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The Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian denomination. Founded in 1867 in London, England, the communion currently has over 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.
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.
Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth, is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet. He was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held from December 2002 to December 2012. Previously the Bishop of Monmouth and Archbishop of Wales, Williams was the first Archbishop of Canterbury in modern times not to be appointed from within the Church of England.
The Church of Ireland is a Christian church in Ireland and an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. It is organised on an all-Ireland basis and is the second largest Christian church on the island after the Catholic Church. Like other Anglican churches, it has retained elements of pre-Reformation practice, notably its episcopal polity, while rejecting the primacy of the Pope. In theological and liturgical matters, it incorporates many principles of the Reformation, particularly those espoused during the English Reformation. The church self-identifies as being both catholic and Reformed. Within the church, differences exist between those members who are more Catholic-leaning and those who are more Protestant-leaning (evangelical). For historical and cultural reasons, the Church of Ireland is generally identified as a Protestant church.
The Scottish Episcopal Church is the ecclesiastical province of the Anglican Communion in Scotland.
The Church in Wales is the Anglican church in Wales, composed of six dioceses. In 2000, membership figures taken as a percentage of the population was 1.6%. Between 1996 and 2016 the number of signed-up Church in Wales members dropped from 91,247 to 45,759 or 1.5% out of a total population of 3,113,150 The number of Church in Wales members on the "Electoral Roll" dropped further to 42,441 by 2018 or 1.4% out of the total Welsh population of 3,187,203 The Anglican church claims to be the largest denomination in Wales.
Since the 1990s, the Anglican Communion has struggled with controversy regarding homosexuality in the church. In 1998, the 13th Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops passed a resolution "rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture". However, this is not legally binding. "Like all Lambeth Conference resolutions, it is not legally binding on all provinces of the Communion, including the Church of England, though it commends an essential and persuasive view of the attitude of the Communion." "Anglican national churches in Brazil, South Africa, South India, New Zealand and Canada have taken steps toward approving and celebrating same-sex relationships amid strong resistance among other national churches within the 80 million-member global body. The Episcopal Church in the U.S. has allowed gay marriage since 2015." "Church of England clergy have appeared to signal support for gay marriage after they rejected a bishops’ report which said that only a man and woman could marry in church." The Church of England's General Synod is set to discuss a diocesan motion "to create a set of formal services and prayers to bless those who have had a same-sex marriage or civil partnership". At General Synod in 2019, the Church of England announced that same-gender couples may remain married and recognised as married after one spouse experiences a gender transition provided that the spouses identified as opposite genders at the time of the marriage.
George Leonard Carey, Baron Carey of Clifton, is a retired Anglican bishop who was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002, having previously been the Bishop of Bath and Wells. In 2018 the UK Child Sex Abuse Report found Carey had committed serious breaches of duty in covering up child sex abuse within the Church. In June 2017 he resigned from his last formal role in the church after a finding that he had covered up child sex abuse allegations against the bishop Peter Ball.
Frederick Donald Coggan, Baron Coggan, was the 101st Archbishop of Canterbury from 1974 to 1980. As Archbishop of Canterbury, he "revived morale within the Church of England, opened a dialogue with Rome and supported women's ordination". He had previously been successively the Bishop of Bradford and the Archbishop of York.
The Lords Spiritual of the United Kingdom are the 26 bishops of the established Church of England who serve in the House of Lords, not counting bishops who sit by right of a peerage. The Church of Scotland, which is Presbyterian, and the Anglican churches in Wales and Northern Ireland, which are no longer established churches, are not represented. The Lords Spiritual are distinct from the Lords Temporal, their secular counterparts who also sit in the House of Lords.
Cormac Murphy-O'Connor was a British cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, Archbishop of Westminster and president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. He was made cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 2001. He submitted his resignation as archbishop on reaching his 75th birthday in 2007; Pope Benedict XVI accepted it on 3 April 2009.
The Anglican Church of Canada is the province of the Anglican Communion in Canada. The official French-language name is l'Église anglicane du Canada. In 2017, the Anglican Church counted 359,030 members on parish rolls in 2,206 congregations, organized into 1,571 parishes. The 2011 Canadian Census counted 1,631,845 self-identified Anglicans, making the Anglican Church the third-largest Canadian church after the Catholic Church and the United Church of Canada. The Queen of Canada's Canadian Royal Style continues to include the title of Defender of the Faith, and the Canadian Monarch continues her countenance of three Chapels Royal in the Realm.
