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The Church of England and the Church of Scotland (a Presbyterian church) are both established churches, and the sovereign enjoys a special relationship with each. She is under a statutory duty to maintain and preserve the two churches, which are national churches. In Wales and Northern Ireland, there is no established church, and there is no established church in any other member state of the Commonwealth. `Establishment’ is not, however, a very precise term, and the sovereign's relations with the established churches in England and Scotland are very different. Disestablishment of the Church of England is once again a lively political issue as it was for much of the nineteenth century.

In the early 1840s, the Church of England adopted a new imperial paradigm of engagement with the British Empire in the formation of the Colonial Bishoprics Fund. This highlighted the fundamental importance of episcopacy in the colonies and autonomous action by that church in the empire, and the abandonment of the church-state partnership. It was a consequence of the legal changes in the British constitution between 1828 and 1832, which caused the demise of the legal monopoly of Anglican representation in parliament.

Two contradictory Protestant truths. Nature of church establishment in England and Scotland. Its non‐existence in Wales and Northern Ireland. A confused archbishop. Prevalence of religious belief in the United Kingdom since 1851. Religion and social policy: variation in social attitudes between religious and non‐religious people in the United Kingdom. Withdrawal of Prime Minister from appointing bishops 2007: de facto disestablishment? Whether religious representatives have a role in a democratic parliament. Religious pluralism and charitable regulation. The theology of Calvinism from Andrew Melvill to the Percy case. Status of the Church of Scotland Act 1921.

This chapter discusses the three established churches of England, Ireland, and Scotland, and the respective conditions between the years 1801 and 1828. It reveals that the churches were a semi-confessional Protestant State, and were considered the religious authority at that time. Parishes were the fundamental unit of both ecclesiastical and civil government. The churches of England and Ireland were Episcopalian in nature, while Scotland was Presbyterian. The chapter explains how the three churches responded to dissent and the formation of new dissent churches. It also discusses the formation of church parties and the controversies that arose from them.

The four years from Frederick Denison Maurice’s ordination in January 1834 to the appearance of the first edition of The Kingdom of Christ in 1838 were momentous ones, both for the national Church and for Maurice himself. A critical appreciation of The Kingdom of Christ must be central to any attempt to understand the shape of Maurice’s ecclesiology and his view of Anglicanism, since it is by far his most substantial work on the Christian Church. It forms the main focus of this chapter. However, its writing must be read against the background of widening ‘party’ divisions within the Church of England. Maurice was eventually (and reluctantly) to be identified with one specific group, the so-called Broad Church. However if, in the early 1830s, he inclined in fact towards the Tractarians, he did so without any intention of signalling ‘party’ affiliation. This chapter looks at Maurice’s attitudes toward Anglicanism, Tractarianism, and Evangelicalism.

Frederick Denison Maurice’s understanding of the nation as one of the three forms of social life providentially ordained as part of the spiritual constitution implied that the Christian Church was intrinsically related to national identity and character. A church truly possessed of Catholicity could be the church of the nation. Maurice himself did not much like the word ‘Established’, and claimed to prefer ‘English’ in its place. However, this depended on a particular reading of history. Only by tracing historically the lineaments of Catholicity in the Church of England could its identity as the Catholic Church in England be proved. By this means, Maurice sought to justify the state’s recognition of the Church of England against a rising tide of radical and dissenting criticism. This chapter deals with Maurice’s arguments concerning the relations between church and state.

This chapter discusses the struggles of the established churches outside Ireland. It explains that the recognition of the collapsed New Reformation in Ireland contributed to fundamental constitutional changes in the United Kingdom, in which a more democratic political order was born, one in which the conformity to one of the established Churches was no longer a requirement. The chapter also shows that the strong union of the Church and State seemed to be breaking up. The established Churches could no longer count on support from the Parliament, and would now need to seek cultural support. It also discusses the efforts of Sir Robert Peel (leader of Melbourne Government) to establish a new commission for the English Church reform, made up exclusively of clergymen and lay members of the Church of England.

Union of England and Scotland 1707: Darien; succession crisis; trading issues; nature of the treaty. Church establishment in both countries. Union of Great Britain and Ireland 1800–1: United Irishmen 1798; French wars; trading issues; Pitt's plan and George III's veto.

