The Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion after the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Founded in 1867 in London, the communion has more than 85 million members within the Church of England and other autocephalous national and regional churches in full communion. The traditional origins of Anglican doctrine 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. Most, but not all, member churches of the communion are the historic national or regional Anglican churches.
Anglo-Catholicism comprises beliefs and practices that emphasise the catholic heritage and identity of the various Anglican churches.
The Oxford Movement was a movement of high church members of the Church of England which began in the 1830s and eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose original devotees were mostly associated with the University of Oxford, argued for the reinstatement of some older Christian traditions of faith and their inclusion into Anglican liturgy and theology. They thought of Anglicanism as one of three branches of the "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic" Christian church. Many key participants subsequently converted to Roman Catholicism.
The term high church refers to beliefs and practices of Christian ecclesiology, liturgy, and theology that emphasize "ritual, priestly authority, [and] sacraments". Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term originated in and has been principally associated with the Anglican tradition, where it describes churches using a number of ritual practices associated in the popular mind with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The opposite tradition is low church. Contemporary media discussing Anglican churches erroneously prefer the terms evangelical to low church and Anglo-Catholic to high church, even though their meanings do not exactly correspond. Other contemporary denominations that contain high church wings include some Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches.
In Anglican Christianity, low church refers to those who give little emphasis to ritual. The term is most often used in a liturgical sense, denoting a Protestant emphasis, whereas "high church" denotes an emphasis on ritual, often Anglo-Catholic.
Ritualism, in the history of Christianity, refers to an emphasis on the rituals and liturgical ceremonies of the Church, specifically the Christian practice of Holy Communion.
The Society of the Holy Cross is an international Anglo-Catholic society of male priests with members in the Anglican Communion and the Continuing Anglican movement, who live under a common rule of life that informs their priestly ministry and charism.
John Charles Ryle was an English evangelical Anglican bishop. He was the first Anglican bishop of Liverpool.
The Reformed Episcopal Church (REC) is an Anglican church of evangelical Episcopalian heritage. It was founded in 1873 in New York City by George David Cummins, a former bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
Thomas Pelham Dale (1821–1892) was an English Anglo-Catholic ritualist priest, most notable for being prosecuted and imprisoned for ritualist practices.
Anglican doctrine is the body of Christian teachings used to guide the religious and moral practices of Anglicans.
Richard William Enraght was an Irish-born Church of England priest of the late nineteenth century. He was influenced by the Oxford Movement and was included amongst the priests commonly called "Second Generation" Anglo-Catholics.
Central churchmanship describes those who adhere to a 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 doctrinal views and liturgical preferences. The term is used much less frequently than some others.
John Kensit was an English religious leader and polemicist. He concentrated on a struggle against Anglo-Catholic tendencies in the Church of England.
The 1928 Book of Common Prayer, sometimes known as the Deposited Book, is a liturgical book which was proposed as a revised version of the Church of England's 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Opposing what they saw as an Anglo-Catholic revision that would align the Church of England with the Catholic Church—particularly through expanding the practice of the reserved sacrament—Protestant evangelicals and nonconformists in Parliament put up significant resistance, driving what became known as the Prayer Book Crisis.
Francis James Chavasse was an Anglican priest and bishop and father of Captain Noel Chavasse. After serving in parishes in Preston, London, and Oxford, for eleven years from 1889 he was principal of the evangelical theological college Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. In 1900 he was appointed as the second Bishop of Liverpool and held the see from 1900 to 1923, during which time he played a large part in the commissioning and the early phases of construction of Liverpool Cathedral.
Church Society is a conservative, evangelical Anglican organisation and registered charity formed in 1950 by the merger of the Anglican Church Association and National Church League. In May 2018, Church Society merged with two other evangelical Anglican organisations, Reform and the Fellowship of Word and Spirit to provide a united voice for conservative evangelicals within the Church of England.
The Catholic societies of the Church of England are associations within the Church of England which follow in the tradition of Anglo-Catholicism. They may be devotional, theological or pilgrimage-focused in nature. Many trace their origins to the Catholic revival in the Church of England which started with the Oxford Movement in the 19th century.
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.
Thomas Henry Sparshott, was an English Anglican priest, also known as Rev Tom. He served as a missionary in East Africa and in Mombasa, Kenya, as curate and vicar to various English congregations, as chaplain to George Cholmondeley, 4th Marquess of Cholmondeley and as chaplain to a home for the daughters of female prisoners. For eighteen years he was organising secretary of the Church Association.
