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London

Also Known As Londoner
United Kingdom

London has been the administrative center of English Christianity since the medieval period, with St Paul's Cathedral as the seat of its bishop and Westminster Abbey, upriver in Westminster, as the coronation church of English and British monarchs since 1066. The break with Rome under Henry VIII made the city the working capital of a state church whose supreme governor is the monarch, and the dissenting congregations that grew up outside it, among them Quakers, Baptists and Methodists, did much of their organizing there. It is today one of the most religiously plural cities in Europe, with large Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Jewish populations and long established mosques, mandirs and synagogues alongside its parish churches.

Facts
Origins
Founded
Founded as Londinium about 47 CE, refounded by Alfred in the ninth century and the capital of England since the medieval period 1
Origin of the Name
The name Londinium is first recorded by Tacitus around 115 to 120 CE; its root is a pre-Roman Brittonic name of disputed meaning, not a Latin coinage. 1
Attributions
Tradition
The Roman cults attested at the Walbrook mithraeum; Latin Christianity, and the Church of England after the break with Rome; the Nonconformist churches; a Jewish community expelled in 1290 and readmitted from 1656; and one of the most religiously varied populations in Europe today 3
Status
UNESCO World Heritage
Inscribed on the World Heritage List 2
Traditions
Sacred and Liturgical Languages
Latin in the medieval church and English since the Reformation, with Hebrew, Arabic, Gujarati, Punjabi and many others in the city's present communities 4
Learn More
Westminster, St Paul's and a Church by Law Established

Two churches carry the weight of English religion in London and neither is quite an ordinary cathedral. Westminster Abbey was refounded by Edward the Confessor and consecrated days before his death; every English and British coronation since 1066 has taken place in it. It is a royal peculiar, answerable to the sovereign rather than to a bishop, which is a constitutional arrangement as much as a religious one. St Paul's is the cathedral of the diocese, and the churchyard of the medieval building held Paul's Cross, an open air pulpit where royal proclamations and set piece sermons were delivered to crowds, making it the closest thing Tudor England had to a national platform.

The break with Rome turned the city into the working capital of a state church. The monasteries were dissolved and their London houses turned to other uses, the Book of Common Prayer put a single vernacular liturgy into every parish, and the monarch became supreme head and later supreme governor of the church. That settlement was enforced. Protestants were burned at Smithfield under Mary, and Catholic priests were executed at Tyburn under Elizabeth and her successors, so the city holds martyrs venerated by both sides of the same argument.

Old St Paul's burned in the Great Fire of 1666, and Christopher Wren replaced it with a domed building that is Protestant in its plan, an auditory church built for preaching to a seated congregation, in a shape borrowed from Catholic Rome.

Dissent, Resettlement and a Plural City

What grew up outside the established church mattered as much as what happened inside it. Bunhill Fields, on the edge of the City, was the burial ground for those who would not use the Prayer Book service, and John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, Isaac Watts and William Blake all lie there. Across the road stands the chapel John Wesley built in 1778, near the meeting in Aldersgate Street where he described his heart being strangely warmed in 1738, an event Methodists count as the beginning of their movement.

Jews had been expelled from England in 1290. Readmission came informally under Cromwell in the 1650s, and the Bevis Marks synagogue, opened in 1701 by the Spanish and Portuguese congregation, has held services ever since without interruption, the oldest in Britain still in use. Nineteenth and twentieth century migration from eastern Europe made the East End the centre of Jewish London before the community moved north and west.

One building in Brick Lane tells the rest of the story on its own. It was built in 1743 as a chapel for Huguenot refugees, became a Methodist chapel, then in 1898 a synagogue for the Jewish population of the streets around it, and since 1976 has been the Brick Lane Jamme Masjid. The East London Mosque nearby is among the largest in Europe. The Shri Swaminarayan Mandir at Neasden, built in the 1990s from carved Indian stone, and the gurdwara at Southall serve communities that are now several generations old.

Connections

Associated With

This source names London directly: "by Tea Leaves, published in 1881 in London under the pen name A Highland Seer, is a classic public domain handbook of tasseography, listing the traditional symbol meanings read into tea leaf patterns."

Source Tea-Cup Reading and Fortune-Telling by Tea LeavesA Highland Seer

This source names London directly: "January blessing of the river at London Bridge."

