Ross Cameron: Well done, King Henry, we’re all Anglicans now

Posted by Kendall Harmon

After the Vatican invited Anglicans to return to the Catholic fold, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, went to Rome. He met the Pope and his cardinals, and the holy father will reciprocate next year in Canterbury.

The invitation allows Anglicans to retain their distinctive customs, but the unavoidable conclusion is that millions of Anglicans would, for the first time in 470 years, kneel and accept the Pope as boss. I expect the meetings in Rome have begun an inexorable reabsorption of the Anglican Church into the world's oldest institution. The church created by the charismatic King Henry VIII has found its current archbishop, an undertaker, appearing to see his mission as an orderly burial.

Our children will barely distinguish an Anglican from a Catholic church and their children will be baptised in merged congregations. In the absence of a unifying vision, and dynamic global leadership, we must assume the Anglican idea is fast reaching its use-by date.

It has, however, been a great innings, and the Pope's move is less hostile takeover than reverse takeover. Over the past half millennium, Anglicanism has transformed Catholicism and the world. The Anglican Church was never a truly Protestant church, but a halfway house between Luther and Rome. It leaned Protestant more by accident than design - to keep the peace, it became the original broad church.

Read it all.

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9 Comments
Posted December 5, 2009 at 11:29 am [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. Conchúr wrote:

There are so many errors and false assumptions in that article one hardly knows where to start.

December 5, 11:56 am | [comment link]
2. Randy Muller wrote:

Anglicanism invented religious tolerance…

Most of my ancestors came to America to escape Anglican “religious tolerance”.

December 5, 12:44 pm | [comment link]
3. Anglicanum wrote:

#2, well it’s the ‘tolerance’ of most liberal groups: you can be like me in any number of ways ...

December 5, 12:51 pm | [comment link]
4. Br_er Rabbit wrote:

#2 And mine also, Randy. But they ended up as anglicans anyway.

December 5, 2:02 pm | [comment link]
5. Calvin wrote:

“England was the only European nation to sit out these wars because it was neither Protestant nor Catholic - Anglicanism was a bit of both”

I’m speechless…. this MYTH was dispelled forty years ago… read Patrick Collinson, Diarmaid McCulloch, Peter Lake, Nicholas Tyacke, Kenneth Fincham, or any real historian of early modern England (not your local parish priest).

I might have to put a quote from this article (one in a major newspaper) in my dissertation to show my committee that this silliness keeps going on…  I can think of no greater disparity from where basic historical scholarship is and where popular readership is.

To quote Diarmaid McCulloch: The English reformation DID happen….

December 5, 4:27 pm | [comment link]
6. Dan Crawford wrote:

My Anglican heart is warmed whenever I think of the “charismatic Henry VIII” and the great “Reformation” he wrought.

December 5, 5:11 pm | [comment link]
7. John Wilkins wrote:

smart.  And true.  but it’s hard to sustain an organization like that.

December 5, 11:40 pm | [comment link]
8. Oriscus wrote:

re #2 - I like how Garrison Keillor put it:
“My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time.”

December 6, 11:55 am | [comment link]
9. swisswiss wrote:

Pace Mary McCarthy: “Every word he writes is a lie, including ‘a’ and ‘the.’”

December 6, 8:15 pm | [comment link]
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