Talk:Church of England

From Academic Kids

Who was Supreme Governor of the Church of England during the Commonwealth?

I think it was disestablished. Assuming the CofE was Royalist (a complete hunch), then I'd reckon they would recognise Charles II. Timrollpickering 07:54, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Nope. The Church of England was turned Presbyterian, and eventually congregationalist, during the Civil War. But it was still the established Church of England. I'd say it's accurate to say there was no Supreme Governor at this time. john 16:15, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Contents

1 Church of England in Wales 2 Order of headlines in article 3 Why 4 ECUSA and Break with Rome 5 Church of England religion 6 List of Governors 7 Appointment of Bishops 8 Assets

Church of England in Wales

The article on the Church of England states that it is the established church not only in England but the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, but omits the far more significant country of Wales, where it is the dominant church (indeed the present Archbishop of Canterbury is Welsh). Furthermore, the future Supreme Governor of the Church of England is the heir to the throne, i.e. the Prince of Wales.

The Church in Wales is not the established Church of Wales - Welsh disestablishment occurred early in the last century, i believe. Something like 90% of the Welsh were of dissenting churches at that time - I can't imagine the status of the formerly established church has changed much since then. john 00:56, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The most significant thing here is that the Church in Wales is not a part of the Church of England. The Church of England is the mother church of the Anglican Communion; the Church in Wales is a separate church which is also part of the Anglican Communion. Therefore mention of Wales is not relevant for this page; it may be relevant on the Anglican Communion page. Yes, it IS unusual that the current ABofC has never been a Church of England bishop; but in theory, the head of the Church of England could be from any church in communion with the CofE - ECUSA, the Nigerian Anglican Church, even, I think, in theory the Old Catholic Church in Germany. TSP 04:30, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Order of headlines in article

A question before I rashly change it- is there a reason that "appointment of bishops" and "recent developments" is listed before "history"? Seems pretty counter-intuitive to me. --Puffy jacket 11:13, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• Perhaps it's so you can get the headline news before diving into history? Just proposing an explanation, It makes sense to me the other way too.--Fish-man 11:51, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Frankly, the appointment of bishops thing should maybe be spun off to another page altogether. But as long as it's here, I'm gonna move it to a more logical place. Doops 17:17, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Why

Does it say "other Protestant churches". In what sense is the CoE cut and dried Protestant? I am not aware of any self declaration of that form.

--BozMo|talk 20:12, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

ECUSA and Break with Rome

Two items, which I think it would be nice to bring out.

1) The church has been in England for a long time even prior to the rise of Rome - it would be nice to include a bit about the influence of the early church there, and their artifacts (Book of Kells, etc...) which still color the church both in England and in the States. I am certain the Archbishop of Canterbury would also state that he saw the roots of Anglicanism dating back to those early Christians (not just to the first Archbishop). I think we should document this.

2) The ECUSA seems to be treated as if it is part-and-parcel of the COE, when in fact, although ECUSA owes allegiance to the Archbishop of Canterbury, that is about as far as it goes. ECUSA follows it's own path, and looks to the ABC for guidance. Including the Gene Robinson ordination (which imho, was a good thing) directly with COE information seems misleading - information about that event seems like it belongs more in Anglican Communion and the web page for ECUSA. -Fish-man 18:43, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think both these concerns have been addressed by revisions in the last month. Doops 22:18, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Church of England religion

I don't get it. So is the church of England currently and officially a Protestant church or a Catholic church? And I have another question, Protestant and Catholic are both Christian right?

I think a look at Nicene Creed should begin to answer your question. Crculver 03:46, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, Protestantism and Roman Catholicism are two of what most people would call the three main strands of Christianity, along with Eastern Orthodoxy — but there's nothing official about it. These are just the terms people use. But fundamentally, "protestant" is just an adjective meaning "engaging in protest" and "catholic" is just an adjective meaning "universal." While the Roman Catholic church is pretty much one monolithic thing, there are literally hundreds of independent Protestant churches. The Church of England is definitely one of them, since after its break with Rome it adopted many of the principles of the Protestant reformation. But it also thinks of itself as "catholic" in a certain sense of the word. Since the adjective "catholic" means "universal," a "catholic" church is a universal, world-wide church. The official position of the Church of England is that it is the legitimate English branch of the old world-wide (i.e. catholic) church, and that it only broke from Rome because the Pope was being too autocratic in preventing reforms. For a long time, it was popular in the church of England to call the pope the "Bishop of Rome" — recognizing his legitimate right to run Rome, but denying that he gets to run the whole world-wide church. Officially (in theory), if the Roman Catholic church reformed itself and stopped claiming things like Papal infallibility, the Church of England would fit right back into it. Nonetheless, if you had to assign the C of E to one of those three main strands, it would be in the Protestant one. (Additionaly, in its beliefs and ceremonies, it is one of the protestant churches most similar to the Roman Catholic one — which is probably the real, folk etymological reason people continue to call the C of E "both protestant and catholic".) Doops 05:12, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No, I think that's wrong. The C of E in all its formal statements regards itself as a part of the Catholic church (with a capital "C") which ended communion with Rome when Elizabeth I was finally excommunicated some time into her reign. It was the act of excommunication which was the schism. The Roman Catholic church tries all the time to claim ownership of "Catholic" as a term but it is freely used and owned by other churches including the CoE and the Old Catholic church and others. The Bishop of Rome is a common term for the pope, not just in the past, in all churches so I don't think that bit is right either. However, there is not a lot of point in correcting the main article since WikiPedia always fails when popular opinion runs contrary to history. --195.157.186.49 13:11, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't see how you disagree. If I'm reading it correctly, I agree with everything you wrote; your ¶ doesn't appear contradict mine — they're just different sides of the same coin with different emphases. Doops 17:48, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

