English national church that traces its history back to the arrival of Christianity in Britain during the 2nd century; it has been the original church of the Anglican Communion (Anglicanism) (q.v.) since the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. As the successor of the Anglo-Saxon and medieval English church, it has valued and preserved much of the traditional framework of medieval Roman Catholicism in church government, liturgy, and customs, while it also has usually held the fundamentals of Reformation faith.

The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons, who began invading Britain after Rome stopped governing the country in the 5th century, was undertaken by St. Augustine (Augustine of Canterbury, Saint), a monk in Rome chosen by Pope Gregory I to lead a mission to the Anglo-Saxons. He arrived in 597, and within 90 years all the Saxon kingdoms of England had accepted Christianity.

In the centuries before the Reformation, the English church experienced periods of advancement and of decline. During the 8th century, English scholarship was highly regarded, and several English churchmen worked in Europe as scholars, reformers, and missionaries. Subsequently, Danish invasions destroyed monasteries and weakened scholarship. Political unity in England was established under the Wessex kings in the 10th century, however, and reforms of the church took place.

In the 11th century the Norman Conquest of England (1066) united England more closely with the culture of Latin Europe. The English church was reformed according to Roman ideas: local synods were revived, celibacy of the clergy was required, and the canon law of western Europe was introduced in England.

During the Middle Ages, English clergy and laity made important contributions to the life and activities of the Roman Catholic church. The English church, however, shared in the religious unrest characteristic of the later Middle Ages. John Wycliffe, the 14th-century Reformer and theologian, became a revolutionary critic of the papacy and is considered a major influence on the 16th-century Protestant Reformation.

The break with the Roman papacy and the establishment of an independent Church of England came during the reign of Henry VIII (1509–47). When Pope Clement VII refused to approve the annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, the English Parliament, at Henry's insistence, passed a series of acts that separated the English church from the Roman hierarchy and in 1534 made the English monarch the head of the English church. The monasteries were suppressed, but few other changes were immediately made, since Henry intended that the English church would remain Catholic, though separated from Rome.

After Henry's death, Protestant (Protestantism) reforms of the church were introduced during the six-year reign of Edward VI. In 1553, however, when Edward's half-sister, Mary, a Roman Catholic, succeeded to the throne, her repression and persecution of Protestants aroused sympathy for their cause. When Elizabeth I became queen in 1558, the independent Church of England was reestablished. The Book of Common Prayer (Book of Common Prayer) (q.v.; 1549, final revision 1662) and the Thirty-nine Articles (q.v.; 1571) became the standards for liturgy and doctrine. (In 2000 the church introduced Common Worship, a collection of services and prayers, as the official alternative to The Book of Common Prayer for congregations favouring a more “modern” liturgy.)

In the 17th century the Puritan movement led to the English Civil Wars (1642–51) and the Commonwealth (1649–60). The monarchy and the Church of England were repressed, but both were restored in 1660.

The Evangelical movement in the 18th century emphasized the Protestant heritage of the church, while the Oxford Movement in the 19th century emphasized the Roman Catholic heritage. These two attitudes have continued in the church and are sometimes referred to as Low Church and High Church, respectively. In the 20th century the church was active in the ecumenical movement.

The Church of England has maintained the episcopal form of government. It is divided into two provinces, Canterbury (Canterbury, archbishop of) and York, each headed by an archbishop, with Canterbury taking precedence over York. Provinces are divided into dioceses, each headed by a bishop and made up of several parishes. Women deacons, known originally as deaconesses and serving basically as assistants to priests, were first ordained by the Church of England in 1987, allowing them to perform virtually all clerical functions except the celebration of the Eucharist. The church voted in 1992 to ordain women as priests; the first ordination, of 32 women, took place in 1994 at Bristol Cathedral. Following an intense debate, the church voted in 2008 to consecrate women as bishops.