Anglicanism
What is Anglicanism?
Anglicanism is Anglican (English) Christianity that goes as far back as the 1st or 2nd century in Britain. Tradition says that the gospel was brought there by Joseph of Arimathea after the resurrection of Christ. Little is known of its earliest foundations, but records show that Bishops from Britain attended some of the earliest church councils at Arles (314) and Nicaea (325).
So when Pope Gregory sent a monk named Augustine to England in 597 to establish a Roman mission at Canterbury, he found an already established and robust British church with its own bishops and customs.
The two church traditions (Rome and Britain) existed side-by-side until the Synod of Whitby in 664 when for the sake of Christian unity, it was decided that Roman customs would be followed. That relationship continued through most of Anglican church history.
In 1208, a confrontation arose between King John and Pope Innocent III over rights in the church which led to England being placed under interdict and King John’s five-year ex-communication. When King John penned the Magna Carta between himself and the English people, he began with the opening line, The “Ecclesia Anglicana (Anglican Church) shall be free.”
Good relations were interrupted again in the 1530s, when King Henry VIII, desiring to obtain an annulment of his marriage, renounced the jurisdiction of the pope or any other foreign bishop in the English realm. Communion was restored briefly in 1553 with the succession of the Catholic Queen Mary, but relations were severed again in 1570 with the ex-communication of the protestant Queen Elizabeth I by Pope Pius V. The Church of England became an independent body at that point and would continue to follow its own laws and customs thereafter.
Anglicans in America
The Anglican church in the American colonies became a separate ecclesial body along with the birth of the United States after the Revolutionary War. The Americans, having just fought a bloody battle for independence against the English, no longer wanted their churches to be referred to as Anglican since that meant English. Instead, they used the name “Episcopalian” almost exclusively after the war.
This newly designated “Episcopal Church” was far from intending to depart from the church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline, or worship, or further than local circumstances allow” (The Book of Common Prayer, p.11). The word “episcopal” comes from the Greek word episcopos (overseer) that the New Testament uses for the office of a bishop who oversees a local church or group of churches. The word “church” comes from the Greek word ekklesia (assembly) that the New Testament uses for God’s people gathered into an assembled congregation. So the term “episcopal church” means a church overseen by bishops, according to the New Testament model.