Church Of England

Church of England

Abbreviation	C of E
Classification	Anglican
Orientation	Anglicanism
Polity	Episcopal
Supreme Governor	Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Primate of All England	Justin Welby as Archbishop of Canterbury
Region	England Wales (cross-border parishes) Isle of Man Channel Islands Gibraltar
Headquarters	Church House, Westminster
Origin	England
Separated from	Roman Catholic Church
Separations	English Dissenters Methodists Brethren Free Church of England Episcopal Church (USA) Quakers
Members	26 million (2015)
Official website	churchofengland.org

The Church of England (C of E) is the Anglican Christian state church of England.Headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury (currently Justin Welby) and primarily governed from London with the monarch as the supreme governor, the Church of England is also the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. The church dates its formal establishment as a national church to the 6th-century Gregorian mission in Kent led by Augustine of Canterbury, with considerable features introduced and established during and following the English Reformation in the 16th century.

The English church renounced papal authority when Henry VIII sought to secure an annulment from Catherine of Aragon in the 1530s. The English Reformation accelerated under Edward VI's regents before a brief restoration of papal authority under Queen Mary I and King Philip. The Act of Supremacy 1558 renewed the breach and the Elizabethan Settlement charted a course whereby the English church was to be both Catholic and Reformed: