Anglican
The Church of England separated from Rome by the Act of Supremacy in November 1534, for reasons of politics and governance before doctrine. It is the trunk of the largest cascade in Protestantism: Separatists, Quakers, Methodists, the Holiness and Pentecostal families, and the Baptists by way of English Separatism.
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.
Bodies in this family
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.
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.'
Research compiled July 2026. Page data built 2026-10-10.