In the last article we
talked about the Protestant Reformation in Germany and Switzerland. Around the same time another reformation was
starting to take place in England which was very different than the one on the
Continent and which has much greater direct bearing on us as Methodists and as
Americans.
It all started because
King Henry VIII wanted a divorce from his wife, a Spanish princess, named
Catherine of Aragon. Henry wanted a
divorce because Catherine had not provided Henry a male heir, only a daughter
named Mary.
In order to get a
divorce Henry would need permission from the Pope; the Pope would not give
it. To make a long story short, Henry
had Parliament pass the Act of Supremacy in 1534 which declared the King of
England to be the “Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England,” and that
the Pope had no political or religious authority in England. This left the way open for Henry to marry his
mistress, Anne Boleyn, who, by the way, also had only a daughter,
Elizabeth. Henry would eventually have
Anne executed for treason so that he could marry Jane Seymour who would finally
give him a son, Edward.
One, however, must not
think that the English Reformation was merely political. Many people in England had begun to have the
same misgivings about the Roman Catholic Church as had the Reformers in Europe. Those people, most notably, Thomas Cranmer,
who would become Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest bishop in the Church of
England, would take this opportunity to try to make some true spiritual and
biblical reforms in worship and theology.
Actual reforms under
Henry were very modest. Worship and
theology remained virtually identical. Priests
and bishops were required to pledge loyalty to the King rather than to the
Pope. Those who refused were imprisoned,
banished, or executed. Also, Henry had
catholic monasteries disbanded and their land sold to raise money for the
crown.
The son of Henry VIII,
Edward VI, became king in 1547 at the age of nine. Young Edward ruled through his uncle who
served as Lord Protector. During
Edward’s reign major changes were made to remove all vestiges of Catholicism
from English theology and worship.
Edward, however, was a sickly boy who died in 1553 at 15 years old.
Henry and Catherine’s
daughter then became Queen Mary I after her supporters executed Lady Jane Grey,
Mary’s cousin, whom Edward had named as successor and who was Queen for only
nine days. Mary returned England to
Catholicism. She is known as “Bloody
Mary” because during her reign 283 Protestants were burned at the stake for
heresy.
When Mary died
childless in 1558, her half-sister, daughter of Henry and Anne, was crowned
Queen Elizabeth I. Elizabeth led England
back into Protestantism, however, in a manner that was less Protestant than her
brother Edward, and yet also less Catholic than her father Henry, in theology
and worship. This became known as the
via media, or middle road, which remains an important concept within the Church
of England and the Anglican tradition throughout the world, including the
Anglican and Episcopal churches in this country.
However, all were not
happy with the Elizabethan Settlement, as it was called. Catholics continued to be suppressed as did “Separatists,”
who thought that the Church of England had not gone far enough in its reforms
and began to worship on their own.
Meanwhile, within the Church of England two groups began to form: the “Conformists”
or “high church” group preferred a more Catholic feeling worship, while the “Puritans”
or “low church” group rejected the more Catholic style.
After Elizabeth this
tension between the Puritans and the Conformists, among other things, would
lead to English Civil War and the migration of some of the Puritans to New
England. The English Civil War, and the
religious climate in England which followed it, would set the stage for the
birth of John and Charles Wesley, the founders of the Methodist movement. We will pick up with those stories next time.
