The Anglican Church traces her roots all the way back to the early Church. She succeeds from the authority of the Apostles through their ‘laying on of hands.’ Early evidence of British contact with the Apostles can be found in the studies of early British war. King Caradoc lead the Brits to battle against Rome in the First Century and ended up in house arrest in the late 50s where his family (and likely Caradoc himself) stayed with St. Paul the Apostle (2 Timothy 4:21 – Linus was Caradoc’s son and became the first Bishop of Rome).
There is ample evidence that British Bishops existed in the pre-Nicaene Church, such as the fact that they attended the councils of Arles (314) and Sardica (343). This is comforting to know and gives the Anglican Church serious roots, but even more serious than that is the Apostolic Succession from, in one sense, St. Patrick’s “invisible” succession of apostolic doctrine and liturgy and in another, St. Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury’s “visible” succession of apostolic leadership: the bishopric.
St. Patrick was born in Scotland in the year 387. When Patrick was 16 years of age he was taken captive by Irish marauders and held as a slave for six years, when he was finally able to free himself to return home. In the year 433 St. Germain, Bishop of Auxerre, France, commissioned Patrick to accompany him to Ireland to help the very people that enslaved Patrick.
St. Patrick was instrumental not only in saving the souls of many of the Irish and establishing the Church in Britan but he was also instrumental in forming the liturgyof the Celtic/British church. Patrick had little to work with when he arrived in Ireland, as far as foundation for the Church. It seems that much of the British Church had dissolved their due to various wars. One of his main objectives was to convert Druid worship into Christian worship.
We have little traces of the exact liturgy that Patrick ended with but we know that shortly after St. Patrick’s time, St. Columba took the Irish liturgy to England. One interesting thing to note is that we know the Celtic liturgy had the Creed without the filouque clause (some Eastern influence happening here). The liturgy involved Holy Communion on Sunday’s and Holy Days with unleavened bread as well as responsive readings and Psalms. What Patrick did exactly is unknown but what it evolved in to seemed to be just what England needed.
St. Columba (521-597) was an Irish Celt who traveled to England to plant a church with the traditions from Ireland. He, with 150 monks established the English “Mother Church” in Iona.
In 596 Bishop Gregory sent St. Augustine and others from Rome to England as missionaries. Augustine was frightened by the stories of the Anglo-Saxon and returned to ask Gregory if he could abandon the quest. The Bishop convinced him to go forward and Augustine arrived in Kent in 597. He received land from Ethelbert to build a monastery and he later assured that Ethelbert and his knights were baptized. Augustine returned to France to be consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury. Augustine was also commissioned to govern the whole church of Southern England and Wales, although Wales did not receive his authority.
St. Bede (673-735) was the first known scholar of the English Church. He joined the Monastery of Jarrow as a boy, completely devoting himself to study. He is known for his ecclesiastical studies of the English Church and is also known to have translated the Bible into Anglo-Saxon.
Through the centuries the English Church grew and prospered but not without conflict. As the Roman Bishop became more predominant within the church abroad, many within the Church of England became more and more disgruntled. Several organized reforms were attempted, John Wycliffe (b. 1320) being one of the more known reformers and then later in the 14th century, John Hus.
King Henry VIII was the King of England in 1509. He was a fair scholar and was received by many as a young man of promising expectations. On June 25th, 1503 he was betrothed to his sister-in-law Catherine. In June of 1527 Henry informed Catherine that they had been living in sin according to Lev. 20:21 and that they must be separated. The Pope refused to annul this marriage and so Henry withdrew from the authority of the Pontiff, something that many English churchmen had been praying for for many years.
Henry was in many ways good to the Church and the state. He despised Tyndale’s English Bible but did authorize the English version The Great Bible. He also approved of the great Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of the Church of England. Henry wrote a treatise against Luther’s rejection of the Seven Sacraments. Henry died at Whitehall, January 28, 1547.
Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) was a Cambridge scholar who became the Archbishop of The Church of England in 1553 by King Henry VIII. Cranmer instituted many doctrines which leaned in the direction of Calvinism. He wrote the first prayer book in 1549 and later the 42-articles of faith, which were reformed into what we know now as the 39 Articles of Faith. When Mary Tudor became Queen, Cranmer was arrested and forced to sign a letter that retracted his teachings. He was then condemned to die at the stake. When brought to the stake he first put his hand to the fire as a sign of his repentance of signing the retraction document.
In 1603 King James I sent a team named the Virginia Company to search out the new world of America. They touched America on April 19, 1607 and called the particular area Cape Henry. They began to explore and established Jamestown in May 13, 1607 with the first Anglican parish. Over the next century more a more immigrants settled in America and less and less oversight from England was implemented, eventually resulting in an overthrow of the government that is known today as the Revolutionary War.
The Episcopal Church of America was a direct branch of the Church of England. As missionary efforts unfolded in the 19th century, many Anglicans that had loose commitments to the Church of England, such as those from the Evangelical movement and Latitudinarianism movement, began to form churches. The Evangelicals and Latitudinarians were very low-church and also many of them were not concerned about establishing themselves ecclesiastically, and therefore were not able to obtain the authority from an Archbishop.
At the Revolution many of the clergy, whose license came from their bishop in England, left the colonies and returned to England, especially in the South, where laymen were left to lead the corporate worship and Morning Prayer, which became the service on Sunday due to the lack of priests.
There was a General Council that met in 1789 to unite the church and declare Samuel Seabury’s ordination valid. Seabury had no authorization from the State of Connecticut and because of this and the fact that the Archbishop of England did not believe he could consecrate a bishop of an independent country (post-Revolutionary war). Seabury then went to Scotland to be consecrated by three bishops from the Episcopal Church of Scotland in 1784. Seabury’s ordination as bishop was later approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Seabury and White then formed the first House of Bishops. The Prayer Book was revised, removing the more Protestant liturgy. This became the first American Prayer Book of 1789.
In the early 1960s, a bishop of the Episcopal Church, James Albert Pike declared that he no longer believed in the virgin birthnor several other basic beliefs of the Christian Faith. James Pike was a schooled attorney, admitted to practice before the U. S. Supreme Court, who came to the ministry late in life. He became the bishop of California. As a result of the refusal of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church to discipline him, a group of Episcopalians left that church and formed the Anglican Orthodox Church under a bishop named Dees whose headquarters was in North Carolina. A year of so later, another group started up under bishop named George and called themselves the American Episcopal Church. This group was based in Florida and on Bishop George’s retirement, Anthony F. M. Clavier became the bishop. The AEC grew to a few thousand members by the 1970s.
By the mid seventies, more people had become distraught over the direction being taken by the Episcopal Church and called for a meeting to be held in St. Louis to discuss the direction they would take. This meeting drew several thousand people and resulted in a declaration of belief, written by Perry Laukauff now known as the Affirmation of St. Louis in which they determined to “continue” being the church that the Episcopal Church had been before Pike and the subsequent moving away from the catholic faith. This determination led to Anglican traditionalists being known as the Continuing Anglican Church.