Introduction

This introduction sets out the issues dealt with in this book. The return of religion in the public sphere presents a challenge for both modern societies and christian churches, especially Anglican churches with their christendom heritage. Reconfiguring how we approach this involves some significant archaeology of the issues. Following a review of Bede’s imagined English Christendom, the focus is on the foundational period from the Norman Conquest to Magna Carta looking especially at William I, Lanfranc, Anselm, Henry II and Becket, and Pope Innocent III. The Tudor Royal Supremacy and the attempt of Richard Hooker to re-shape the debate provides an opening to approach the issues in a different and more fundamental way. Two overseas examples of the dismantling of this christendom, Australia and America, enable a more critical approach to the issues of ecclesiology, institutions order and power, the role of the church and the nature of the theocratic element in Christianity and especially Anglicanism.