Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is the program
bringing you news, views,
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information, discussion,
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maybe even some wild
ideas on religious liberty.
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I hope not.
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But we want to
open your consciousness
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on this very important topic.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty Magazine.
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And my guest on the
program is Dr. John Reeve,
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from Andrews University,
Department of Church History.
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And...
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Let's deal with
some secular history
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just to throw you.
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No, but I know, it
involves church history.
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Because I believe much
of what is going on today
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in the religious liberty era
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and church state
relations in the United States
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can be traced back obviously,
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to what was once
the mother country,
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to what went on in
England and in Europe.
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And I'm very fixated on
the civil war in England
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that began with some
largely secular reasons,
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but very quickly
devolved to Protestants
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against what they saw as a
Catholic sympathizing king.
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And even further devolved
to Puritans and their agenda
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that was at odds
with the Church of England
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and the desire to establish
the kingdom of God on earth,
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and the holy nation
and a religious republic
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and the whole deal,
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and culminated
with Oliver Cromwell,
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the Lord Protector
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who really wanted to
re-Christianize his country.
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What are your
thoughts on that era,
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and maybe even further back?
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What can we say
about that continium,
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and that history is
how then made its way
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to this part of the world.
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When you go back to,
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to the
magisterial reformation the...
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You really do
not have any concept
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of having a
separation of church and state,
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you know, the idea
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that whatever,
whatever the king or the ruler,
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local ruler has their religion,
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the people should have
that as their religion as well
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was kind of the mode of the day.
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So you know, as the
king, so the people.
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And was the
structure of society.
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Of course.
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You know, today, we
look at Asia and see that,
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like in China, that's
very much the thinking.
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For sure.
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And Japan, but that
was Europe, wasn't it?
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Yeah.
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And it struck me
with Christianity
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as it first began, wasn't it,
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Clovis was
baptized, king of the Franks.
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Everyone is suddenly Christian.
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And in Russia,
thousand years ago now,
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it was the ruler of the Russ...
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I'm trying to
remember the ruler's name,
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but he was baptized,
everyone suddenly christened,
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they didn't even know
what the religion was.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And that's because the
identity with their people,
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their identity, the
leader is the people,
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and...
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So when you end
up with Henry VIII,
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needing to turn
away from Catholicism
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toward Protestantism in
order to achieve his means.
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He did not want to
make any religious change.
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He just wanted to be,
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he wanted to get rid
of the power of the pope
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and wanted to
bring England back to...
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English power and money back.
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It was a bit
bigger than his marriage.
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It was bigger than his marriage.
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And I will give
him a little boost up.
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He had written some
very interesting articles
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on the whole thing.
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Well, actually
now remember them all.
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He also wrote
against Martin Luther
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at one point, is that true?
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Yeah, sure.
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He was called the
defender of the faith.
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Right, but he did write
some prophetic treatises too.
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So he was very much
involved theologically,
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he just wasn't...
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He was a very astute theologian,
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but he was not interested
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in changing the way
worship happen so much
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as he was interested in changing
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the power
dynamics of the church,
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getting the land
back from the church
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to usable land and
taxable land particularly,
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and his father before him,
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Henry VII had been very poignant
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about trying to
get a court of laws
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that were answerable to the king
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and not the local lords,
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so that there
would be some justice
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in the land rather
than just the lord rules,
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and if the lord was this...
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Well, what you're
really describing,
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which has been a
long process also,
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was the move away
from pure feudalism
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to more of a modern
system of governance
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and a view of the individual
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rather than as a
serve for a vessel.
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But many people have said that
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the horse that
Henry road to power,
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Henry VIII, I'm referring to,
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the horse that
Henry road to power
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was the law lord horse,
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the followers of...
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Now you're getting
towards as I told you earlier,
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Wycliffe, I've
got a very soft spot.
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Morningstar of the Reformation.
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Yes.
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And it was many, many
decades before Martin Luther.
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So England had been stirred
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with bit more biblically
based views of religion
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rather than the
autocratic church state model.
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And it was Thomas Cromwell,
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who was the
king's man in Parliament
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that allowed him to
make the break with Rome,
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and to establish
a Church of England,
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with the king as the
head of the Church of England,
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and then establish
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that the money would
no longer flow to Rome,
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but would stay local.
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All of this was
changed by a person
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who was interested
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in a democratization
of England and a king,
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who was not
interested in democratization.
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So you've got a
tension between Thomas Cromwell
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and the king as to how to do it,
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and so the king uses Cromwell
until he's not useful anymore,
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then he puts him in prison,
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and he cuts his head off
and that's the end of it.