Source Thames: Sacred RiverPeter Ackroyd

This source names London directly: "Headquartered in Los Angeles and London, it is widely regarded by scholars of new religious movements as the first major UFO-based religion and remains one of the longest continuously operating..."

Source New Religions: A Guide, New Religious Movements, Sects and Alternative SpiritualitiesChristopher Partridge (ed.)

This source names London directly: "Tauris, London, 1994, is an academic monograph."

Source The Assassin Legends: Myths of the IsmailisFarhad Daftary

This source names London directly: "Mowbray in London in 1912, is the tradition's own authoritative account of its history and practice, written by one of its own senior hierarchs."

Source The Church of Armenia: Her History, Doctrine, Rule, Discipline, Liturgy, Literature and Existing ConditionMalachia Ormanian, translated by G. Marcar Gregory

This source names London directly: "gathered at Wesley's own chapel in London in 1881 for the first Ecumenical Methodist Conference, seeking closer fraternal ties toward what the delegates called the conversion of the world."

Source About Us (World Methodist Council)World Methodist Council

This source names London directly: "Venner led a failed armed uprising in London in January 1661 to hasten the promised fifth monarchy."

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

This source names London directly: "Kennedy is a professor of Arabic at SOAS, University of London, and the book works from the same documented chronicle tradition as his other narrative history in this catalog on the Islamic Near..."

Source The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live InHugh Kennedy

This source names London directly: "scholarly study from Ithaca Press, London, published as Oxford Oriental Monographs No."

Source The Legend of Miao-shanGlen Dudbridge

This source names London directly: "published by Philip Wellby, London, is the standard early English-language account of the esoteric philosopher's life."

Source The Life of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, the Unknown PhilosopherArthur Edward Waite

This source names London directly: "and Their Rituals, Joseph Masters, London, 1852, is a primary nineteenth century account, not a modern scholarly study."

Source The Nestorians and Their RitualsGeorge Percy Badger

This source names London directly: "and Foundation of the Royal Society of London is a scholarly historical study by a specialist in the history of early modern British science, tracing the intellectual and institutional circumstances..."

Source The origins and foundation of the Royal Society of LondonMichael Hunter

This source names London directly: "4, 1989 at the Royal Albert Hall in London, with Isserlis as soloist and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Oliver Knussen."

Source The Protecting Veil (Tavener) (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Thomas Becket, Sources

This source names London directly: "by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in London in 1986, is a scholarly biography of the twelfth century Archbishop of Canterbury whose murder in his own cathedral in 1170 made him one of medieval England's..."

Source Thomas BecketFrank Barlow

This source names London directly: "of the Royal College of Physicians in London in 1518."

Source Thomas Linacre and the Royal College of PhysiciansPast Medical History

This source names London directly: "Devon, and worked as a cooper in London before emigrating to New England in 1637; he returned to England some years later."

Source The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study in Seventeenth Century English MillenarianismBernard Capp

This source names London directly: "on the Wellcome Collection, the London museum and library of medical history, maintained through Wikipedia's ordinary community editing process rather than a fixed editorial board."

Source Wellcome Collection (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Westminster Abbey has been the coronation church of English and British monarchs since 1066.

This source names London directly: "present home at the National Gallery, London."

Source Wilton Diptych (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names London directly: "Younghusband, its first congress in London July 3 to 17, 1936, and its interfaith fellowship mission."

Source World Congress of Faiths (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names London directly: "in Monrovia, California and London, United Kingdom, and its staff draw on various Christian traditions and other faiths."

Source World Vision International (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Showing 51 to 71 of 71 in Associated With, page 2 of 2.

Contained In

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Source The Recognition of the Unitas Fratrum as an Old Episcopal Church (J. Taylor Hamilton, Anglican History)
Source Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral Article (Wikipedia)
Source Lambeth Conference (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
2. UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Tower of London
UNESCO World Heritage CentreWorld Heritage List, property 488
Quote, World Heritage List, property 488
It was built on the Thames by William the Conqueror to protect London and assert his power.
View the Source
3. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005Entries: Anglicanism; Methodist Churches; Judaism in Northern and Eastern EuropeView the Source
4. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
John Bowker (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997View the Source
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Allen Lane, 2003View the Source
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