God's Kingdom in England

The Anglican Church remains a pillar of the British establishment. It is the state church, both venerable and dependable – and is often taken for granted. Yet its history is far from comfortable. It was born into an age of bloody turmoil, marked by Henry VIII’s divisive secession from Rome in 1534. And between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Anglicanism became the bitter battleground for some of the fiercest contests in Europe over interpretations of the Bible, liturgy and theology. Reformed or Catholic? Puritan or Arminian? Bishops or elders? As Euan Cameron reveals, in his much-anticipated new book, these were among the crucial questions facing men such as Cranmer, Latimer, Lancelot Andrewes, Laud and Traherne. In addressing them, the Anglican divines created not just their own national church but also timeless masterpieces of world literature such as the Book of Common Prayer, the King James Bible, Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity and the sublime verse of the scholar-lyricist George Herbert. This `golden age’ of devotional writing was inseparable from the volatile politics of the age.