Elizabethan Religious Settlement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
This article has been tagged since December 2006.

Background
Part of the series on Anglicanism

Anglican Communion
Christianity English Reformation Apostolic Succession Catholicism Episcopal polity
People
Thomas Cranmer Thomas Cromwell Henry VIII Hugh Latimer Richard Hooker Elizabeth I
Instruments of Unity
Archbishop of Canterbury Lambeth Conferences Anglican Consultative Council Primates' Meeting
Liturgy and Worship
Book of Common Prayer High Church · Low Church Broad Church Oxford Movement Thirty-Nine Articles Book of Homilies Doctrine Ministry Sacraments Saints in Anglicanism This box: view • talk • edit

The Elizabethan Religious Settlement was Elizabeth I’s response to the religious divisions created over the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I. This response was set out in two Acts of the Parliament of England. The Act of Supremacy of 1559 re-established the English church’s independence from Rome. The Act of Uniformity 1559 set out the form the English church would now take.

Often seen as a terminal point for the English Reformation and the foundation of a "via media Anglicanism" by scholars, some historians now commonly regard the "settlement" as taking place long before England had become an extensively quasi-Protestant nation on a popular level. It is now common to see the "settlement" as belying or even provoking great divisions in the population and among the clergy which cannot be reduced to a few simple categories like "conservatives," "Anglicans," and "Puritans," a traditional arrangement.