The English Reformation

For the want of a Divorce …

The reigning monarch in England at the beginning of the European Reformation was Henry the VIII. King Henry was a committed Catholic who had no aspirations to embrace a movement that led away from the Mother Church. In fact, in 1521, Henry wrote a treatise against Martin Luther and in support of the Seven Sacraments. For his efforts, the Pope awarded Henry with the Title: Defender of the Faith.

Given his faith and support of the Catholic Church, how did the Protestant Reformation cross the Channel to arrive on English shores? The English Reformation is generally treated as an entirely separate movement from the Continental Reformation. As mentioned over the past few studies, there are three main streams of the Reformation: Lutheran, Reformed, and Radical; the English situation is not part of any of those streams.

The reason has to do with the matter of origins. The Continental Reformation rose from theological concerns. That is to say, as one was studying the Bible, he came to understand the Catholic Church had allowed tradition to cloud biblical teaching, In England, theology had nothing to do with the origin of the movement. Henry was the instrument used to bring change, and his interests lay in the political realm.

Simply put, Henry desperately needed a male heir to the throne. His wife, Catherine of Aragon, had given him a daughter (Mary), but no son. Henry wanted to have the marriage annulled, but the Pope refused on the account that Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, was the nephew of Henry’s wife. Henry did not take this setback well so he plotted with several of his advisors who had been following the Continental Reformation with interest. Therefore, in the year 1534 the English Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy which cut the nation loose from the Catholic Church and instituted the English Monarch as the Head of the Anglican Church.

The Power of the Bible in the common language

While the English Reformation had its origins in politics, the power of God was not absent. The concepts of the Continental Reformation were known in England and there were many supporters of enlightened theology. One such man was William Tyndale. Making use of the printing press and the Greek NT of Erasmus, Tyndale translated the NT into English and had it printed in 1526. It had to be smuggled into England, but the Word in the common language prepared many hearts for the reformation that was on the way. The Bible continued to play a role in the Reformation under King Henry. in 1539, Under the direction of the Archbishop of Canterbury (Cranmer), each church was required to have an English Bible. This Bible became known as the Great Bible or the “chained Bible.” The Bible had to literally chained to the pulpit so eager readers would not remove it from the church. [Imagine that! People eager to read the Bible]

The Cost of Protestant Faith in England

The early years of the English Reformation saw quite a deal of back and forth between Catholicism and Reformed Protestantism. The reason was due to a lack of theological stability as the movement was based on the politics of the reigning monarch. Though Henry broke with Rome (he was excommunicated by the Pope), he remained a Catholic at heart. His “reforms” were to give him power, not due to higher motives. He abolished the Catholic monasteries and sold the land to nobles to fund some of his wars. The priests were allowed to marry, but the form of the Anglican church retained a structure similar to the Catholic church.

Henry still lacked a male heir, even after moving on to wife #2 (Ann Boleyn). Ann did provide Henry with a daughter named Elizabeth, but no son. To get out of this marriage, Henry had Ann beheaded in 1536. Wife #3 was Jane Seymour, and she produced a son named Edward. Unfortunately, Jane died from complications 12 days after Edward was born. Undaunted, Henry proceeded to wife #4, Ann of Cleves who lasted 6 months before the marriage was annulled. Wife #5 was Catherine Howard who lost her head slightly after one year of marriage. Wife #6, the final wife was Catherine Parr was the only wife to outlive King Henry.

Henry died in 1547, and he was succeeded by his son Edward. The boy assumed the throne when he was only 9, and his co-regents assisted with his rule. These men led the country to further the Protestant Reformation, and repealed many of the laws Henry had passed which had retained Catholic beliefs and practices. The country was headed towards a strong Protestant identity, but Edward was not a healthy child and reigned only 7 years before his untimely death at 16.

Edward’s older sister Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon (wife #1) assumed the throne in July of 1553, and things began to get hot for English Protestants. Mary was a devout Catholic and she immediately reinstated the Catholic Mass and went about the business of hunting and killing heretics. Those Protestant Christians who were tortured and killed during her reign became known as the Marian Martyrs and due to ordering almost 300 people killed in the space of three years earned Mary the nickname Bloody Mary. Fortunately, Mary died childless in 1558 and her younger sister Elizabeth (daughter of wife #2) became queen.

The Middle Way (The Elizabethan Era of Reform)

Elizabeth gained the throne in 1558 and ruled for almost a half-century until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was no fan of the Catholic Church because it had declared her illegitimate to make way for her siblings to rule. Therefore, under her rule the Anglican Church would not return to the Catholic fold. The Church would not, however, become fully Protestant as the Lutherans, the Reformed, and the Anabaptists. Elizabeth was a pragmatist like her father, Henry VIII. She carefully melded the Anglican Church into a blended mixture filled with compromise to avoid the extremes. The Pope was rejected, but the Episcopalian form of church government was retained. The state remained firmly in control, but allowed bishops to serve in the upper house of Parliament; the Mass was removed, but the question of the Real Presence in the Lord’s Supper was not addressed, and infant baptism continued with a confusing role of symbolism or regeneration - hard to determine. In short, Elizabeth wanted a tent big enough to hold just about everyone.

Compromise can be an effective coping mechanism in many circumstances (taking out the trash, washing dishes, etc), but in issues of critical importance, compromise fails. (ex: all of the compromises leading up to the Civil War) The situation in the Anglican Church proved the same. Competing factions rose in the Church that tore it apart and eventually led the way to the English Civil War. For our purposes, we only want to highlight one of the factions: that of the Puritans.

The Puritans wanted to purify the Church and to rid it of all things Roman Catholic. This group of believers were also known as Separatists, and eventually left England and the Anglican Church. They ended up in America and God used them in a powerful manner of influencing the spiritual heritage of our country. Out of this strand of English Separatists also derives the group of believers which became known as Baptists.