This chapter argues that tractarian attitudes to establishment marked a breach with the social utilitarianism which they felt had corrupted the older high-church position, and signified a dynamic conception of the church's function in society. The conviction that the catholic Church of England had been compromised by the erastian pretensions of a liberal state sent up clouds of anti-establishment chaff among supporters of tractarianism. Tractarians emphasised the independence of the church from the state; the derivation of its authority not from the ‘accident’ of national establishment but from the ‘plain historical fact’ of the apostolic succession. A specific measure of the differences between old high-church and later tractarian reviewers lies in the British Critic's changing attitudes to Thomas Chalmers, whose celebrated London lectures of April and May 1838 confirmed his reputation as the principal advocate of national establishments. This chapter also considers the views of John Keble regarding the separation of church and state.

This chapter maps the religious landscape of the late colonial Upper South, examining the patterns of religious practice of the state-established Church of England, which opened the door for competition from the small dissenting sect of the Baptists. While Baptist churches grew exponentially, the Church of England labored to gain the lay adherence necessary even to support existing churches, let alone create new ones. The Anglican Church's difficulty in keeping pace with the population of the Upper South opened the door for competing sects to recruit unchurched populations. This contest between established and dissenting churches introduced a new and compelling definition of “church” and religiosity that would ultimately reshape the religious landscape in the region and alter the concept of the state's place in the religious realm.

John Stott wanted to further the evangelical cause in the Church of England. He believed that the Church of England was a firmly Protestant institution and wanted it to stay that way. With the help of J. I. Packer and others, he therefore built a coalition of evangelical Anglicans to influence church policy. His efforts led to clashes with non-Anglican evangelicals, notably D. M. Lloyd-Jones. The chapter discusses the extent to which he was successful and the nature of evangelical leadership.

Whilst it is true that the Reformed Church of England had no exact parallel in Europe, it would be a mistake to assume that the two main branches of the European Reformation, the one Calvinist and the other Lutheran, produced two supranational Churches. On the contrary, both Calvinism and Lutheranism manifested themselves in different forms so that in effect every European nation with a Reformed Church had one with certain unique features. All these churches had some elements, doctrinal or liturgical or ministerial, in common and this included the Church of England which had some links with all the other Reformed Churches of Europe. The result of the Oxford Movement was the steering of the Church of England in a different direction, away from its links with continental Protestants, and into the position of a via media between Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Gladstone was brought up as an Evangelical, but soon diverged from his earlier position by adopting the doctrine of baptismal regeneration and accepting a high view of the visible church. Although he continued to value religious experience, during the 1830s he sided with Orthodox High Churchmen in abandoning claims about the possibility of firm assurance of salvation. He did not, however, follow Newman in seeing human merit as a ground of justification. In 1838 he published The State in its Relations with the Church in order to vindicate the principle of establishment, revealing in the revised edition of 1841 a remarkable affinity with contemporary German political philosophy. His Church Principles considered in their Results (1840) argued the claims of the Church of England on the basis of his communitarian social premises, but he acknowledged the authenticity of faith outside its bounds.

This chapter presents some concluding thoughts from the author. It discusses how the Church of England mitigated decline in the 19th and early 20th centuries by creating a moral community which went well beyond those who were within its own fold. It also discusses how the two concepts — cultural defence and civil religion — can help us understand how the inter-war Church of England was able to maintain a public presence and power out of proportion to its numerical strength.

The last Calvinist discussed in this book is John Edwards, whose father Thomas Edwards had been a Puritan heresiographer. Nonetheless he conformed to the Church of England in 1660, picturing himself as embattled in that church as he defended Calvin against detractors, argued that the Church of England's theology was properly Calvinist, and continued the struggle against Arminianism within it. Unlike others in this book, he proudly claimed the term “Calvinist” for himself. He confronted the challenges discussed in other chapters—the new science, Deism, scoffing, atheism, Socinianism, Anti-Trinitarianism—opposing them in numerous writings that dealt with epistemology, the role and definition of reason, natural theology, and the authority of scripture. Like others in the Church of England at that time he was deeply interested in the Church Fathers.

The liturgical revolution of the second half of the 19th century was the most violent the Church of England had experienced since the Reformation. Not all of this was attributable to the Oxford Movement, in its origins a small and obscurantist pressure group whose theological outlook was profoundly conservative. However, the movement unleashed other forces within both Church and nation anxious to break away from what they regarded as the mundaneness of official religion in England over the previous century and a half. Some were theological radicals anxious to take the rationalism of the 18th-century Church one stage further. Some were political radicals who wanted to reform the Church. Some were romantics who wanted the Church to return to the perceived orthodoxy of the Caroline divines or the ceremonial splendour of the Middle Ages. All these pressure groups vied with each other for power over the Church of England after 1820, and all could count their successes.