The Church Union is an Anglo-Catholic advocacy group within the Church of England.
The organisation was founded as the Church of England Protection Society on 12 May 1859 to challenge the authority of the English civil courts to determine questions of doctrine. It changed its name to the English Church Union in May 1860.
In particular, it was active in defending Anglo-Catholic priests such as Arthur Tooth, Sidney Faithorn Green and Richard William Enraght against legal action brought under the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874. The passage of this law was secured by Archbishop of Canterbury Archibald Campbell Tait to restrict the growing Oxford Movement and had the support of then-Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.
One of the most famous attempts at prosecution under the 1874 act began in 1888. It was aimed against the Bishop of Lincoln Edward King, but the Archbishop of Canterbury Edward Benson revived his own archiepiscopal court (inactive since 1699) to avoid the prosecution of the saintly King in a lay court. [1]
Such prosecutions ended in 1906 after a Royal Commission recognized pluralism in worship, but the act was not repealed until the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure 1963. In 1933, the English Church Union merged with the Anglo-Catholic Congress to form the present organisation.
Ealdred was Abbot of Tavistock, Bishop of Worcester, and Archbishop of York in early medieval England. He was related to a number of other ecclesiastics of the period. After becoming a monk at the monastery at Winchester, he was appointed Abbot of Tavistock Abbey in around 1027. In 1046 he was named to the Bishopric of Worcester. Ealdred, besides his episcopal duties, served Edward the Confessor, the King of England, as a diplomat and as a military leader. He worked to bring one of the king's relatives, Edward the Exile, back to England from Hungary to secure an heir for the childless king.
The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the 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 person to hold the position, as part of a line of succession going back to the "Apostle to the English" Augustine of Canterbury, who was sent to the island by the church in Rome in 597. Welby succeeded Rowan Williams.
Augustine of Canterbury was a Christian monk who became the first archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597. He is considered the "Apostle to the English”.
The Church of England is the established Christian Church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the origin of the Anglican tradition, which combines features of both Reformed and Catholic Christian practices. Its adherents are called Anglicans.
Dunstan, OSB was an English bishop. He was successively Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, Bishop of Worcester, Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury, later canonised. His work restored monastic life in England and reformed the English Church. His 11th-century biographer Osbern, himself an artist and scribe, states that Dunstan was skilled in "making a picture and forming letters", as were other clergy of his age who reached senior rank. Dunstan served as an important minister of state to several English kings. He was the most popular saint in England for nearly two centuries, having gained fame for the many stories of his greatness, not least among which were those concerning his famed cunning in defeating the Devil.
Edward White Benson was archbishop of Canterbury from 1883 until his death. Before this, he was the first Bishop of Truro, serving from 1877 to 1883, and began construction of Truro Cathedral.
Stigand was an Anglo-Saxon churchman in pre-Norman Conquest England who became Archbishop of Canterbury. His birth date is unknown, but by 1020 he was serving as a royal chaplain and advisor. He was named Bishop of Elmham in 1043, and was later Bishop of Winchester and Archbishop of Canterbury. Stigand was an advisor to several members of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman English royal dynasties, serving six successive kings. Excommunicated by several popes for his pluralism in holding the two sees, or bishoprics, of Winchester and Canterbury concurrently, he was finally deposed in 1070, and his estates and personal wealth were confiscated by William the Conqueror. Stigand was imprisoned at Winchester, where he died.
The Church of England traces its history back to 597. That year, a group of missionaries sent by the pope and led by Augustine of Canterbury began the Christianisation of the Anglo-Saxons. Augustine became the first archbishop of Canterbury. Throughout the Middle Ages, the English Church was a part of the Catholic Church led by the pope in Rome. Over the years, the church won many legal privileges and amassed vast wealth and property. This was often a point of contention between Kings of England and the church.
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.
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.
The Public Worship Regulation Act 1874 was an act of Parliament of the United Kingdom, introduced as a Private Member's Bill by Archbishop of Canterbury Archibald Campbell Tait, to limit what he perceived as the growing ritualism of Anglo-Catholicism and the Oxford Movement within the Church of England. The bill was strongly endorsed by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, and vigorously opposed by Liberal party leader William Ewart Gladstone. Queen Victoria strongly supported it. The law was seldom enforced, but at least five clergymen were imprisoned by judges for contempt of court, which greatly embarrassed the Church of England archbishops who had vigorously promoted it.
Gisa was Bishop of Wells from 1060 to 1088. A native of Lorraine, Gisa came to England as a chaplain to King Edward the Confessor. After his appointment to Wells, he travelled to Rome rather than be consecrated by Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury. As bishop, Gisa added buildings to his cathedral, introduced new saints to his diocese, and instituted the office of archdeacon in his diocese. After the Norman Conquest, Gisa took part in the consecration of Lanfranc, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, and attended Lanfranc's church councils. His tomb in Wells Cathedral was opened in the 20th century and a cross was discovered in his tomb.
Edward King was a British Anglican bishop and academic. From 1885 to 1910, he served as Bishop of Lincoln in the Church of England. Before his consecration to the episcopate, he was Principal of Cuddesdon College (1863–1873), an Anglo-Catholic theological college, and then Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford (1873–1885).
Arthur Tooth was a ritualist priest in the Church of England and a member of the Society of the Holy Cross. Tooth is best known for being prosecuted in 1876 under the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874 for using proscribed liturgical practices. He was also briefly imprisoned as a result of the prosecution in 1877.
Thomas Pelham Dale (1821–1892) was an English Anglo-Catholic ritualist priest, most notable for being prosecuted and imprisoned for ritualist practices.
The Catholic Church in England and Wales is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See. Its origins date from the 6th century, when Pope Gregory I through the Roman monk and Benedictine missionary, Augustine, later Augustine of Canterbury, intensified the evangelization of the Kingdom of Kent linking it to the Holy See in 597 AD.
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.
King Charles the Martyr, or Charles, King and Martyr, is a title of Charles I, who was King of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1625 until his execution on 30 January 1649. The title is used by high church Anglicans who regard Charles's execution as a martyrdom. His feast day in the Anglican calendar of saints is 30 January, the anniversary of his execution in 1649. The cult of Charles the Martyr was historically popular with Tories. The observance was one of several "state services" removed in 1859 from the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England and the Church of Ireland. There remain some churches and parishes dedicated to Charles the Martyr, and his cult is maintained by some Anglo-Catholic societies, including the Society of King Charles the Martyr founded in 1894 and the Royal Martyr Church Union founded in 1906.
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.
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