Tuesday, March 24, 2015

2015 UM History Series #4: “The English Reformation”

            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.

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