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But he sets the stage
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for having a very
strong centralized government
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holding both, the
power of the state
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and the power of
the church in one hand.
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Yeah, yeah.
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That backfires on
the English people
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few years later,
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when his oldest
daughter comes to reign,
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you know, Mary comes to the...
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Well ironically, though,
they call her Bloody Mary
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because she killed
so many Protestants.
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But it wasn't that
many, it was 300 though.
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Less than 300 she killed
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and her father
killed some 70,000 but...
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But she was a fearsome presence
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in what was
becoming Protestant England.
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She definitely, in
many practical ways
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rolled back the reformation.
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Well, she declared herself
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not to be the ruler of the
king of the church in England,
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but declared the pope
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to be the ruler of
the church in England.
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And so, and she tried to redo
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what had been done by
Henry VIII in many ways.
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And the people didn't follow.
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Yeah.
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It was under her rule
that Cranmer, not Cranmer...
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Yeah, Ridley and
Cranmer, wasn't it?
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Yeah, that's correct.
Were burned at the stake.
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And it's only about
a year and a half ago,
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I was in Oxford,
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and that little monument
still live a very minimal,
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it's just as we
were crossing the street,
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I sort of turned and
here's this little marker,
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says that on the
spot they were burned.
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Yeah, I was there last October.
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Yeah. So...
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It's still part of the
history and the ambiance
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of what is modern England.
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And then I think it was at
Winchester Cathedral outside
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the...
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Is it Winchester, yeah,
one of the nearby cathedrals
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or a cathedral
nearby for us that same day,
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I noticed on the gate,
there was an acknowledgement
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that on that spot,
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one of the
churchmen of that cathedral
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have been burned and
also in Bloody Mary's era,
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so she went after the churchmen.
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She did, she went
after the church leaders
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that were keeping England
away from papal authority.
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Now, when Elizabeth
comes to the throne,
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she has to fight against
the Catholic residual feeling
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in England
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in order to establish
the Church of England,
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and it takes her about 20 years.
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But then she
immediately starts fighting
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with the Puritans
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who are wanting to
continue the reform,
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and she wants to
hold her via media.
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So then you have this group
that wants to take it further
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and have a more
biblical ruler in the land,
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rather than someone
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who is
interested in a middle way.
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Well, like the...
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And you're very correct,
linking the Puritan antagonism
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further back.
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Because, you
know, in the civil war,
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that's where it came to ahead,
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but the Puritan movement
was long time in coming.
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Yeah, it was the 1580's,
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you have John Pym,
who's one of the pamphleteer's
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that is trying to win the war
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for the hearts of the
people against the queen.
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And what I see
the Puritan movement
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as it was the real,
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the real outgrowth of
the Protestant Reformation.
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Church of
England in England wasn't
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and still isn't.
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It was a continuation
of the patterns of Romanism
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but without the pope.
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Yeah. In many ways.
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It was Episcopal. Yeah.
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And, of course, as you
know, in the civil war,
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the precipitating
element really was
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that preceded the
parliamentary debates
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and that was really
the king's archbishop,
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lord, changing the
Book of Common Prayer,
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whatever, you know,
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you're messing with
the Bible almost for that.
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And they believed that
the king and his archbishop
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were under the
influence of the king's wife
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and Roman Catholic influence.
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So they saw rolling
back of the Reformation,
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that got everyone ancy.
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And then when there
was the political crisis,
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instantly, it's sort of devolved
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into the king and
his Catholic friends
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against the Puritans who
were the pure Protestants,
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not always so but
that was their claim
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just as today,
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the religious riot,
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you know, claimed to speak
for the American uniqueness.
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But the Puritans
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were demanding
religious freedom.
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Yes. But that's not their goal.
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Their goal was to
impose Puritanism.
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Yes.
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Well, that was
their opportunity.
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They got it. Yeah.
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After the civil war,
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that's
essentially what they did.
00:10:59.62\00:11:00.96
Yeah.
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Oliver Cromwell was
essentially a Puritan
00:11:02.36\00:11:04.69
and most friendly to some
of the more extreme elements.
00:11:04.73\00:11:09.06
And while I think for his time,
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the direct role of the protector
00:11:11.97\00:11:14.27
was relatively benign,
00:11:14.30\00:11:15.90
he invited the Jews back.
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He was fairly indulgent
to religious dissidents
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within Protestantism.
00:11:22.18\00:11:23.51
He had more religious
freedom than Charles I had.
00:11:23.55\00:11:26.85
Right.
