History of Christianity in Britain
first appeared in Britain in antiquity, during the Roman period. The Roman Catholic Church was the dominant form of Christianity in Britain from the 6th century through to the Reformation era in the Middle Ages. The Church of England became the independent established church in England and Wales in 1534 as a result of the English Reformation. In Wales, disestablishment took place in 1920 when the Church in Wales became independent from the Church of England. In Scotland, the Church of Scotland, established in a separate Scottish Reformation in the 16th century, is recognised as the national church, but not established.
Following the Reformation, adherence to the Catholic Church continued at various levels in different parts of Britain, especially among recusants and in the north of England. Particularly from the mid-17th century, forms of Protestant nonconformity, including Baptists, Quakers, Congregationalists, English Presbyterians and, later, Methodists, grew outside of the established church.
Roman Britain
People in Roman Britain typically believed in a wide range of gods and goddesses, and worshipped several of them, likely selecting some local and tribal deities as well as some of the major divinities venerated across the Empire. Both indigenous British deities and introduced Roman counterparts were venerated in the region, sometimes syncretising together, as in cases like Apollo-Cunomaglus and Sulis-Minerva. Romano-British temples were sometimes erected at locations that had earlier been cultic sites in pre-Roman Iron Age Britain. A new style of "Romano-Celtic temple" developed, influenced by both Iron Age and imperial Roman architectural styles but distinct from both; buildings in this style remained in use until the 4th century. The cults of various eastern deities had also been introduced to Roman Britain, among them Isis, Mithras, and Cybele; Christianity was one of these eastern cults. The archaeologist Martin Henig suggested that to "sense something of the spiritual environment of Christianity at this time", one could compare it to modern India, where Hinduism, "a major polytheistic system", remains dominant, and "where churches containing images of Christ and the Virgin are in a tiny minority against the many temples of gods and goddesses".England
Celts
The late Romano-British population seem to have been mostly Christian by the Sub-Roman period. The Great Conspiracy in the 360s and increased raiding around the time of the Roman withdrawal from Britain saw some enslaved. Later medieval legends concerning the conversion of the island under King Lucius or from a mission by Philip the Apostle or Joseph of Arimathea have been discredited as "pious forgeries" attempting to establish independence or seniority in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Norman times. The first archaeological evidence and credible records showing a community large enough to maintain churches and bishops date to the 3rd and 4th centuries. These more formal organisational structures arose from materially modest beginnings: the British delegation to the 353 Council of Ariminum had to beg for financial assistance from its fellows in order to return home. The Saxon invasions of Britain destroyed most of the formal church structures in the east of Britain as they progressed, replacing Christianity with a form of Germanic polytheism. There seems to have been a lull in the Saxon westward expansion traditionally attributed to the Battle of Badon but, with the Yellow Plague of Rhos caused by the arrival of the Plague of Justinian around 547, the expansion resumed. By the time Cornwall was subjugated by Wessex at Hingston Down in 838, however, it was largely left to its native people and practices, which remained inherently Christian. St Piran's Oratory dates to the 6th century, making it one of the oldest extant Christian sites in Britain.Anglo-Saxons
While Christianity survived continuously in the culturally Brittonic west, it was extinguished in the east with the arrival of the Saxons until it was reintroduced to eastern Britain by the Gregorian Mission,. From the seat of his archdiocese at Canterbury, Augustine of Canterbury, with help from Celtic missionaries such as Aidan and Cuthbert, successfully established churches in Kent and then Northumbria: the two provinces of the English Church continue to be led from the cathedrals of Canterbury and York. However, Augustine failed to establish his authority over the Welsh church at Chester. Owing to the importance of the Scottish missions, Northumbria initially followed the native Church in its calculation of Easter and tonsure but then aligned itself with Canterbury and Rome at the 664 Synod of Whitby. Early English Christian documents surviving from this time include the 7th-century illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels and the historical accounts written by the Venerable Bede.Normans
Christianity after the Norman Conquest was generally separatist, its kings claiming the right to overrule the pope in appointing bishops.By the 11th century, the Normans had overrun England and begun the invasion of Wales. Osmund, bishop of Salisbury, codified the Sarum Rite and, by the time of his successor, Roger, a system of endowed prebends had been developed that left ecclesiastical positions independent of the bishop. During the reign of Henry II, the rising popularity of the Grail myth stories coincided with the increasingly central role of communion in Church rituals. Tolerance of commendatory benefices permitted the well-connected to hold multiple offices simply for their spiritual and temporal revenues, subcontracting the position's duties to lower clerics or simply treating them as sinecures. The importance of such revenues prompted the Investiture Crisis, which erupted in Britain over the fight occasioned by King John's refusal to accept Stephen Langton, Pope Innocent III's nominee, as archbishop of Canterbury. England was placed under interdict in 1208 and John excommunicated the following year; he enjoyed the seizure of the Church's revenues but finally relented owing to domestic and foreign rivals strengthened by papal opposition. Although John quickly reneged on his payments, Innocent thereafter took his side and roundly condemned Magna Carta, calling it "not only shameful and demeaning but illegal and unjust". A major reform movement or heresy of the 14th century was Lollardy, led by John Wycliffe, who translated the Bible into English. Posthumously condemned, his body was exhumed and burnt and its ashes thrown into the River Swift.
