Anglicanism

===Development===
{{See also|History of the Anglican Communion}}
[[File:Darnley stage 3.jpg|thumb|[[Queen Elizabeth I]] revived the [[Church of England]] in 1559 and established a uniform faith and practice; she took the title "Supreme Governor"]]
[[File:Frederick Denison Maurice. Portrait c1865.jpg|thumb|[[Frederick Denison Maurice]], a prominent 19th-century Anglican theologian]]
With the [[Elizabethan Settlement]] of 1559, the Protestant identity of the English and Irish churches was affirmed by means of parliamentary legislation which mandated allegiance and loyalty to the English Crown in all their members. The Elizabethan church began to develop distinct religious traditions, assimilating some of the theology of [[Reformed churches]] with the services in the ''[[Book of Common Prayer]]'' (which drew extensively on the [[Sarum Rite]] native to England), under the leadership and organisation of a continuing episcopate.{{sfn|Edwards|1983|p=89}} Over the years, these traditions themselves came to command adherence and loyalty. The Elizabethan Settlement stopped the radical Protestant tendencies under Edward VI by combining the more radical elements of the [[Book of Common Prayer (1552)|1552 prayer book]] with the conservative "Catholic" [[Book of Common Prayer (1549)|1549 prayer book]] into the [[Book of Common Prayer (1559)|1559 ''Book of Common Prayer'']]. From then on, Protestantism was in a "state of arrested development", regardless of the attempts to detach the Church of England from its "idiosyncratic anchorage in the medieval past" by various groups which tried to push it towards a more Reformed theology and governance in the years 1560–1660.{{sfn|MacCulloch|1990|pp=171–172}}

Although two important constitutive elements of what later would emerge as Anglicanism were present in 1559 – scripture, the [[historic episcopate]], the ''Book of Common Prayer'', the teachings of the First Four Ecumenical Councils as the yardstick of catholicity, the teaching of the Church Fathers and Catholic bishops, and informed reason – neither the laypeople nor the clergy perceived themselves as Anglicans at the beginning of Elizabeth I's reign, as there was no such identity. Neither does the term ''[[via media]]'' appear until the 1627 to describe a church which refused to identify itself definitely as Catholic or Protestant, or as both, "and had decided in the end that this is virtue rather than a handicap".<ref>Diarmid MacCullough, ''The Later Reformation in England'', 1990, pp. 142, 171–172 {{ISBN|0-333-69331-0}}</ref>

Historical studies on the period 1560–1660 written before the late 1960s tended to project the predominant conformist spirituality and doctrine of the 1660s on the ecclesiastical situation one hundred years before, and there was also a tendency to take polemically binary partitions of reality claimed by contestants studied (such as the dichotomies Protestant-"Popish" or "[[Laudianism|Laudian]]"-"Puritan") at face value. Since the late 1960s, these interpretations have been criticised. Studies on the subject written during the last forty-five years have, however, not reached any consensus on how to interpret this period in English church history. The extent to which one or several positions concerning doctrine and spirituality existed alongside the more well-known and articulate Puritan movement and the Durham House Party, and the exact extent of continental Calvinism among the English elite and among the ordinary churchgoers from the 1560s to the 1620s are subjects of current and ongoing debate.{{efn|For a study stressing the hegemony of continental Calvinism before the 1620s, see {{harvnb|Tyacke|1987}}. For a study perceiving an emerging self-conscious "Prayer Book Episcopalism" distinct from, but a predecessor to, [[Restoration (England)|Restoration]] Anglicanism, see {{harvnb|Maltby|1998}}.}}

In 1662, under [[Charles II of England|King Charles II]], a revised ''Book of Common Prayer'' was produced, which was acceptable to high churchmen as well as some [[Puritans]] and is still considered authoritative to this day.{{sfn|Black|2005|pp=11, 129}}

