Church of England
Anglican · 1534 · England; worldwide via the Anglican Communion
Parliament's Act of Supremacy (November 1534) made the crown supreme head of the English church, severing papal jurisdiction amid the annulment crisis; Henry kept Catholic doctrine, and the church's Protestant identity formed under Edward and Elizabeth. Cause tags attach to 1534 as it happened — politics and governance first, doctrine later.
Church of England was formed in 1534. Church of England continues today. Church of England's institutional line runs back through Roman Catholicism to the post-apostolic church. No body on this tree is the assembly of Acts 2; where a body claims that, the claim appears in the claimed-lineage layer.
Between the post-apostolic church and Church of England stand 2 divisions along the institutional line, counting separations and disputed forks, not mergers, renewals or national organizations.
At a glance
- Formed
- In 1534
- Family
- Anglican
- Region
- England; worldwide via the Anglican Communion
- Key figures
- Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, Elizabeth I
- Cause tags
- Politics, Governance
- Also known as
- Anglican; Anglican Communion (later); Episcopal (US)
What it separated from
- Separated from Roman Catholicism.
Bodies organized out of it or separated from it: The Brethren movement, Congregationalists, Religious Society of Friends, Methodism, Church of South India, Church of North India, Church of Pakistan.
On the tree
Solid lines are separations and unions; dashed lines are renewals that began inside a body; dotted gray lines are national organizations of one communion; a diamond marks a fork event where neither side is drawn as the one that left. Every line runs back to the post-apostolic church; no body descends from the assembly of Acts 2.
Claimed lineage
What this tradition says about its own origin · branch continuity
The one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church subsists in separated branches — classically Rome, Orthodoxy, and Canterbury — each holding the undivided faith and the apostolic succession of bishops though out of communion (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church definition); the Church of England thus not a new church but the ancient church of the land, reformed.
Its own sources: William Palmer, Treatise on the Church of Christ (1838); Tracts for the Times (Oxford Movement); Daubeny's earlier wider-branch variant.
The documented record: Rejected by the Holy Office (1864) and by the Orthodox Church — each because it holds itself the one Church; the evangelical-Anglican variant relocates unity to the invisible church, of which Fortescue observes every body 'generally holds that it is the purest branch.'
Sources
Research compiled July 2026. Page data built 2026-10-10.