England‘s Anglican Reformation

The English Reformation gave rise to the global Christian communion called Anglicanism: but neither immediately nor directly. This highly distinctive form of Christianity – ritualistic but nondogmatic, self-consciously moderate but staunchly nationalistic – has long been closely tied to English national identity. 

This lecture asks how it came to emerge over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, tracing its roots in the Reformation and showing how political chance and the traumas of civil war led to its slow and improbable ascent to dominance.