I recently mentioned to my (RC) husband that I was looking into the Anglican Church. His snotty reply? "Why would you want to join a church that was started because someone wanted a divorce?"
Maybe I'm unfamiliar with some part of Anglican history, but, well, it seems like he's got a point. Obviously there are more difference between Roman Catholicism but the history seems pretty clear? Am I missing something? How do you respond to this accusation if you hear it?
PS - I hope I am not violating rules against debating in this forum by posting this. I am honestly interested in Anglicanism and curious about this.
This is a common misconception, but it is not really a very good historical reading of what happened.
One of the issues is that your husband is thinking of the Anglican Church or Church of England as if it was some new body or organization. That is not the case, and in fact even Rome did not see it that way at the time - that was never the claim. (that is also largely true with many other Protestant bodies but that is a bit beyond the scope of this discussion.) Rather what happened at that point in history was a schism, much like the schism between the Roman and Eastern Churches.
There had been a Church in England for many years, with their own bishops and hierarchy. The English bishops had always recognized the bishop of Rome as the patriarch of the West, and as such he was seen to have certain legitimate kinds of authority.
In the later middle ages, there were increasing problems throughout the West as far as what kind of authority that really was, both as far as interfering with the local Church on religious issues, but also in the way the Pope was acting as a political leader towards local governments.
In England, the break from the Pope under Henry VIII was preceded by several hundred years of serious problems and difficulties on that account. So to say that it was something just about Henry's marital issues is rather naive - it was something that could be seen building to a head for quite some time, and it involved serious and legitimate problems with the Roman power structure that were not being resolved.
In addition, there were the claims of the Reformers that the whole structure itself was illegitimate and always had been. This idea was largely rejected by Henry and was not, finally, the direction the CofE ultimately went in, but it certainly influenced many people and that idea still has a presence in Anglicanism today, though not in its most extreme forms.
So as you can see, there were several streams of historical circumstances that were coming together.
The particular occasion that brought it all to a head was the issue of Henry's marriage - his desire for a divorce or annulment which as Mark points out is really not ndivide in this instance. Political marriages were in this period very important to the political structures, and despite the idea that divorce was impossible, annulments for reasons of inheritance and political stability were readily available - the system, which was rather different than the modern one, was designed to accommodate those kinds of issues.
Henrys lack of a heir was a serious political problem in England - it was an issue of stability of the government. Although he had daughters, they were not considered candidates for a stable transfer of power - England had not that long ago come out of a period of civil war due to a female claim to the throne not being accepted by the aristocracy which had a lot of power in England. Henrys wife Catherine was beyond childbearing, and so could not provide a male heir - a new marriage was the obvious solution and one that happened regularly in such cases.
It was fully expected that this would be facilitated by Rome. However, the Pope at that time was very much under the political power of Spain, the enemy of England, and Spain choose to use its power to cause Rome to deny Henry's application.
So what you have is not only an instance of Henry being ticked off that he could not marry his girl-friend, as people often present the issue (though he does seem to have been ticked off). You have the enemy state of England using the power of the Papacy in order to act against its rival nation England. This sort of thing could just not be acceptable to any nation, any more than it would be today if the Church was facilitating the interests of one nation over another.
This was ultimately the last straw in the long on-going issues with Romes exercise of power and authority, and the Church in England declared itself to be in schism from the Pope who it said was exercising illegitimate powers.
So what we have now is that same organization that existed before, with bishops and the same sort of hierarchy, but not in communion with Rome. Of course in the years intervening, it has taken a somewhat different theological and organizational path on some issues and it also has (or has had) a particularly English style as well.
