A Short History of the Church of England by the Revd J F Kendall

I picked up this book published in 1910 for the local Oxfam shop mainly because it is "Illustrated with direct colour photographs taken at the Church Pageant" showing the delightful Edwardian fantasy in which Notables dressed up and reacted the major scenes of the history of the Church in the Bishop of  London's Garden at Fulham.

As a 'history' Kendall account is of limited merit, however as a window on to the mind of an Edwardian Churchman and as a treatise in defense of "that middle yet catholic position which is the glory of Anglicanism" it is insightful and engaging.

We learn from Kendall that the Church of England existed first as an independent National expression of the Catholic faith - but this independence was sold down the river in the early middle ages by the political expediency of Kings needing the assistance of Popes to secure their position against internal or external rivals coupled with bungling or self-interested Archbishops.

Therefore when we get to Henry VIII, Kendall shows that the throwing off the supremacy of the Pope was not a revolution but a restoration of the English Church's former and true identity - and the 1549 English Prayer book a suppression of medieval additions in favour of a purified Catholic worship. It was the action of Puritans after the death of Henry that broke with Catholic doctrine, only to be restored by Elizabeth, and then again in 1662 following further Puritan spoiling.  The Act of Toleration is significant to Kendall as while it ends generations of destructive religious conflict it is an admission that the National Church could not hold within itself all the [Christian] people of the nation. 

It would be interesting to learn what Kendall made of disestablishment in Wales and the debacle of the 1928 Prayer Book neither would have helped his case.  And I think he would have his work seriously cut out to paint today's Church of England as either the National Church or the authentic English expression of Catholic faith - but maybe a man would could read a thousand years of history as building inevitably to the Oxford Movement would be up to that task.