What is the meaning of Anglicanism? Concept, Definition of Anglicanism

Definition, Concept, Meaning, What is Anglicanism

1. Concept of Anglicanism

The term Anglican, and its derivative Anglicanism, comes from the medieval latin Anglican ecclesia, meaning English church, is used to describe the people, institutions and churches, as also the liturgical traditions and theological concepts developed by the Church of England, both in particular, as the ecclesiastical provinces of the Anglican Communion. Also used in relation to the Anglican Churches without communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury (in the United Kingdom) and many other completely independent.
The Anglican Church was born in 1534, following the refusal of Pope Clement VII to declare null the marriage of Enrique VIII with Catherine of Aragon; the rejected his order by the Pope led the monarch to empower the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church and proclaim itself Supreme Head of the Church of England.
Many of those who opposed the religious politics of Enrique VIII were deposed of their positions and some tortured and executed, which include the case of Tomás Moro.
After the relatively brief reign of Eduardo VI and the Catholic restoration period headed by Queen María I, the Anglican reformation was definitively consolidated during the reign of Isabel I.
The Anglican Communion, a fellowship of 38 provinces, autonomous and interdependent, that are in full communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, is one of the most numerous Christian communions in the world, with approximately 77 million miembros.1
The Anglican Communion is considered full part of the Christian Church: one, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, and pleads, Catholic and reformed, in this regard, it is interesting the phrase of Dean Henry Forrester (Mexico, 1906): «Catholic, but not Roman and Evangelical, but not Protestant ".
For many Anglicans, it also represents a form of Catholicism no-papal, and for others, a form of Protestantism without founding figures such as Martín Luther or Juan Calvino.2
But in the line of classical Anglicanism, the approaches of the Elizabethan theologian of the century XVI Richard Hooker in Essays on Ecclesiastical Polity, they are expressing the Anglican identity as a wise combination between these two Christian traditions, a Via Media between them, through a balanced application of three essential of faith and ethics criteria:
1. The Holy Scriptures,
2. the Apostolic tradition and
3. the reason.
So then, with some differences of doctrinal and liturgical emphasis, the churches of the Anglican Communion keep your unit through, mainly, of the sacramental communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the celebration of the liturgy in accordance with the different authorized versions of the book of common prayer.

2 Meaning of Anglicanism

It receives the name of Anglicanism new English religion arising from the reform of the Catholic religion, adopting Calvinism, in the hands of a strong monarchy, and despite the support to the Church of the majority of the population, forming national churches. This occurred in the reign of Eduardo VI, although an important antecedent can be found in the divorce from Catherine of Aragon Enrique VIII where broke the bond with the Pope of Rome.
Henry VIII, who ruled England between 1509 and 1547, he was initially critical of the doctrine of the Lutheran, being qualified and dignified as "defender of the faith", but then distanced himself from traditional Catholicism, seeing the immense possibility of having a national church to strengthen their power and seize the assets of the Catholic Church.
He was married to the daughter of the Spanish Catholic Kings, Catherine of Aragon, which wanted to divorce in order to marry Ana Bolena. The Pope was opposed to grant him a divorce, whereupon the King ignored the authority of the Pope. This took place in 1531, attitude which earned him be excommunicated two years later.
In 1534 the Act of supremacy by which the King appointed the bishops was enacted. He secularized church property and was self proclaimed as head of the national church.
Eduardo VI, his son and successor, who reigned between 1547 and 1553 became the Anglican Church is approaching the Calvinism. There was a restoration of Catholicism in the reign of María I, but finally the Anglicanism was imposed with Isabel I, that he ruled between 1558 and 1603, receiving the name of Puritan English Calvinists.
Currently the Anglican Church is that of England and which were born of her, as in the United States, the Episcopal Church. Each Church is independent but is in communion with the rest of the Anglican Churches. In total there are 70 million faithful, and it is a religion Catholic but reformed, being heirs of San Agustín de Canterbury.
The head of the Church is the King and not the Pope. There are hierarchies. Believe in the Bible as a sacred book and two sacraments are considered fundamental: Baptism and the Eucharist. Do not accept the worship of images, but the Holy Trinity.

3. Definition and what is Anglicanism

Anglicanism is recognized as one of the religious expressions which are integrated to Christianity but that are derived from the Schism which represented the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. Unlike what happens with other forms of Protestantism, Anglicanism is characteristic and almost exclusively in England since it emerged as a particular interest of Enrique VIII (then King of England), who sought to break away from the Catholic Church and thus establish their own religion.
The origin of Anglicanism can be inserted in a time of religious crisis as it was the 16th century in Europe. Together with this religious expression, the Protestant Reformation carried out by characters such as Luther and Calvin aimed to set aside the dogmas of the Catholic Church that seemed outdated and inappropriate for that historical moment. In this environment, England was not less than continental Europe, and the religious crisis also reached its shores.
Henry VIII of England would seek to delimit the power of the Catholic Church in its territory. While the conflict started by a subject of private nature and staff of the King (who wanted to divorce from his former wife to marry again with Ana Bolena), this situation would lead to a crisis of far deeper roots that had to do with the jurisdiction that the Catholic Church had in England and with the limits that this King sought since then to impose on this traditional institution. Under the idea that English churches were to be part of State power and organized by the King, Enrique VIII developed what would then become known as the English reformation that would culminate in that same century with the emergence of Anglicanism as religious expression characteristic of Great Britain.
Today Anglicanism is deemed an intermediate position between the Christianity and Protestantism, both seen as extreme positions within a same religion. Anglicans remain however many of the traditions and the Catholic celebrations since they give special importance to written texts, although they have one own on which are the different prayers. Baptism and Eucharist are of special importance for the Anglicans since they are considered signs of divine grace of the Lord in our lives. Anyway, one of the main elements that alienate the Anglicanism of Catholicism is the fact that for the first is none other than the English monarch the maximum representative of the power of God in the Earth and not the Pope.