영국에서의 宗敎와 國家- 잉글랜드 國敎會 法制의 변천을 중심으로 -

Abstract

In the formation of relationship between religion and state or church and politics, the United Kingdom underwent a special course. From the aspect of state formation, the United Kingdom seems to be an alliance of such four non-independent states as England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Until the United Kingdom achieved the current system of kingdoms united, the four non-independent states had repeatedly combined or separated in order to obtain supremacy over the rest. In that course, religion played a crucial role. As a tool of their dominancy, political forces either gave a special position to a specific Christian denomination or church, thus making it a juristic person as a state church, or fought to reject other denominations as heresies, As a result, since the Middle Ages, occasionally repeated in the realm of the United Kingdom was the establishment of state church, which officially recognized a specific Christian denomination or church as 「a state church」, or the dis-establishment of state church, which broke away from the former position of approved church. Eventually, England has Anglican Church of Protestantism as its state church, whereas Scotland has Presbyterian Church of Scotland as the counterpart of England for the present. Therefore, the United Kingdom seems to have a peculiar system of religion and politics, namely one Parliament politically and two established Churches religiously. This study examined the establishment of Church of England in England and the change of its legislation. As supremacy of combined states, England was dominated by Roman Catholic Church and Vatican since Roman conquest of Britain. However, Henry Ⅷ denied Pope’s supremacy and broke away from the Roman Catholic System, thus establishing its own state church system on the basis of Anglican Church of Protestant Denomination. Once it returned to Roman Catholic System, but the United Kingdom has maintained a state church system until now, based on Anglican Church of confessed Protestantism. In this study, the general aspects of Anglican Church system in England, such as its meaning, characteristic and organization, were examined first (Ⅱ). And then the legislative change of state church was looked into, focusing on Acts of Parliament, out of a variety of legislative sources (Ⅲ). Acts of Parliament are a variety of state laws, enacted by Parliament to maintain the unity or separation of state and religion, and had played an important role of church laws in the formation of Anglican Church in England for a long time before the right of independent enactment of state church law was given to General Synod in 1919.