The Protestant Reformation in Germany and England
Copyright © Henry J. Sage 2007

The Protestant Reformation in Germany and England

In order to fully understand American history one must have a grasp of the role which religion has played in the development of this nation. In fact, the history of religion in Western world going back hundreds of years before the discovery of America has affected this nation down to the present time.

In the early 1500s Martin Luther became scandalized by the degree of corruption which he observed in the Christian Church. Today we refer to Luther's church as the Roman Catholic Church, but at that time that was the only Church that existed in the Western world, although Catholicism varied in certain ways from country to country. For all kinds of reasons stemming the from the church having wielded extraordinary social and political pressure over the Western world for over a thousand years, the corruption touched the lives of many people. Luther was an extremely pious and devout priest, so much so that even on the day of his ordination, he was not confident that he was holy enough himself to be able to conduct his first mass. It is understandable that a man with serious concerns about his own holiness would be shocked to discover corruption in an institution which he revered.

Luther began to collect his complaints and finally delivered them in the form of 95 theses which he nailed on the door of the cathedral in Wittenberg, Germany. To say that his complaints were timely doesn't quite capture the impact; within one generation of Martin Luther's protest, Protestantism, consisting of a number of Christian sects which had rebelled against the leadership of the Roman authorities, had spread over much of Northern Europe. As frequently happens in cases of such revolution, after the initial revolution was complete, it fragmented further into various segments. Thus the Protestant Reformation led to the creation of a variety of churches: Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Calvinist and many other varieties. (Over 100 different Protestant denominations exist in America today.)

Most interesting for American history is the fact that at the time the Reformation was beginning a young English Prince had fallen in love with his brother's widow. He was Prince Henry and she was Catherine of Aragon. Since at that time it was considered incestuous for a man to marry his brother's widow, Henry appealed to the church in Rome that the wedding and marriage between his brother and Catherine be nullified, so that he would be free to marry her. The Pope in Rome, nervous over the fragmentation of his religious domain, was happy to grant an annulment to keep the English monarch in good favor. The prince became King Henry VIII, and his story is well known. What is not so well known is that several years into his reign Henry argued forcefully against the reforms of Martin Luther and defended the Roman church from what he saw as false accusations. In recognition of his faithful service, he was named “Defender of the Faith” by the Pope, a title which is borne by British monarchs to this day.

The story does not end there, of course. After 20 years of marriage to Catherine of Aragon, with no male heir to show for it, Henry became disenchanted with his wife. At the same time that he was becoming attracted to a handsome young woman of the court, Anne Boleyn. The story of Henry's infatuation with Anne is less important than the fact that eventually he sought an annulment from his Catherine on the grounds that the original annulment had been against God's favor. He claimed to believe that the fact that he had no male heirs was because God was displeased with the marriage. Now the pope was in a very difficult position; he was being asked to declare that the daughter of two powerful Catholic monarchs of Aragon and Castile, which eventually became the kingdom of Spain, had been living in sin with the English king for some time, and that their child, a girl named Mary, was a bastard. In addition, Catherine's uncle was the holy Roman Emperor, another staunch supporter of the church, who would also have been outraged by the annulment. So the pope denied Henry's request.

Infuriated and infatuated, Henry decided to break with Rome, and thus came about the English Reformation, so-called because Henry made himself head of the Church of England, which became known as the Anglican Church. Although the Anglican Church had formally severed its ties with Rome, the Anglican faith kept many of the trappings of what was now known as the Roman Catholic religion. Many Protestants, who felt that Martin Luther had not gone far enough in his reforms, objected to the continuing “remnants of popery” that emanated from English cathedrals and demanded that the church be further purified of Catholic influence. The most vociferous of these were known as Puritans, who divided themselves into two camps, Puritans and Separatists.

The Puritans were those who stayed in England during the reign of Henry's heirs, especially during that of Queen Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn. They tried to work within the system to help reform the Anglican Church. They were willing to conform to the political demands of the church, for church and state were one, since the king was head of both. The Separatists, however, being more radical, were unwilling to continue to live under the domination of the church and sought their salvation elsewhere. The Separatists eventually became the Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth in 1620, and the Puritans were the great mass of people who came to America's shores in Massachusetts Bay, beginning in 1630. The influence of the Puritans and the Anglican faith and many other religious convictions which colonial Britons brought with them from England and other countries has become part of the legacy of American religious history.

Religion and the Revolution

Although the American Revolution was not fought over religious matters, the legacy of the religious strife in the world preceding the revolution provided the impetus for the American founding fathers to see to it that religion would not become a divisive issue in the new republic. Starting with the Virginia statute on religious freedom written by Thomas Jefferson, endorsed by James Madison, and enacted in 1786, the states gradually began to remove all connections between governments and churches. The First Amendment to the Constitution, which stated that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” although it did not apply originally to the several states, did nevertheless foster an atmosphere suggesting a wall between church and state. Anyone who follows current events even in the 21st century understands that religious conflicts have not disappeared from American culture. All the same, the steps taken by the founding fathers to minimize religious controversy have stood the country in good stead.

History 121 Assignments | Updated January 2, 2007