read this to get a better idea
Okay.
but kinda of schizophrenic
Aren't we all.
who is the spiritual leader, the Pope or Henry the VIII?
Is this a rhetorical question? I think they've both failed.
The Archbishop of Canturbury is the ceremonial head of the Anglican Communion, but Anglican/Episcopal Churches in different countries have their own leadership.
Today most Anglicans are African. And they are far more conservative than the CofE or American Episcopalians.
With a huge number of former black Muslims converting to Anglicanism, Catholicism and Evangelism, they can’t build churches fast enough. Some of the African dioceses are huge. Even sanctioning (conservative) African Anglican missionary churches in America for conservatives disgruntled with the leftism of the American church.
read this to get a better idea
Anglicanism was born as a compromise.
Henry 8 hated Calvinist thought, but really wanted the right to marry and divorce (or rather chop and change) 6 wives. So he made himself head of the church in England. He also took the monasteries who were building the countryside and doled the land to those who overlooked his chopping and changing.
This went against the people’s wishes, but suited the Lords
Anglo-Catholicism is now mostly dead - as is much of the Anglican church.
What happened is that Henry 8 was originally meant for the priesthood, but his education was interrupted when his older brother died and he was put in line to the throne.
A classic case of “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” - he thought he knew more than he actually did.
Anyway, so after Anglicanism puttered along, then in the 1800s religion really began to die in the UK - the Puritans had left in the early 1700s and the Methodists were good, but not quite satisfying.
Many Anglicans started reading the early Christian writings and about the early heresies and started thinking “hey, these Protestant beliefs don’t match with the early Christian beliefs but more with the Gnostic or other heresies of the early centuries, what’s going on?”
So they started Anglo-Catholicism which was basically Catholicism without the Pope (I simplify). But by the late 1800s many of the Anglo-Catholics realized that they might as well swim the Tiber and so they did.
I would also point out two things:
1. The Anglo-Catholic movement (or the Oxford movement) in the 1800s had a number of Anglican priests, theologians start reading the Bible and early Christian writings and asking questions. And it ended with most of them becoming Catholic - i.e. “Roman” Catholic. The most famous examples being Cardinal Newman and, later, GK Chesterton
2. An Anglican rite was created to help Anglican priests and laity swim the Tiber. This was done in the early 2000s