This episode highlights the problem of dissent in any church-state mixture. Henry VIII separated England from the Roman Catholic Church and made himself head of the new Anglican Church. He was both head of the church and the state, and subsequent monarchs assumed these roles. Henry's daughter Mary eventually came to the throne, and her fervent Catholicism led to the martyrdom of many Protestants, some whose stories are recorded in Fox's Book of Martyrs. While her successor Elizabeth managed to quell religious violence, the problem of dissent remained: as long as the crown (the state) is tied to the church, purely "theological" disputes are necessarily "political." Disagreement in the "religious" sphere becomes rebellion against the ESTABLISHED church, i.e., the STATE church. The Puritan "city on a hill" escaped persecution in England, but not the problem of dissent. For barely starting anew in Massachusetts, the Puritans exiled Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams, the latter objecting to the church-state blending of the Puritans. Williams insisted on the separation of church and state, a "wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world." Williams therefore embodies both the problem and solution to the problem of dissent. Up to this point the response to dissent among "Christian nationalists" was either persecution or exile. The episode finally cites Madison's condemnation of church-state mixing, leading to "inquisitions" among dissenters, second-class citizens.
Henry VIII: When the Wicked Falls into his Own Trap
This episode follows the history of Bible translation amidst the stormy political swings of 16th century England. William Tyndale translated the New Testament into English in 1526, and his continued work on translating the Old Testament led to his execution in 1536 as a heretic by Henry VIII. Tyndale's protege Miles Cloverdale nevertheless managed to convince the king to authorize "The Great Bible" in 1539, the first officially sanctioned English Bible of the Anglican church. Why the sudden reversal? In his dispute with the papacy over separation of the Church of England from the Roman church, Henry VIII found an English translation to be a politically expedient tool to uphold his power. The English Bible, as opposed to the Latin Vulgate, was much more amenable to the nationalism that he was promoting, particularly one in which he was actually head of both the church and the state. The irony here is that the Great Bible, unbeknownst to Henry, depended on Tyndale's NT! The episode traces the close church-state relationship as it developed, highlighting England's return to Catholicism under "bloody Mary" (1553-58) and the subsequent compromise reached under Elizabeth in the "Elizabethan Settlement" of 1577.