The English Church, Jewish Worship, and the Temple
The English Church, Jewish Worship, and the Temple
This chapter shows how conflicts within the Church of England turned on its relation to the Jewish past and to Judaism. Whereas Foxe, Prynne, and Milton insisted that a reformed church must be divested of all traces of Judaism (which they identified with Catholicism), defenders of ceremony and episcopacy from Hooker through William Laud looked to Jewish precedent, emphasizing continuity not with the Church of Rome but with earlier Jewish worship and the Temple, which they saw as a symbol of centralized religion and stability in the kingdom. ‘Puritans,’ wanting further reform, were sharply anti–Judaic. Traces of these conflicts over reformed religion's relation to Judaism and the Jewish Temple can be seen in Spenser's and Herbert's poetry. Trying to make the English Church a counterpart of Solomon's Temple, where God's presence would dwell, Laudians contributed to a distinctive idea of English‐Israelite identity.
Keywords: Church of England, Judaism, Church of Rome, Foxe, Hooker, William Laud, Milton, Spenser, Herbert, the Temple
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
