As American As Anglicanism

William Swatos observes that “The Church of England at its inception and in the Elizabethan period — perhaps its finest hour — was ‘pure’ religion as Durkheim would define it: Society writ large” (217). The Anglican church was England at prayer.

Given the symbiosis of church and crown, it’s not surprising that they collapsed together in the early seventeenth century. The restoration redefined church membership, “abstracting” it from nationality. According to Swatos, “The Church of England became symbolic of the monarchy, while the monarchy became impotent as a power to be reckoned with in day-to-day British life” (218).

In the US, the Episcopal church ended up, by pressure of necessity, becoming something much closer to what “right-wing Puritans in the seventeenth century” had advocated, but given the new cultural setting, this also meant returning to its Durkheimian roots. If the church of England no longer represented English society as a whole, its accommodation to American ways meant that it came to embody American culture: “Thus the underlying spirit of the English reformation – that the church reflect national character – was rekindled in American denominationalism” (218).

(Swatos, “Beyond Denominationalism?: Community and Culture in American Religion, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 20:3 [1981] 217-227.)