Law and Modernization in the Church of England: Charles II to the Welfare State (A Study of the Legal History of Establishment in England) - Hardcover

Rodes examines the legal materials (cases, statutes, canons, and measures) used in the English experience of updating the medieval synthesis of church and state. This volume begins with the restoration of the monarch (and the Anglican church) in 1660. The first chapter describes the relatively peaceful century and a half - from the Restoration to the reform agitation of the early nineteenth century - when the spiritual condition of the nation was more closely reflected in the institutional patterns of the Church than it had ever been before or ever would be again. The next two chapters detail the painful juridical adjustements that had to be made when the old synthesis finally came unstuck and the Church had to take its place among the other institutions of a modern, efficient, and pluralist state. The last chapters show the equally painful and far more tumultuous adjustments of the laws governing the Church's doctrine, liturgy, and internal affairs to accompany its changed position in society. In addition to examination of the legal materials, Rodes analyzes the anomaly of having an ""established"" church in a pluralist society, and deals with the dialectical tension between two ecclesiological emphases he calls ""Erastianism"" and ""High Churchmanship"". Using the English example, he also sets forth some thoughts on how a church-state relation should be structured.

Robert E. Rodes, Jr., is Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame Law School with chief research interests in legal history, jurisprudence, and church-state relations.