The General Synod is the tricameral deliberative and legislative organ of the Church of England. The synod was instituted in 1970, replacing the Church Assembly, and is the culmination of a process of rediscovering self-government for the Church of England that had started in the 1850s.
Vincent Gerard Nichols is an English cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, Archbishop of Westminster and President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. He previously served as Archbishop of Birmingham from 2000 to 2009. On 22 February 2014, Pope Francis admitted Archbishop Nichols to the Sacred College of Cardinals at a general consistory.
Douglas Geoffrey Rowell was an Anglican bishop, who served as Bishop of Basingstoke and then as the third Bishop in Europe until his retirement on 8 November 2013. Following his retirement he ministered as an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Chichester and in the Diocese of Portsmouth. He died in the early morning of Trinity Sunday, 11 June 2017.
The Convocations of Canterbury and York are the synodical assemblies of the bishops and clergy of each of the two provinces which comprise the Church of England. Their origins go back to the ecclesiastical reorganisation carried out under Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury (668–90) and the establishment of a separate northern province in 733. Until 1225 the synods were composed entirely of bishops, but during the thirteenth century more and more clergy were cited until by 1283 the membership was established as the bishops, deans, archdeacons and abbots of each province together with one proctor (representative) from each cathedral chapter and two proctors elected by the clergy of each diocese. The main purpose of the convocations was to take counsel for the well-being of the church and to approve canonical legislation, but in practice much time was spent in discussing the amount of tax to be paid to the Crown since the clergy were a separate estate of the realm and refused to be taxed in or through Parliament. Before the end of the nineteenth century, the Convocation of Canterbury, which was numerically very much larger, played the major role and the activity of the Convocation of York was often little more than giving formal approval to the decisions taken by the southern province.
The Anglican realignment is a movement among some Anglicans to align themselves under new or alternative oversight within or outside the Anglican Communion. This movement is primarily active in parts of the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada. Two of the major events which contributed to the movement were the 2002 decision of the Diocese of New Westminster in Canada to authorise a rite of blessing for same-sex unions, and the nomination of two openly gay priests in 2003 to become bishops. Jeffrey John, an openly gay priest with a long-time partner, was appointed to be the next Bishop of Reading in the Church of England and the General Convention of the Episcopal Church ratified the election of Gene Robinson, an openly gay non-celibate man, as Bishop of New Hampshire. Jeffrey John ultimately declined the appointment due to pressure.
The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada is the chief governing and legislative body of the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC), the sole Canadian representative of the Anglican Communion. The first General Synod session was held in Toronto in 1893, with the proviso that the parameters of its authority would not undermine the local independence of dioceses.
A Commissioners' church, also known as a Waterloo church and Million Act church, is an Anglican church in the United Kingdom built with money voted by Parliament as a result of the Church Building Acts of 1818 and 1824. The 1818 Act supplied a grant of money and established the Church Building Commission to direct its use, and in 1824 made a further grant of money. In addition to paying for the building of churches, the Commission had powers to divide and subdivide parishes, and to provide endowments. The Commission continued to function as a separate body until the end of 1856, when it was absorbed into the Ecclesiastical Commission. In some cases the Commissioners provided the full cost of the new church; in other cases they provided a partial grant and the balance was raised locally. In total 612 new churches were provided, mainly in expanding industrial towns and cities.
References
- ↑ Staff profile on Reading University's website.
- 1 2 "Dr. Philip Giddings". Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life. 18 August 2015. Retrieved 4 March 2016.
- ↑ Sam Jones, "Female bishops: house of laity chair survives no-confidence vote", The Guardian, 18 January 2013
- ↑ "Church of England no-confidence vote defeated", BBC News, 18 January 2013
- ↑ Madeleine Davies, "Lay rebel explains his Giddings challenge", Church Times, 11 January 2013.
- ↑ "Head to head: Gay church debate", BBC News, 15 October 2003.
- ↑ "Gay cleric's 'wedding' to partner", BBC News, 1 August 2006.
- ↑ "The Archbishop of Canterbury's Awards: Lambeth Palace" (pdf). Archbishop of Canterbury. 31 March 2016. Retrieved 14 July 2017.[ permanent dead link ]