For Jane Austen and the majority of her contemporaries, religion and politics were inextricably intertwined and of central ideological and material interest, and had long been so. Austen belonged to the Church of England, or Anglican church, established as the state church in the sixteenth century. It was Protestant, headed by the monarch, and episcopal in structure. Its theology and ecclesiastical structure were a compromise between Roman Catholicism and non-Calvinist Protestantism. Anglican theology was Arminian, rejecting the Calvinist doctrine of predestination and affirming salvation by a combination of true faith and good works, free will and divine grace. There were some groups who rejected various aspects of the established church and its theology, however, and who were accordingly known as 'Dissenters' or 'Nonconformists' and excluded from certain civil rights. These differences and inequalities resulted in social, cultural, and political tensions that reached a particular crisis in Austen's day.