The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and is the mother branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion as well as a founding member of the Porvoo Communion. Christianity was planted in Britain in the first or second centuries and existed independent of the Church of Rome. The Church of England was part of the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages, but broke from Rome in the reign of Henry VIII. It was fully rejoined to Rome with the Act of Reunion in the reign of Mary I and eventually separated again by the excommunication of Elizabeth I.
The head of the Church of England is officially the reigning monarch (at present, Elizabeth II), who is the called the "Supreme Governor". The effective head, however, is a senior cleric, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is also recognized as a symbolic head to the worldwide Anglican Communion of independent national or regional churches. The current Archbishop of Canterbury is Dr. Rowan Douglas Williams.
Although Christians may have been present in England from the Apostolic Age, and British bishops are recorded as being present at the Council of Arles in the early fourth century, Augustine of Canterbury was sent from Rome on a mission to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent in the year 597. With the help of Christians already residing there, he established his church in Canterbury, the capital of Kent, and became the first in the series of archbishops of Canterbury. Over the next few centuries, the pre-existing celtic christian churches were gradually absorbed into the Roman system begun by Augustine.
The Church of England considers itself both protestant and catholic: protestant insofar as it has adopted many of the principles of the reformation and refuses to accept Papal authority; catholic in that as it views itself the unbroken continuation of the mediaeval universal church rather than a new formation. In its practices, furthermore, the Church of England remains closer to Roman Catholicism than other protestant churches. Its theological beliefs are relatively conservative, its form of worship can be quite traditional and ceremonial, and its organization retains the historical episcopal hierarchy of bishops and dioceses.
In many people's eyes, however, the primary distinguishing mark of the Church of England is its breadth and open-mindedness. In addition to the traditional mainstream, the church has long included "high church" and "low church" factions with their own particular preferences. Today, practices range from those of the Anglo-Catholics with their incense and holy water to the emotional and far less ceremonial services of Evangelicals and Charismatics. More contentious are various doctrinal questions raised by the development of modern society, such as conflicts over the ordination of women (finally accepted in 1992 and begun in 1994) and the status of homosexuals in the church (unsettled today).
The Church of England has a legislative body, the General Synod. However, fundamental legislation still has to pass through the UK Parliament. The church has its own judicial branch, known as the Ecclesiastical courts, which are likewise a part of the UK court system.
In addition to England proper, the jurisdiction of the Church of England extends to the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. In recent years, expatriate congregations on the continent of Europe have become the Diocese in Europe.