RELIGIOUS disunity in Britain has been apparent from earliest days. No one knows how, in the second century, Christianity reached Britain. Later, two distinct churches developed​—the Celtic, which was independent, and the Roman, under the pope’s control.

For several centuries there was no serious clash, mainly because the two churches were concentrated in different parts of the country. However, by the seventh century their missionary activities brought them into collision. Their differences were over ceremonial details, the date of Easter, and suchlike, rather than over doctrine.

In 663 C.E. the King of Northumbria invited both sides to the Council of Whitby, of which he was chairman. Though of the Celtic persuasion himself, he took the side of Rome, and the Council agreed. As a result, the Celtic influence on religion soon faded in most of Britain. Rome had triumphed. For almost 900 years she remained the dominant church, continually strengthening her religious control as well as her political influence. Her growing arrogance spawned deep resentment in the rulers and discontent among the people.

The Break With Rome

Church/​State hostility reached a climax in the 16th century during the reign of Henry VIII. Catherine of Aragon had not provided him a surviving male heir, so he desperately wanted to divorce her and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope refused to dissolve the marriage by special dispensation, though this was a fairly common practice at the time. Apparently in this case political factors dictated the pope’s refusal. Henry then had Parliament enact a series of bills that severed all ties to Rome and made him supreme head of the church in England. Thus, in 1534, the church in England became independent.

Upon Henry’s death his nine-year-old son, Edward, became king. A council of regency was appointed to govern until he came of age. It was a reforming body, determined to remove idolatry and superstition from religious worship. But Edward died six years later, to be succeeded by Mary, Henry’s daughter by his first wife. As a devout Roman Catholic, Mary determined to return the Church of England to the bosom of Rome. In 1554 the anti-Rome laws were repealed. Full communion with Rome was restored a year later. Then followed the savage persecution of unrepentant Protestants, some 300 of whom were burnt to death at the stake.

Mary, however, ruled for only five years. Her half sister Elizabeth succeeded her to the throne, and Elizabeth determined to follow in the footsteps of Henry VIII, her father. Within a year, two Acts of Parliament restored the legislation repealed during Mary’s reign. The pope retaliated by excommunicating Elizabeth. He then attempted an invasion of Britain, supported by the Spanish Armada, but it failed disastrously. All of this, in turn, brought savage persecution upon the recusants, as Catholics who refused to attend Anglican services were known. About 250 of them were put to death.

Internal Divisions

The Church of England was once again freed from Rome but not from trouble. Internal division appeared. On one hand the Anglicans, or High Churchmen, wished to cling to Roman rituals, which had been left intact in spite of the break with Rome. On the other hand, the Puritans, or Low Churchmen, regarded such rituals as superstitious, unscriptural, and idolatrous. Among the Puritans were those whose revulsion was so strong that they left their homes and sailed away to the “New World.” The first of them left on the Mayflower on September 16, 1620.

In 1642 three years of civil war erupted. Charles I, claiming to rule by divine right, had dissolved Parliament and was ruling autocratically. Supporting him were the Anglicans. On the other side were Parliament and the Puritans, successfully led by Oliver Cromwell. In 1649 they beheaded Charles, and the nation became a commonwealth headed by a protector. During the next ten years, Parliament disestablished the Church of England and replaced the Anglican form of worship with the austere Calvinistic Presbyterian style. What churches and monasteries still stood after the war were either closed or destroyed.

Cromwell proscribed the Anglican and Roman rituals but otherwise allowed freedom of worship. Thus it was that many sects arose, most to flutter and die. A few, however, grew into modern-day religious bodies, among them the Baptists, the Quakers, and the Congregationalists. Then, in 1738, John Wesley founded Methodism.

The Puritans and their presbyterianism soon lost favor with the people, who grew tired of their austere form of worship. So in 1660, not long after Cromwell’s death, Charles II was invited to come from exile to take the throne. He and the Anglicans moved cautiously but positively and in two years persuaded Parliament to reestablish the Church of England. Eventually, in 1829, full civil rights were restored to Roman Catholics.

In comparatively recent times the Catholic Church has promulgated three dogmas that have heightened the barrier between itself and the Protestant churches. These are the Immaculate Conception (sinlessness) of Mary (1854), the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven (1950), and the doctrinal infallibility of the pope (1870). Stumbling blocks to unity with other religions, indeed!

Anglican-Roman Catholic Efforts

In 1966 the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is generally acknowledged to be the spiritual head of the Anglican Church, agreed to the formation of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission. Beginning in 1970, it spent 12 years examining the difficulties hindering unity and recommending possible solutions. The Commission, made up of ten scholars from each religion, paid particular attention to three controversial issues: authority (including papal primacy and infallibility); Catholic adoration of the Eucharist; and the ordained ministry.

How was the Commission’s report received by the two churches? Neither rejected it out of hand. In fact, it is expected that each Church will take years to formulate an official response. But a London Times editorial forecast that “actual union between the two [Rome and Canterbury] is surely a generation away at least.” Blocking the path are such issues as contraception, married clergy, the infallibility and jurisdiction of the pope, the adoration of Mary, and the ordination of Anglican clergy, declared to be “utterly invalid and altogether void” by Leo XIII at the First Vatican Council in 1896.

When Pope John Paul II visited Britain in the summer of 1982, he and the Archbishop of Canterbury agreed to set up another international commission to study further the possibility of moving towards unity.

The Motives for Seeking Unity

Why the concern of Christendom’s religions to unite? Cardinal Hume told a conference of Catholic bishops in Rome that “there can be no doubt that a major obstacle to the effective preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the scandal of the disunity among his followers. . . . Throughout this century in particular, Christians have experienced increasing frustration and impatience with divisions amongst themselves.”

Some years ago, Anglican bishop Charles Brent said of the need for religious unity: “It’s little short of absurd to try to bring into the Church of Christ the great nations of the Far East unless we can present a united front.”

Others think that the motive for seeking unity lies elsewhere. Russell Lewis wrote in the Daily Mail: “My impression is that the drive for unity is not really a popular movement at all but something got up by a trendy elite of bishops and lesser clergy who think that it will stop the decline in their audience ratings. It is striking how the big urge to unity has coincided with plummeting attendances beginning in the Sixties in the Protestant mainline churches and in the Seventies among the Catholics.”

Whatever the motives for seeking unity, the religious disunity that has prevailed for centuries in Britain is contrary to the apostle Paul’s clear exhortation to Christians: “Agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.”​—1 Corinthians 1:10, New International Version.

What Happens Now?

Well aware of the religious disunity around them and the setbacks they have encountered, the ecumenists continue their conciliatory efforts. For them, unity is a pious hope for the distant future. For the time being, they seem happy to settle for cooperation and mutual respect. The talk is of “union without absorption” as the joint chairmen of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission described it.

Striking the same note, the Archbishop of Canterbury told the representatives of several religions: “I rejoice in our distinctiveness. It would be a sad day if we were to be amalgamated into some grey uniformity.” So the unity they have in mind for the foreseeable future is not true unity at all, not a return to the pure Christianity of the first century, not a return to the Bible.