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Concordia Theological Monthly

Publication Date

4-1-1960

Document Type

Article

Keywords

elizabeth i, protestant, england, reformation, elizabethan settlement, anglican, parliament, calvin, catholic, protestantism

Submission Type

Bible Study; Lecture; Sermon Prep

Abstract

Though the Church of England is now well past its 400th birthday, the sources of its distinctive doctrines and polity are still somewhat unclear. If we can agree that the conclusions reached by Queen Elizabeth I and her Parliament of 1559 were basic to the future shape of the Anglican Church, it is natural then to go into an examination of whether the outcome of the settlement depended primarily on Elizabeth, on someone else perhaps, or upon compromise between Elizabeth and her advisers. Needless to say, the still more difficult question of possible divine intervention in human affairs scarcely comes into consideration in the perhaps too mundane presuppositions of ecclesiastical historians. This paper attempts to trace the influence of the continental Reformed tradition upon the celebrated English religious events up to May in the year 1559, and thereby to indicate the importance for the Elizabethan Settlement of radical Protestant influences, which were non-English in their origin and program but which came to be part of the basic design for reform of the Church of England and modified considerably Elizabeth's more tentative Protestant proposals.

Disciplines

Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion

Submission Cost

Free

Submission Audience

Laity; Ministers; Scholars

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