019 Canterbury Cathedral Nave facing west Originally uploaded by Eric Rochester The Church of England is going through one its periods of agonisation. It would never have existed were it not for Henry_VIIIs divorce, though the Reformation would probably have affected the church in England in some way, even if it were not for the Tudor king. It has always been a three-way compromise between those who would like to have remained Roman Catholic, the genuine Protestants - the so-called evangelicals - who adhere closely to scriptural texts, and the ones in-between, probably the largest number, who just want to live-and-let-live. It has held together because nobody has generally pushed principle too hard. A few, like John Wesley, went off to found the Methodists, and from Newman's time there was a trickle into the Roman Catholic church, but the C of E has remained the dominant Christian grouping in England until recent years. The points at issue this time are the appointment of openly g...
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