List of Governors

Is it correct to describe Mary I as supreme governor? I thought during her reign it was the pope --BozMo 07:59, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

Is the list of governors of the church completely necessary? I would have thought that it was sufficient to say that it is the sovereign, and then mark the Commonwealth and Mary I as exceptions. The schism with Rome is also to do with the rise of nationalism, humanism (in the original sense) and grassroots protest for a reform of the church. Arguments between the Pope and Harry were just the pretext. It is unlikely that the king was ever really Protestant. As with many articles, it is easy to think that only grandees matter: can we have something about the place of the CofE in English society?

Gareth Hughes 13:53, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I quite agree - given that there is a perfectly good list of monarchs elsewhere, and especially given that this page doesn't contain a list of Archbishops of Canterbury, which would be far more relevant, this list seems quite superfluous. It's also possibly wrong, given that - as has been noted - Mary at least was a Roman Catholic who certainly wouldn't have regarded herself as Supreme Governor of a protestant church. I'll remove if no-one gives a good reason for its presence in a few days. TSP 04:30, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This list ALSO contradicts the one on the Supreme Governor of the Church of England page! I'm going to remove it now - it seems to serve no purpose, is duplicated in one other place and contradicted in another! If someone really feels it should be there they can roll back, but it seems to me to clearly be doing more harm than good. TSP 04:34, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Done; I've moved the text to Talk:Supreme Governor of the Church of England so it can be compared with the text there; it can also be got back from there if you disagree that it should have been deleted. Hope I haven't seemed rude. TSP 05:31, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No, thank you for your boldness. I think the page looks better without the list. The notion of Supreme Governor is important in the Church of England, but not that important. I have already said that I feel this article dwells too heavily on structural and historical considerations rather than giving the reader a clear impression of what the Church of England is like. I would like to contribute a little to the article, but I'm stuck on other things for a while. Gareth Hughes 12:34, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Appointment of Bishops

This section is extremely lengthy and goes into this not-especially-important process in a detail out of all proportion with the article's coverage of other issues.

I've just removed a section of it - "(Seniority of consecration in the Bishops' Orders, not seniority of appointment, determines who may serve in the House of Lords. Even if a Bishop is translated to another see, he does not lose seniority.)" - because it is simply wrong (membership of the House of Lords is based on how long you have been a diocesan bishop - date of consecration isn't relevant). However, I'm not sure what to replace it with - it seemed out of place here anyway - because this section is so out of proportion with the rest of the article. A corrected version of this sentence would properly belong in the section dealing with bishops' membership of the House of Lords; but there is no such section. Should this bit of the article be left, in the hope that the article's coverage of other issues will expand in proportion? Or is there somewhere else it can go? TSP 02:01, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Assets

Whoo, OK, whole new can of worms. We need to be careful with POV here; this section started off very NPOV and still is to a degree. For example, it refers to Bishopthorpe Palace's 15 "servants". It links to a slightly POV editorial article to back this up, but even this only says "staff" - given that Bishopthorpe is a conference venue, a historic building, and an office as well as the archbishop's home, it is not likely that most of these are accurately termed servants. I've no idea how many household staff the archbishop has, though I do know he makes is own breakfast. The average bishop in my experience has one or perhaps two full-time-equivalent household staff (gardener, cleaner, chauffeur). This doesn't include secretaries, but then you wouldn't say that a businessman's secretary was a servant. The Church has recently been reviewing whether current houses are economic. Auckland Castle, for example, which is mentioned as an example of excess, was proposed for sale; it's been kept because it is close to making a profit from conferences and so on - meaning that the bishop would be living there for free.

"Palace" is just the term for a bishop's house - some 'palaces' are three-bedroom semis on ordinary streets.

I think this is a valuable subject to have a section on, but it's not started off well.... well done to all those who've tried to neutralise it, but it still needs carefully going through sentence by sentence. TSP 12:40, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC).

