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A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain (3 vol. Wipf & Stock, 2017). online; Gilley, Sheridan, and W. J. Sheils. A History of Religion in Britain: Practice and Belief from Pre-Roman Times to the Present (1994) 608pp excerpt and text search; Hastings, Adrian. A History of English Christianity: 1920–1985 (1986) 720pp a major ...
The Christian church in the Roman Empire based its organisation on Roman provinces. The church in each city was led by a bishop, and the chief city of the province was led by a metropolitan bishop. [20] In 314, Constantine called the Council of Arles, the first church council summoned by a Roman
The process of Christianisation and timing of the adoption of Christianity varied by region and was not necessarily a one-way process, with the traditional religion regaining dominance in most kingdoms at least once after their first Christian king. Kings likely often converted for political reasons such as the imposition by a more powerful ...
After 380, Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire, and there was some sort of formal church organisation in Britain led by bishops. In the 5th century, the end of Roman rule and invasions by Germanic pagans led to the destruction of any formal church organisation in England.
This suggests the British church was well established by the early 4th century. [3] [4] It is unclear how widely the Romano-British people adopted Christianity. Historian Marc Morris writes, "As for organized Christianity in Britain, the evidence suggests it had never been very strongly established in the first place."
In 604, Augustine founded two more bishoprics in Britain. Two men who had come to Britain with him in 601 were consecrated, Mellitus as Bishop of London and Justus as Bishop of Rochester. [18] [48] [49] Bede relates that Augustine, with the help of the king, "recovered" a church built by Roman Christians in Canterbury.
None of this was so during the first few centuries of the Christian movement, and remembering why—and how those early Christians designated themselves and each other—can offer lessons for today.
[a] [22] Many of the early Church Fathers wrote of the presence of Christianity in Roman Britain, with Tertullian stating "those parts of Britain into which the Roman arms had never penetrated were become subject to Christ". [23] Saint Alban, who was executed in AD 209, is the first Christian martyr in the British Isles.