English Reformation

Background

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, England was a Catholic country under papal authority. When Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547) failed to produce a male heir, he asked Pope Clement VII to annul his marriage to Queen Catherine, but the pope refused. Intent on marrying Anne Boleyn, Henry broke with the papacy by acting through Parliament. Because the English Reformation began with questions of royal marriage and national sovereignty rather than with doctrinal controversy, its origins differed from those of the Reformation on the Continent.

Course of Events

Henry VIII

• Parliament, meeting in a series of sessions from 1529 to 1536, passed a succession of statutes concerning the church.
• In November 1534 the Act of Supremacy (a law making the monarch head of the church) declared the king Supreme Head of the Church of England. Thomas More and others who refused to accept it were executed.
• Beginning in 1536, Thomas Cromwell led the dissolution of the monasteries, and their property passed to the Crown.
• Figures with reforming sympathies, such as Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, were appointed to office, but worship continued to be conducted in Latin.

Edward VI (1547–1553)

• With the Act of Uniformity of 1549, the Book of Common Prayer, an English-language service book compiled by Cranmer, replaced the Latin Mass.
• The revised edition of 1552, influenced by Martin Bucer and other Continental reformers, took on a more strongly Reformed character.

Mary I (1553–1558)

• The Acts of Repeal of 1553 and 1555 nullified the earlier religious legislation and restored papal authority.
• Nearly three hundred Protestants are reported to have been burned at the stake, and Cranmer was among those executed during this period. Many Protestants fled to the Continent, where they encountered the theology of John Calvin and others.

Elizabeth I (1558–1603)

• The Act of Supremacy of 1559 designated the queen "Supreme Governor" rather than "Supreme Head."
• The Act of Uniformity of the same year reintroduced the Book of Common Prayer in a revision of the 1552 edition and made attendance at the services of the established church compulsory. The new prayer book left room for differing understandings of the Lord's Supper and permitted traditional clerical vestments, making it acceptable even to those who valued tradition.
• These acts, together with the Thirty-Nine Articles, finalized by 1571, are collectively known as the "Elizabethan Religious Settlement."

Results and Influence

The Church of England became established as a national church independent of Rome, with the monarch as Supreme Governor. While retaining the episcopate and liturgy (fixed forms of worship), it embraced Protestant doctrine, and it became the root of the worldwide Anglican Communion and of the Anglican Church of Korea.

Those who called for the church to be further reformed according to Scripture came to be known as Puritans. This movement led to the Westminster Confession of Faith and exerted a major influence on the Presbyterian tradition. Congregational churches, Baptists, and other groups emerged from among the Nonconformists outside the established church, while the Methodist movement of John Wesley, a priest of the Church of England, began within the established church itself.

Assessment

• Some regard the English Reformation as essentially a political reform, pointing to Henry VIII's motives.
• Anglicans understand it as a process through which the Church of England carried forward both the traditions of the ancient church and the Protestant faith.
• In the Reformed tradition, including Presbyterianism, the Elizabethan settlement is often viewed as an "incomplete reformation" that the Puritans sought to bring to completion.
• The Catholic Church regards the English Reformation as a schism that broke unity with the pope. It venerates as saints Thomas More and others who were executed for refusing to accept the Act of Supremacy.
• The Elizabethan settlement is often described as a compromise, but some point out that it compelled attendance at worship and prohibited the Mass, enforcing these measures with penalties.