• sigh* I'm really having difficulty making this section meaningful. The income of £134m is, I *think*, the Church Commissioners' income. (£134m is pretty insignificant for an organisation the size of the CofE - clergy pensions alone cost over £100m/year.) This is a pretty meaningless figure, though - the Church Commissioners are just a church body which looks after some jobs - they are not 'The Church'. The only meaningful figure really would be total income for all churches, I think, and I'm not sure that figure is obtainable. The total assets the Church Commissions manage is about 3.9m - I don't know what the 'total funds' figure cited in the article is. TSP 13:07, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What this section needs is a historial account of the church's assets, covering Henry VIII's seizing of the monastaries and, more importantly, the church commissioners' sale, at some point in the 19th century, of the remaining lands so they could (perhaps unwisely in retrospect) invest the proceeds in more liquid places like the stock market. Bishops' palaces, although interesting, are really not that important in the broader scheme of things. Doops 16:00, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The highly POV link so emotionally criticised by TSP is from the web site http://www.anglicansonline.org/ - presumably not widely regarded as "enemys of the church".

While TSP might find "difficulty making this section meaningful" the figures stand for themselves without additional POV statements and are simply the Church of England's own published figures.

I agree that the palace servants are servant only in the same sense that royal servants are servants (or that maids or chauffeurs are servants) and I will amend my comments to that effect in due course.

This may be someones cherished home ground, but in other parts of this Wiki I think a rather more professional approach is traditional with fewer "Whoo"s and "*sigh*"s and recollections of "bishops I have known" at a little more focus on the facts.--Daedelus 11:31, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Come now, that's not called for. This is the talk page, for pete's sake; it's not really fair to call TSP's professionalism into question on the basis of a few comments here. And frankly, Daedalus, you would come across as more "professional" yourself if you could conduct your arguments by focusing on the article rather than making it personal about TSP him-/herself. Doops 15:41, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's true, I know some bishops - to an extent, that's why I'm discussing it here rather than editing the article itself, because I don't want to fall into the trap of bias the other way - but that's also why I know that the impression given at least by the inital draft, of bishops living in servant-attended luxury, was very far from the truth. I'm afraid that my natural inclination with this section would be to wipe it and start again; while the 10 or so historic castles serving as bishops' homes, and the Church Commissioners' investment funds, are conspicuous assets of the church, I don't actually think they're particularly notable assets. Far more interesting and representative are the thousands of (often historic) churches, and the funds raised in individual parishes and used to pay clergy and do parish work.

Regarding the Independent article: no, the article isn't actually especially anti-church (not that I think Anglicans Online would refuse to host it if it was - as far as I can see they just archive all church-related articles they find interesting), and I did edit my initial text within minutes of posting it to correct myself - I'd only read the first paragraph or so when I originally commented on it, for which I apologise. Nevertheless, it's an opinion article, using statistics to make its point; not an unbiased source of statistics. I don't doubt the statistics are true, but they may not be representative (as I said above, the Church Commissioners are a very small part of the church). I think it's Wikipedia's task to be representative, not to use the facts or statistics which best demonstrate any particular point of view; and to that end I think our approach for this section needs examining carefully. TSP 01:03, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

PS. I read the talk page before reading the article today; it's looking a lot better, thanks to everyone who's worked on it. TSP 01:04, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The finances of the Church of England are quite complicated. The figures given do not 'speak for themselves', they do need interpretation. The Church Commissioners deal with the budget of stipends, training and pensions. They also deal with bishops' expenses, but that is in the process of review. The review found a great disparity in bishops' expenses, but that was based more on the difference in extra-diocesan responsibilities than the households they kept. Auckland Castle, for example, is the diocesan office for Durham Diocese, a conference centre and the home of the bishop (which takes up decidedly less space than the other operations). Parishes and dioceses have to foot the bill for the maintenance of a great chunk of built heritage, too. Durham Diocese, where I used to serve, had to consider a policy of not filling vacant parish posts for a year to reduce the stipends bill, and most other dioceses of the Church of England are finding that costs are increasing faster than income. Yes, the church is rich, but we're can't find much of a market for used cathedrals. Gareth Hughes 14:14, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm actually fairly happy with the passage as it stands now - User:Doops did a great rejig, which I think put User:Daedelus' original content and the content you (Gareth) and others added in response to it into a better context and brought out its proper significance. I've added some more content, clarifying the role of the Church Commissioners (who, incidentally, probably deserve their own page) and putting in several figures from the Church of England's Funding pages (http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/funding/)] where areas weren't covered in the rejigged version, and it's starting to look pretty encyclopaedic to me now; though I haven't really gone over the final paragraph, which covers among other things the thorny issue of bishops' houses, so I can't comment fully on that.

Incidentally, I'm in Durham diocese at the moment - not clergy, but I'm on Diocesan Synod, which discussed Auckland Castle just last meeting (with the bishop explaining the figures and exactly why it wouldn't be economically better for the diocese to sell the house)... so I was amused to see it as an apparent example of excess here. I think there ARE bishops' houses which are needlessly expensive - both the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds have asked recently for smaller houses - but because it makes so much from conferences and so on, Auckland actually isn't one of them. (Its context on the page now looks reasonably fair, though.) TSP 14:47, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)