Type | Fortnightly newspaper |
---|---|
Format | Tabloid |
Owner(s) | English Churchman Trust |
Editor | Rev Christopher Pierce |
Founded | 7 February 1761 |
Political alignment | Church of England / Anglican Communion |
Language | English |
Headquarters | 8 Cradlehall Gardens, Cradlehall Inverness, Scotland |
Website | www |
The English Churchman was a Protestant family newspaper published in England with a global readership. The newspaper was not an official organ of the Church of England, but was one of only three officially recognised church papers, alongside the Church Times and the Church of England Newspaper. [1] The formal title of the newspaper is English Churchman and St James's Chronicle.
The St James's Chronicle dates from 1761. The first edition of a newspaper under the name English Churchman was published on 5 January 1843.
Contrary to general ecclesiastical trends, the English Churchman began life as an Anglo-Catholic newspaper. It was 'set up for the express purpose of advocating Tractarian views' [2] and ranked alongside the British Critic as one of the 'two great Tractarian organs'. [3]
In 1884, the paper was acquired by those in sympathy with the Church Association, thus coming into evangelical hands, where it has remained ever since. [4] [5] It has gained a reputation for being 'robustly Reformed and Protestant, Evangelical, as the Formularies of the Church of England teach' (i.e. the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, and the ordinal). [6]
In 2002 the Editor, Dr Napier Malcolm, resigned and started The British Church Newspaper with the help of his existing team of helpers. The English Churchman was then virtually restarted from scratch under the editorship of Andrew Price and, from 2005, Rev Peter Ratcliff of the Church of England Continuing. The newspaper continued along the lines of Dr Malcolm during this period, distinctly opposed to remaining in the Anglican Communion. The newspaper took a clear Reformed line and ceased advocating Christian Zionism.
As of 1 February 2021, the editor was a clergyman of the Church of Ireland. [7]
The cover cost of English Churchman rose from one penny per copy in the late nineteenth century to one pound at closure. [8] The newspaper was originally weekly, but since the 1970s began publishing fortnightly. Most readers were subscribers who receive the newspaper by post, although the paper was historically available through newsagents.
After 262 years the newspaper ceased publication and closed on the 27th of June 2023. [9]
Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of the largest branches of Christianity, with around 110 million adherents worldwide as of 2001.
Anglo-Catholicism comprises beliefs and practices that emphasise the catholic heritage and identity of the various Anglican churches.
John Henry Newman was an English theologian, academic, intellectual, philosopher, polymath, historian, writer, scholar and poet, first as an Anglican priest and later as a Catholic priest and cardinal, who was an important and controversial figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. He was known nationally by the mid-1830s, and was canonised as a saint in the Catholic Church in 2019.
The Oxford Movement was a movement of high church members of the Church of England which began in the 1830s and eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose original devotees were mostly associated with the University of Oxford, argued for the reinstatement of some older Christian traditions of faith and their inclusion into Anglican liturgy and theology. They thought of Anglicanism as one of three branches of the "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic" Christian church. Many key participants subsequently converted to Roman Catholicism.
The term high church refers to beliefs and practices of Christian ecclesiology, liturgy, and theology that emphasize "ritual, priestly authority, [and] sacraments". Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term originated in and has been principally associated with the Anglican tradition, where it describes churches using a number of ritual practices associated in the popular mind with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The opposite tradition is low church. Contemporary media discussing Anglican churches erroneously prefer the terms evangelical to low church and Anglo-Catholic to high church, even though their meanings do not exactly correspond. Other contemporary denominations that contain high church wings include some Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches.
Holy Sepulchre London, formerly and in some official uses Saint Sepulchre-without-Newgate, is the largest Anglican parish church in the City of London. It stands on the north side of Holborn Viaduct across a crossroads from the Old Bailey, and its parish takes in Smithfield Market. During medieval times, the site lay outside ("without") the city wall, west of the Newgate.
In Anglican Christianity, low church refers to those who give little emphasis to ritual. The term is most often used in a liturgical sense, denoting a Protestant emphasis, whereas "high church" denotes an emphasis on ritual, often Anglo-Catholic.
Via media is a Latin phrase meaning "the middle road" or the "way between two extremes".
William Henry Sewell, English divine and author, helped to found two public schools along high church Anglican lines. A devout churchman, learned scholar and reforming schoolmaster, he was strongly influenced by the Tractarians.
Churchmanship is a way of talking about and labelling different tendencies, parties, or schools of thought within the Church of England and the sister churches of the Anglican Communion.
The Reformed Episcopal Church (REC) is an Anglican church of evangelical Episcopalian heritage. It was founded in 1873 in New York City by George David Cummins, a former bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
Charles Todd Quintard was an American physician and clergyman who became the second bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee and the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of the South.
William Gresley was an English divine. He was a high churchman, who joined in popularising the Tractarian movement of 1833.
The Parker Society was a text publication society set up in 1841 to produce editions of the works of the early Protestant writers of the English Reformation. It was supported by both the High Church and evangelical wings of the Church of England, and was established in reaction against the Tractarian movement of the 1830s. Its Council was dominated by evangelicals, but not to the exclusion of other views.
Charles Smith Bird (1795–1862) was an English academic, cleric and tutor, known as a theological author and writer of devotional verse, and described as a High Church Evangelical. He was the author of several significant books against Tractarianism.
Edward Newenham Hoare, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin was an Irish Anglican priest: he was Archdeacon of Ardfert from 1836 to 1839, then Dean of Achonry from 1839 to 1850; and Dean of Waterford from then until his death.
The Christian Guardian was a Wesleyan Methodist journal founded in Upper Canada in 1829. The first editor was Egerton Ryerson. It ceased publication in 1925 when the Methodist Church of Canada merged with the Presbyterians and Congregationalists to form the United Church of Canada, and merged their journals to create The New Outlook, later renamed the United Church Observer.
Henry Blunt (1794–1843) was an evangelical cleric of the Church of England. He introduced an early parish magazine, Poor Churchman's Evening Companion, in his London parish of Chelsea.
Evangelical Anglicanism or evangelical Episcopalianism is a tradition or church party within Anglicanism that shares affinity with broader evangelicalism. Evangelical Anglicans share with other evangelicals the attributes of "conversionism, activism, biblicism and crucicentrism" identified by historian David Bebbington as central to evangelical identity. The emergence of evangelical churchmanship can be traced back to the First Great Awakening in America and the Evangelical Revival in Britain in the 18th century. In the 20th century, prominent figures have included John Stott and J. I. Packer.
Protestant liturgy or Evangelical liturgy is a pattern for worship used by a Protestant congregation or denomination on a regular basis. The term liturgy comes from Greek and means "public work". Liturgy is especially important in the Historical Protestant churches, both mainline and evangelical, while Baptist, Pentecostal, and nondenominational churches tend to be very flexible and in some cases have no liturgy at all. It often but not exclusively occurs on Sunday.