Author

Forget, Andre

Journal

Anglican Journal

Date

2017 October

Volume

143

Issue

8

Page

7, 14

Notes

"According to Torrance Kirby, professor of ecclesiastical history and former director of the Centre for Research on Religion at McGill University's School of Religious Studies ... 'The English like to think of their church as entirely homegrown, and this is balderdash .. right from the beginning, England was radically dependent on continental influences', he said in an interview" (p. 7). Henry VIII's "immediate response to the Reformation was, according to British historian Diarmaid MacCulloch's 'The Reformation: A History', 'wholly negative'. Henry 'threw himself wholeheartedly behind the church's campaign against Luther' in the years following 1517, and in 1521, he had Luther's books publicly burned" (p. 7). "Cranmer had initially been skeptical of Luther's teachings but this changed when he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Nuremberg in 1532. At the time, the city was a hotbed of Lutheranism" (p. 7). During the reign of Mary "Cranmer was executed, but many of the other English reformers took sanctuary in Zurich, an important centre of Reformed theology. When they returned under Queen Elizabeth I, they brought a rigorous, Reformed Calvinistic theology with them" (p. 14). "It is an irony of history, in [the Rev. Daniel] Graves' view, that it is precisely this resurgent [19th century] interest in Catholicism that brought the Anglican church closer to its early Lutheran origins. 'The modern [Anglican] understanding of our sacramental life has become much closer to the Lutheran view', he says. 'I think it is is, interestingly enough, that notion of Catholicity that moves [the Anglican church] into the ecumenical movement .. that allows us to get into conversation and communion arrangements with the Lutherans'" (p. 14).

Subjects

Reformation Quincentenary, 2017

Reformation - England

Luther, Martin, 1483-1546

Henry VIII, King of England, 1491-1547 - Religion

Protestant churches - History - 16th century

Church of England - History - 16th century

Anglican Communion - Relations - Lutheran Church

Kirby, W.J. Torrance, 1955-

MacCulloch, Diarmaid (Diarmaid Ninian John), 1951-

Graves, Daniel F. (Daniel Francis)

Less detail