Anglican religious order

Anglican religious orders are communities of men or women (or in some cases mixed communities of both sexes) in the Anglican Communion who live under a common rule of life. The members of religious orders take vows which often include the traditional monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, or the ancient vow of stability, or sometimes a modern interpretation of some or all of these vows. Members may be laity or clergy, but most commonly include a mixture of both. They lead a common life of work and prayer, sometimes on a single site, sometimes spread over multiple locations.

Members of religious communities may be known as monks or nuns, particularly in those communities which require their members to live permanently in one location; they may be known as friars or sisters, a term used particularly (though not exclusively) by religious orders whose members are more active in the wider community, often living in smaller groups. Amongst the friars and sisters the term mendicant is sometimes applied to orders whose members are geographically mobile, frequently moving between different small community houses. Brother and Sister are common forms of address across all the communities. The titles Father and Mother or Reverend Father and Reverend Mother are commonly applied to the leader of a community, or sometimes more generally to all members who have been ordained as priests. In the Benedictine tradition the formal titles Right Reverend and Very Reverend are sometimes applied to the Abbot (leader) and Prior (deputy leader) of the community. Benedictine communities sometimes apply the titles Dom and Dame to professed male and female members, rather than Brother and Sister.

Religious orders were dissolved by King Henry VIII when he separated the Church of England from papal primacy. In 1626, the saintly Nicholas Ferrar, a protege of William Laud (1573-1645), and his family established the Little Gidding community. Since there was no formal Rule (such as the Rule of Saint Benedict), no vows taken, and no enclosure, Little Gidding cannot be said to be a formal religious community, like a monastery, convent, or hermitage. The household had a routine according to High Church principles and the Book of Common Prayer. Fiercely denounced by the Puritans and denounced as "Protestant Nunnery" and as an Arminian heresy, Little Gidding was attacked in a 1641 pamphlet entitled "The Arminian Nunnery". The fame of the Ferrars and the Little Gidding community spread and they attracted visitors. King Charles I visited three times, including on 2 May 1646 seeking refuge after the Royalist defeat at the Battle of Naseby. The community ended when its last member died in 1657.

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