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Article: A shilling for Queen Elizabeth: the era of state regulation of church attendance in England, 1552-1969.
- Article from:
- Journal of Church and State
- Article date:
- March 22, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 J.M. Dawson Studies in Church and State. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Throughout Christian history, churchgoing has been widely regarded as one of the most important and tangible expressions of religious observance. Yet, before the Reformation, failure to attend services was subject solely to ecclesiastical sanctions, such as admonition, penance, and excommunication, as applied by the Episcopal courts. Partly as a consequence, despite some evidence of action by these courts in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, (1) "Many pre-Reformation English men and women probably did not go to church very regularly, and some hardly ever or not at all." (2) In England, for four centuries after the birth of Protestantism, the situation ...