Edmund Campion

Edmund Campion (b. 1540–d. 1581) was born in London and educated there and at Oxford, as a member of the newly founded St John’s College, a pillar of Mary Tudor’s Catholic revival. By the time he graduated Mary had been succeeded by Elizabeth I and Catholicism by an episcopally led form of Protestantism. Campion remained in Oxford, as tutor, lecturer, and orator, and was ordained as a deacon of the Church of England in 1569, but retained strong Catholic sympathies. In 1570 Elizabeth was excommunicated by Pius V and Campion retreated to Ireland. The following year he made his way to Douai in the Spanish Netherlands, where he recanted his Protestantism, and, in 1573, proceeded to Rome, where he entered the Society of Jesus. His Jesuit novitiate was undertaken in Brno, after which he taught in Prague. In 1579 he was chosen to undertake a mission to England, supporting those of his fellow countrymen who had remained loyal to Rome and endeavoring to convert those who had not. Together with Robert Persons (or Parsons [b. 1546–d. 1610]) and Ralph Emerson, Campion left Rome in April 1580. Arriving in England, he issued a challenge to debate doctrinal matters with leading Protestants. This was his so-called Brag. It was followed by the lengthier Rationes decem. All the while, he ministered in secret to the Catholic minority, until he was arrested at Lyford Grange, Berkshire, on 17 July 1581. During his imprisonment in the Tower of London he was granted his wish to debate with Protestant divines, but the four events were rigged against him. In November he was tried and found guilty of treasonable conspiracy against the queen, and on 1 December hanged at Tyburn with two other priests, Ralph Sherwin and Alexander Briant. He was beatified by Leo XIII in 1886 and canonized (as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales) by Paul VI in 1970. As this article confirms, Campion’s story is related in numerous Reference Works, expanded and/or placed in context in Overviews and examined in detail in Journals and Collections of Papers. For present purposes, his career is divided chronologically: up to 1570 under London and Oxford, 1570–1571 under History of Ireland, and the self-explanatory Mission to England, 1580–1581, which is subdivided into Primary Sources and Analysis. His afterlife is addressed under Legacy, first for the period 1581–1618, and then From Hagiography to Biography.

‘To stay, serve and witness’ – church politics and British inner cities in the 1980s

By analysing the Church of England's 1985 report Faith in the City (FITC), this article demonstrates that the church played a decisive role in shaping the discourse on British ‘inner cities’. Following a brief historical contextualization, the article examines the FITC report itself, how it came about and what arguments the Church of England introduced into the national debate on inner cities, as well as the media and political discussion that followed its publication and the reactions in the religious field. The article argues that the publication was a turning point in the inner cities discourse of the 1980s. It examines how the church succeeded in (re)directing national attention to the topic thereby countering the territorial stigmatization and replacing it with a more positive view focused on the potential of the residents living in the inner cities.

‘Seven whole days’: The Obligation of the Clergy of the Church of England to ‘say daily the Morning and Evening Prayer’

All Christians are called to pray. The daily offering of Morning and Evening Prayer is a particular obligation of the clergy of the Church of England, as part of the ‘manner of life of clerks’ laid down in Canon C 26. However, despite the significant time devoted to these prayers by the clergy on a daily basis, there has been little detailed examination of this canonical obligation. This article explores the historical background to the obligation and its effect today.

Robert Sanderson (1587–1663)

Over the course of the reigns of the last two Tudors and first three Stuarts – just in excess of a century – the national established Church of England was disestablished twice and re-established twice. Following the return to Rome under Mary, Elizabeth's settlement re-established the English Church under the royal supremacy, set down church doctrine and liturgy, embarked on a reform of canon law and so consolidated an ecclesial polity which many today see as an Anglican via media between papal Rome and Calvinist Geneva. However, as a compromise, the settlement contained in itself seeds of discord: it outlawed Roman reconciliation and recusancy; it extended lay and clerical discipline by the use of ecclesiastical commissioners; and it drove Puritans to agitate for reform on Presbyterian lines. While James I continued Elizabeth's policy, disappointing both Puritans and Papists, Charles I married a Roman Catholic, sought to impose a prayer book on Calvinist Scotland, asserted divine-right monarchy, engaged in an 11-year personal rule without Parliament and favoured Arminian clergy. With these and other disputes between Crown and Parliament, civil war ensued, a directory of worship replaced the prayer book, episcopacy and monarchy were abolished and a Puritan-style republic was instituted. The republic failed, and in 1660 monarchy was restored, the Church of England was re-established and a limited form of religious toleration was introduced under the Clarendon Code. In all these upheavals, understandings of the nature, source and authority of human law, civil and ecclesiastical, were the subject of claim and counter-claim. Enter Robert Sanderson: a life begun under Elizabeth and ended under Charles II, a protagonist who felt the burdens and benefits of the age, Professor of Divinity at Oxford and later Bishop of Lincoln, and a clerical-jurist who thought deeply on the nature of human law and its place in a cosmic legal order – so much so, he may be compared with three of his great contemporaries: the lawyer Matthew Hale (1609–1676), the cleric Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1678).

General Synod of the Church of England

This report covers the groups of sessions held in April and July 2021. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, General Synod did not meet formally in February.

The Printing and the Printers of The Book of Common Prayer, 1549–1561

Bibliographers have been notoriously 'hesitant to deal with liturgies', and this volume bridges an important gap with its authoritative examination of how the Book of Common Prayer came into being. The first edition of 1549, the first Grafton edition of 1552 and the first quarto edition of 1559 are now correctly identified, while Peter W. M. Blayney shows that the first two editions of 1559 were probably finished on the same day. Through relentless scrutiny of the evidence, he reveals that the contents of the 1549 version continued to evolve both during and after the printing of the first edition, and that changes were still being made to the Elizabethan revision weeks after the Act of Uniformity was passed. His bold reconstruction is transformative for the early Anglican liturgy, and thus for the wider history of the Church of England. This major, revisionist work is a remarkable book about a remarkable book.

Answers on a Postcard: Photo Elicitation in the Service of Local Ecclesial Strategy

This article reports the findings of a practical Theological Action Research project in a Church of England diocese in the UK, using photo elicitation. This image-based approach resulted in findings that echoed existing diocesan strategies, but also highlighted other issues that may otherwise have remained implicit, specifically the mode of mission and concerns regarding growth and survival. The visual data itself is analysed, revealing that the images do not always function as direct signifiers, but instead were generating creative, intuited responses. From the data, four mirrors were developed to reflect back to the groups their responses. This approach enabled local strategies to emerge from within espoused theologies, but also to make explicit their coherence or departure from the normative missiologies of the diocese. Finally, the authors suggest that the exposure of church leaders within training to qualitative research methodologies is releasing a new kind of leadership to emerge.

Statistical Analysis of the Membership Management Indicators of the Church of England UK Dioceses during the Recent (XXth Century) “Decade of Evangelism”

The paper focusses on the growth or/and decline in the number of devotees in UK Dioceses of the Church of England during the “Decade of Evangelism” [1990–2000]. In this study, rank-size relationships and subsequent correlations are searched for through various performance indicators of evangelism management. A strong structural regularity is found. Moreover, it is shown that such key indicators appear to fall into two different classes. This unexpected feature seems to indicate some basic universality regimes, in particular to distinguish behaviour measures. Rank correlations between indicators measures further emphasise some difference in evangelism management between Evangelical and Catholic Anglican tradition dioceses (or rather bishops) during that time interval.