Go to the Land I will Show you
Anyone who pays attention to current events will have heard
of the new “hate
speech” laws that have been enacted in England. If you are like me then you were probably
shocked (and deeply disturbed) to hear that police in the United Kingdom are
vigorously scrolling through social media to try to identify individuals that
they think have broken these new speech codes.
You were likely just as bothered that they’ve actually begun to arrest
some people. It is the end of freedom
when the government says that there are certain things they don’t like and
therefore cannot be spoken.
This form of tyranny, though, is familiar to our friends
across the Atlantic. All throughout
English history men and women have found themselves faced up against a government
that did not support their deeply held religious convictions and that forced
them into a decision. Would they be
faithful to God, or would they conform to that which had been mandated by the
throne?
From what I can tell this looks to have started with the
Lollards. A movement inspired by John
Wycliffe, who was a kind of Protestant before Martin Luther. They were called Lollards (Lollard meant to
“mumble”) because they were not permitted to openly share their views. Those that were foolish (or brave) enough to
do so were burned at the stake and there are many accounts of such martyrs in
England, especially in the years before the Protestant Reformation took root. Many think that England’s choice to embrace the
German Luther’s views was the result of Henry VIII’s frustration at the
Catholic Church for not approving his divorce to Catherine of Aragon, and it is
of course true that this aspect factored in.
But what is often overlooked is that the German monk’s theology
flourished the most in the very places where Lollard activity had been the
strongest. In short, these brave souls
who faced the flame for their beliefs became a kind of figurative gasoline that
spiritually lit England on fire with a passion to read the Bible in their own
language and to live lives that were true to what they saw within it; and not
what they were told by a pre-approved priest.
But the English Reformation was only the beginning of the
tribulations for genuine Protestants. As
mentioned above it was brought about by two forces: 1) A small grass-roots
movement that was willing to die for what they believed and 2) Monarchs who
acted out of political expediency. It
wouldn’t have taken a professional prognosticator to predict that these 2
currents would conflict with each other in the years ahead.
Be of Good
Comfort Master Ridley
But at times they were friends. After Henry VIII came the reign of Edward the
sixth. Edward was just a boy when he ascended to the throne and at age 9 was
too young to run the country. He was
raised by Protestant tutors and was sincerely devoted to the faith but would
tragically die of tuberculosis in his early teens, having never personally been at
the helm of the nation. Two Protestant regents were elevated to lead on his
behalf. These noblemen did much to
establish the ideals of the Reformation in England in this short time bringing
about many changes in the church, not the least of which involved allowing
clergymen to marry.
Edward’s sudden departure, shocking as it was, proved to be
a harrowing harbinger of what was to come upon the nation. For he was to be
succeeded by Mary Tudor, a zealous Roman Catholic. Two years into her rule she began to vigorously
persecute Protestants. Bloody Mary, as
she came to be known, was responsible for imprisoning many who were guilty of
evangelical beliefs and for burning some 300 at the stake. These were incredibly dark days for those
faithful to Scripture in England, but they were also days of great bravery and
eternal reward, for “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His
godly ones” (Psalm 116:15). On one occasion, when two leaders of the Church were
being burned at the stake, one turned to the other and said, “Be of good
comfort master Ridley, and play the man; for we shall this day light a candle,
by God’s grace in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”
Mary, like Edward, was also to die suddenly, and in her case
after having only been Queen for 5 years.
She was followed by Elizabeth I, a Protestant, whose entry into London was
like the golden sun rising after the blackest of nights. A year into her rule she made the Anglican
Church Protestant again with a settlement that caused great rejoicing amongst
the people and brought many of the exiled Church leaders back to England. But the Elizabethan Settlement was based on a
compromise of sorts with the older, more Catholic, expression of worship that
left many of the Church’s leader’s worried that lay congregants might get the
sense that this newer, Protestant, church wasn’t all that different from the
way things were before. Theologically,
to be sure, England was aligned with the beliefs of Luther and Calvin, but the
services themselves had the feel of a Roman Mass; and that concerned a lot of
people.
Puritans and
Separatists
Individuals that possessed these scruples were known as
Puritans and they ignited a culture war within England to bring further changes
– which they considered to be the final and necessary aspects of the
Reformation – into the Church. Elizabeth
was mostly tolerant of Puritans provided they still – in spite of all their fussiness
– conformed to the form of worship that the throne had dictated. In her mind people were free to believe what
they wanted, provided they did this little thing of adhering to the
compromise that she (along with Parliamentary and Ecclesiastical authorities)
had made with the past.
But there were some who could not go along with it. These men became known as Separatists because
they felt it necessary to separate from the English Church and hold their own
services outside of the watchful eyes of Queen and Bishop. To do this, though, was dangerous. In those days, over 400 years ago, people
believed that religion was the glue that held society together. Elizabeth was no different in this regard and
she viewed her compromise as a kind of universal olive branch, meant to create
a tent big enough for all those in England.
Inside the tent was safety, but to be on the outside – to separate from
the established fold – was to be an enemy of the throne.
At first Separatists were imprisoned. The first traces of these rebels were
discovered in the late 1560s and early 1570s, where, upon the unearthing of
their crimes, they were promptly thrown in jail. The leader of these early dissidents, Richard
Fitz, was to die in prison. But when
another crop of these religious anarchists was found, the penalties became more
severe. 2 were hanged in 1583 for “distributing
forbidden literature” and another 3 were killed in 1593 for “publishing
material with malicious intent”. These
executions were followed by legislation called the “Conventical Act” that decreed
“banishment as the first penalty” for Separatism and “death, should the
banished person dare return”.
Separatism has a unique place in American history for it was
Separatists who, from a desire to find a place where they would be free to practice their
faith without harassment and raise their children in the way they thought best,
boarded the Mayflower in hopes that the new world would be more welcoming than
the old.
One cannot help but imagine how this rag-tag crew of 28
adults and their children must have felt on their journey when, by chance, they opened their
Bibles to Genesis 12:1-3, which reads:
“Go from your country,
And from your relatives
And from your father’s house,
To the land which I will show you;
2 And I will make you into a great nation,
And I will bless you,
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing;
3 And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who [a]curses you I
will [b]curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
They had been exiled from England and were strangers in the Dutch Republic, but here they were on this boat, looking for a city whose builder and maker is God.
Thus, they were off – sailing across the ocean to a land that they knew nothing about, because they knew they could not stay where they had been. And so, one wonders, if during a moment of reprieve, maybe as an amber sunset was pasteling the evening sky, these families sat together reading about the Promises of God and musing about what the future might hold.
~ 🌅 ~
But just because some had ventured across the Atlantic and
started over doesn’t mean that the temperature had cooled in Britain. There still were wars to be fought and
revolutions to be had. Kings would be
beheaded, and preachers jailed. Many a
trouble still lay ahead. But for now, we
can pause with this thought. That
America, and all the good that she has done in the world, was started by people
who were fed up with having things pushed on them by the government and decided
to risk it all for the chance to live free.
This alone is a powerful testament to us in our day, that despite how
dark things may seem to be getting, that God has a plan and that He will always
find people who are willing to take Him up on what He is about to do.
May that we be those people, Lord.
Amen.
--------------
* Much of the information for this post is taken from the excellent series on Church History by Nick Needham titled 2000 Years of Christ’s Power. I have devoured all 5 volumes and highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in a both a stirring and balanced telling of the history of the Church
Comments
Post a Comment