The Problem of Religious Identification in the Church of England

This article examines the history of the transformation of the constitutional position of the Church of England in the context of the problem of her (self)identification. Using extensive source material, the author demonstrates that the constitutional position of the Established Church is an important element of its identity and throughout its history, it is the dynamics of the relationship between the reformed English Church and the Crown that largely determined the process of confessional self-identification of the former. The connection between the Monarch and the Church of England was gradually established by law, beginning with major Acts, leading to the break with Rome, passed by the English Reformation Parliament between 1529 and 1534. However, it was only in the second half of the 17th — early 18th century, when nonconforming clergy were ejected and Catholics were excluded from the line of succession, that the final consolidation of the position of the Church of England in the developing British Constitution, defined by the author as, first and foremost, a system of government institutions and the principles according to which these institutions operate, individually and jointly, took place

Canon Law · Church History · Confessional · Constitution · Context (archaeology · Element (criminal law · Parliament · Political science · Politics · Position (finance · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Classics · History · Law · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Religious Freedom and Discrimination