In so far as Anglicans derived their identity from both parliamentary legislation and ecclesiastical tradition, a crisis of identity could result wherever secular and religious loyalties came into conflict – and such a crisis indeed occurred in 1776 with the [[American Declaration of Independence]], most of whose signatories were, at least nominally, Anglican.{{sfn|Edwards|1984|p=42}} For these American patriots, even the forms of Anglican services were in doubt, since the Prayer Book rites of [[Matins]], [[Evening Prayer (Anglican)|Evensong]], and Holy Communion all included specific prayers for the British royal family. Consequently, the conclusion of the [[American Revolutionary War|War of Independence]] eventually resulted in the creation of two new Anglican churches, the [[Episcopal Church (United States)|Episcopal Church in the United States]] in those states that had achieved independence; and in the 1830s [[Anglican Church of Canada|The Church of England in Canada]] became independent from the Church of England in those North American colonies which had remained under British control and to which many Loyalist churchmen had migrated.{{sfn|Edwards|1984|p=43}}

Reluctantly, legislation was passed in the British Parliament (the Consecration of Bishops Abroad Act 1786) to allow bishops to be consecrated for an American church outside of allegiance to the British Crown (since no dioceses had ever been established in the former American colonies).{{sfn|Edwards|1984|p=43}} Both in the United States and in Canada, the new Anglican churches developed novel models of self-government, collective decision-making, and self-supported financing; that would be consistent with separation of religious and secular identities.{{sfn|Edwards|1984|p=322}}

In the following century, two further factors acted to accelerate the development of a distinct Anglican identity. From 1828 and 1829, [[Dissenters]] and Catholics could be elected to the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]],{{sfn|Edwards|1984|pp=113, 124}} which consequently ceased to be a body drawn purely from the established churches of Scotland, England, and Ireland; but which nevertheless, over the following ten years, engaged in extensive reforming legislation affecting the interests of the English and Irish churches; which, by the [[Acts of Union 1800|Acts of Union of 1800]], had been reconstituted as the [[United Church of England and Ireland]]. The propriety of this legislation was bitterly contested by the [[Oxford Movement]] (Tractarians),{{sfn|Edwards|1984|p=178}} who in response developed a vision of Anglicanism as religious tradition deriving ultimately from the [[ecumenical councils]] of the patristic church. Those within the Church of England opposed to the Tractarians, and to their revived ritual practices, introduced a stream of bills in parliament aimed to control innovations in worship.{{sfn|Chadwick|1987|p=324}} This only made the dilemma more acute, with consequent continual litigation in the secular and ecclesiastical courts.

Over the same period, Anglican churches engaged vigorously in [[Mission (Christian)|Christian missions]], resulting in the creation, by the end of the century, of over ninety colonial bishoprics,{{sfn|Edwards|1984|p=318}} which gradually coalesced into new self-governing churches on the Canadian and American models. However, the case of [[John Colenso]], [[Bishop of Natal]], reinstated in 1865 by the English [[Judicial Committee of the Privy Council]] over the heads of the Church in South Africa,{{sfn|Edwards|1984|p=324}} demonstrated acutely that the extension of episcopacy had to be accompanied by a recognised Anglican ecclesiology of ecclesiastical authority, distinct from secular power.

Consequently, at the instigation of the bishops of Canada and South Africa, the first [[Lambeth Conference]] was called in 1867;{{sfn|Edwards|1984|p=325}} to be followed by further conferences in 1878 and 1888, and thereafter at ten-year intervals. The various papers and declarations of successive Lambeth Conferences have served to frame the continued Anglican debate on identity, especially as relating to the possibility of ecumenical discussion with other churches. This ecumenical aspiration became much more of a possibility, as other denominational groups rapidly followed the example of the Anglican Communion in founding their own transnational alliances: the [[World Alliance of Reformed Churches|Alliance of Reformed Churches]], the [[World Methodist Council|Ecumenical Methodist Council]], the [[World Alliance of Reformed Churches|International Congregational Council]], and the [[Baptist World Alliance]].