by Anglican divines, and the regulations and orientations of ecclesiastical provinces. The principal source material is the Book of Common Prayer, specifically its eucharistic prayers and Article XXVIII of the Thirty-Nine Articles. Article XXVIII comprises the foundational Anglican doctrinal statement about the Eucharist, although its interpretation varies among churches of the Anglican Communion and in different traditions of churchmanship such as Anglo-Catholicism and Evangelical Anglicanism.

Anglican doctrine

Anglican doctrine is the body of Christian teachings used to guide the religious and moral practices of Anglicans.

Anglican Diocese of Melbourne

The Anglican Diocese of Melbourne is the metropolitan diocese of the Province of Victoria in the Anglican Church of Australia. The diocese was founded from the Diocese of Australia by letters patent of 25 June 1847 and includes the cities of Melbourne and Geelong and also some more rural areas. The cathedral church is St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne. The ordinary of the diocese is the Archbishop of Melbourne, Philip Freier, who was translated from the Anglican Diocese of The Northern Territory.

Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi

The Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi, created in 1826, is the diocese of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America with jurisdiction over the entire state of Mississippi. It is in Province 4 and its cathedral, St. Andrew's Cathedral, is in Jackson, as are the diocesan offices.

Cyril Easthaugh was a British Anglican bishop in the 20th Century. He was Bishop of Kensington from 1949 to 1961 and Bishop of Peterborough from 1961 to 1972.

Towards the Conversion of England: a plan dedicated to the memory of Archbishop William Temple was a 1945 report produced by the Church of England Commission on Evangelism, chaired by the evangelical Bishop of Rochester, Christopher Chavasse. At the time it was widely circulated and influential, though controversial.

Evangelical Anglicanism

Evangelical Anglicanism or evangelical Episcopalianism is a tradition or church party within Anglicanism that shares affinity with broader evangelicalism. Evangelical Anglicans share with other evangelicals the attributes of "conversionism, activism, biblicism and crucicentrism" identified by historian David Bebbington as central to evangelical identity. The emergence of evangelical churchmanship can be traced back to the First Great Awakening in America and the Evangelical Revival in Britain in the 18th century. In the 20th century, prominent figures have included John Stott and J. I. Packer.

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