Arminianism in the Church of England

Arminianism in the Church of England was a theological strand or tendency within the clergy of the Church of England particularly evident in the second quarter of the 17th century (the reign of Charles I of England). Arminianism properly refers in specific terms to the theology of the Dutch minister and academic Jacobus Arminius, who died in 1609, and his Remonstrant followers, and so to certain proposed revisions to tenets of Reformed theology (known less accurately as Calvinism). "Arminianism" in the English sense, however, had a broader application: to questions of church hierarchy, discipline and uniformity; to details of liturgy and ritual; and in the hands of the Puritan opponents of Laudianism, to a wider range of perceived or actual ecclesiastical policies, especially those implying any reconciliation with Roman Catholic practice or extension of central government powers over clerics.

While the term "Arminian" was widely used in debates of that time, and was subsequently co-opted as convenient to match later High Church views of Anglicanism, scholarly debate has not settled the exact content or historical role of English Arminianism. The Synod of Dort of 1619 in effect destroyed the political base of Dutch Arminianism. Arminian views held in England after that time are variously seen as advanced, and even disruptive of Calvinism that was quite orthodox in the Church of England by the end of the reign of Elizabeth I (a position argued by Nicholas Tyacke); or on the other hand a return to the spirit of the Elizabethan Settlement. The status of the canons of Dort in relation to the Church, and the interpretation of the Thirty-Nine Articles in the light of these and other pronouncements on Reformed theology, remained unclarified until the 1640s.

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