Types of Anglicans - Rev Paul Taylor, LL.M.

Elizabeth I by force of Arms created a unified Anglican church. (C of E)
There was a new prayerbook that looked catholic, but was not. There were the highly political 39 Articles which re invented Christianity 1500 years after the death of Christ. Lastly there were the homilies which admitted that the C of E was in fact protestant church.

The idea was to stop 200 years of religious warfare and cement Elizabeth's position of the throne of England. Henry VIII catholics could live with Geneva protestants. Neither had their way in the new church.
There was peace in our time so to speak. The reality was that there were separate groups living in one tent that were doing things differently.

To make a long story short there emerged

Anglo Catholics, Anglo Papists, High Church, Broad church,
Low church. Frankly no one really cared what you believe, if anything. This is Churchmanship at its finest. People who were actually religious were considered a bit strange. However, it its the nature of the risen Christ to reach out to his people. Horrors of horrors this even happens in well respected churches.

Anglo Catholics wanted to be catholic without submitting to catholic order and discipline. All the popes from Leo XIII were mean because they did not recognize them as Catholics.

Anglo Papists are an offshoot of the Anglo Catholics. They want to go to Rome but the overwhelming majority do not seem to be able to walk across the street to the local RCC.

High churchmen like the communion service better than the Choir offices. Fortunately no one has to explain why.

Low churchmen liked the choir offices of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer (evensong in England). Fortunately no one has to explain why.
In the U.S Evening prayer sort of died out.

Broad Church was so frightfully thoughtful that they embraced high and low church at the same time. Civility ober allis. Enlightened tolerance is the more English term.

Recently the terminology has changed a bit. It's sort of Alice in wonderland where words mean what I say they mean.
The new word is evangelicals. In the good old days that would mean people who went out and preached the good news of the gospel. Today (and especially on the net) an evangelical is a person is is not Anglo Catholic. Now that we have simplified Anglicanism to these two groups we can get a better grip on what is and was is not and build new church.
These two groups do have things in common. (1) God is undoubtedly a gentleman and most certainly an Anglican. (2) People that go out and shout the good news of Christ crucified are religious extremists. What's worse they offend people.

So here you have it a look at the nuts inside the nutshell