Even before the Conquest, Edward the Confessor had returned from Normandy with masons who constructed Westminster Abbey in the Romanesque style. The cruciform churches of Norman architecture often had deep chancels and a square crossing tower, which has remained a feature of English ecclesiastical architecture. England has many early cathedrals, most notably Winchester Cathedral, York Minster, Durham Cathedral, and Salisbury Cathedral. After a fire damaged Canterbury Cathedral in 1174, Norman masons introduced the Gothic style, which developed into the English Gothic at Wells and Lincoln Cathedrals around 1191. Oxford and Cambridge began as religious schools in the 11th and 13th centuries, respectively.
English Reformation
was named Defender of the Faith for his opposition to Luther's Reformation. The fact he had no living son and the pope's inability to permit him a divorce from his wife while her nephew's armies held Rome, however, prompted Henry to summon the Reformation Parliament and to invoke the statute of praemunire against the English Church, ultimately leading to the 1532 Submission of the Clergy and the 1534 Acts of Supremacy that made the Church of England an independent national church, no longer under the governance of the Pope, but with the King as Supreme Governor. A law passed the same year made it an act of treason to publicly oppose these measures; John Fisher and Thomas More and many others were martyred for their continued Catholicism. Fear of foreign invasion was a concern until the 1588 rout of the Spanish Armada, but land sales after the Dissolution of the lesser and greater monasteries united most of the aristocracy behind the change. Religious rebellions in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire in 1536, in Cumberland in 1537, and in Devon and Cornwall in 1549 were quickly dealt with. The doctrine of the English Reformation differed little at first except with regard to royal authority over canon law: Lutheranism remained condemned and John Frith, Robert Barnes, and other Protestants were also martyred, including William Tyndale, whose Obedience of a Christian Man inspired Henry's break with Rome and whose translation of the Bible formed the basis of Henry's own authorised Great Bible. Meanwhile, laws in 1535 and 1542 fully merged Wales with England.For the next 150 years, religious policy varied with the ruler: Edward VI and his regents favoured greater Protestantism, including new books of Common Prayer and Common Order. His sister Mary restored Catholicism after negotiations with the pope ended Rome's claims to the former Church lands, but two false pregnancies left her sister Elizabeth I as her heir. Upon Elizabeth's ascension, the 1558 Act of Uniformity, 1559 Act and Oath of Supremacy, and the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563 formed the Religious Settlement which restored the Protestant Church of England. The vicissitudes of the clergy during the period were satirised in "The Vicar of Bray". The papal bull Regnans in Excelsis supporting the Rising of the North and the Irish Desmond Rebellions against Elizabeth proved ineffective, but similarly ineffective were the Marian exiles who returned from Calvin's Geneva as Puritans. James I supported the bishops of Anglicanism and the production of an authoritative English Bible while easing persecution against Catholics; several attempts against his person—including the Bye and Gunpowder Plots—finally led to harsher measures. Charles I provoked the Bishops' Wars in Scotland and ultimately the Civil War in England. The victorious Long Parliament restructured the Church at the 1643 Westminster Assembly and issued a new confession of faith. Following the Restoration, onerous Penal Laws were enacted against Dissenters, including the Clarendon Code. Charles II and James II tried to declare royal indulgences of other faiths in 1672 and in 1687; the former was withdrawn in favour of the first Test Act, which—along with the Popish Plot—led to the Exclusion Crisis, and the latter contributed to the Glorious Revolution of 1688.