ANGLO-CALVINISTS. — By this name Anglicans are sometimes called, to indicate the Calvinist tendency within their Church. Anglo-Catholics especially protest against this designation, asserting that the Church of England does not admit Calvin’s decree on predestination, nor is it governed according to the Presbyterian system, while conceding that the members of the Low Church, with their Calvinizing doctrines, have given some writers occasion to apply this name to the Church of England. Defenders of the name, on the other hand, argue that history and Anglican doctrine provide good reasons for its use.
First, there is no doubt that Calvinists exercised great influence at the time of Edward VI (1547–53); moreover, until 1662 the Edwardian form of episcopal consecration was retained, in which nothing distinguishes bishops from simple priests — a doctrine fundamental to Calvinists. Furthermore, the final redaction of the Thirty-Nine Articles was carried out in such a way that some of them may be interpreted in a Calvinist sense (cf. Calvinism, in Dictionary of English Church History), and the Nine Articles of Lambeth, approved in 1595 and for many years appended to the Thirty-Nine Articles even in their modified form, retain a meaning sufficiently favorable to Calvin’s decree. Finally, prelates of Calvinist tendencies and doctrines were without difficulty elected to the primatial see of Canterbury, ABBATIA (v.) and Tait.
All this has contributed to the fact that even the Russian “Orthodox” Church holds that, with the exception of adherents of the High Church, all other Anglicans are Calvinists, as is evident from the reply given by the Russian Holy Synod (23 Feb. 1903) to the Ecumenical Patriarch, who had sought its opinion on union with Anglicans.