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Not too good
toward the Catholics.
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But, yeah, I mean,
his goal and his undoing
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was giving power
to the Major Generals,
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I think they were
called in the different areas
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to administer religious practice
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and they became
odious to the population.
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So there was an
attempt to enforce
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a certain type of
religious behavior.
00:11:49.64\00:11:51.97
And a similar thing happened
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when the Puritans went
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to the Massachusetts
Bay Colony in America.
00:11:55.18\00:11:56.64
Yeah.
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The Puritanism there was
not the religious freedom
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they were claiming
was freedom for them to do
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what they wanted to
do rather than been told.
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As we've said other
times and I keep repeating it.
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What we're seeing now
is the same type of thing,
00:12:09.06\00:12:11.76
its religious entitlement.
00:12:11.79\00:12:13.13
Yes.
00:12:13.16\00:12:14.50
Under the guise
of religious liberty
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and I don't think,
00:12:15.90\00:12:17.23
well, they self deceived,
00:12:17.27\00:12:18.60
but I don't think
they say it cynically.
00:12:18.63\00:12:20.47
But its self-interest
winning out on a principles,
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that you advance the principle
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but you really
only mean for our group,
00:12:24.67\00:12:26.54
for the Puritans in that case,
00:12:26.57\00:12:28.74
and perhaps for what they see
00:12:28.78\00:12:30.11
as an American
mainline Christianity here.
00:12:30.15\00:12:32.81
And, of course, then
you get Roger Williams,
00:12:32.85\00:12:39.72
who starts as one
of them and is then...
00:12:39.75\00:12:42.59
Well, he was on
the inner circle.
00:12:42.62\00:12:43.96
Yeah. He was one of the elders.
00:12:43.99\00:12:46.90
But he had met
with Oliver Cromwell.
00:12:46.93\00:12:48.83
He was the semi adopted
son of Lord Coke or Cook.
00:12:48.86\00:12:53.17
I didn't know that one.
00:12:53.20\00:12:54.54
Yeah, the chief justice
who really laid the groundwork
00:12:54.57\00:12:58.44
for the whole
Puritan political movement.
00:12:58.47\00:13:02.68
Like he was the guy
00:13:02.71\00:13:04.05
that came up with the statement,
00:13:04.08\00:13:05.41
"An Englishman's
home is his castle."
00:13:05.45\00:13:06.78
Yeah.
00:13:06.82\00:13:08.15
That was, he was one
of the greatest jurors,
00:13:08.18\00:13:09.55
but he was opposed
to the king's power,
00:13:09.58\00:13:12.09
at least in its own,
and challenge for him.
00:13:12.12\00:13:15.89
And he had a Puritan sensibility
00:13:15.92\00:13:17.76
and death
directly prepared the way.
00:13:17.79\00:13:20.40
But when he comes
to Massachusetts Bay,
00:13:20.43\00:13:23.40
then he ends up
with being at odds
00:13:23.43\00:13:27.30
with those who would say
00:13:27.34\00:13:30.27
he cannot worship
the way he wanted to.
00:13:30.31\00:13:32.51
Well, and, you know, I'm...
00:13:32.54\00:13:35.54
Well, I'm not a self
proclaimed expert on it,
00:13:35.58\00:13:38.01
but I'm very interested in this
00:13:38.05\00:13:39.41
and I believe
00:13:39.45\00:13:40.78
that he was
exemplifying the core principles
00:13:40.82\00:13:43.59
that the real thinkers
00:13:43.62\00:13:45.05
in that movement
have been advancing,
00:13:45.09\00:13:46.82
not the popular application
00:13:46.86\00:13:48.42
of unrestricted
Puritan sensibility.
00:13:48.46\00:13:53.03
And part of the proof of that,
00:13:53.06\00:13:55.03
remember out of that era came
00:13:55.06\00:13:57.20
John Milton's Paradise
Lost, Paradise Regained
00:13:57.23\00:14:01.84
and some of his other writings
00:14:01.87\00:14:03.77
and I can argue
that even Adventism,
00:14:03.81\00:14:06.61
our great controversy thing
00:14:06.64\00:14:07.98
comes straight
out of John Milton.
00:14:08.01\00:14:10.35
And it's a wonderful concept
of the freedom of man to rebel
00:14:10.38\00:14:16.32
and God giving back his power
00:14:16.35\00:14:18.25
and freedom to morally
regain everything he'd lost.
00:14:18.29\00:14:23.36
So I think at root
the Puritan movement
00:14:23.39\00:14:26.73
had good thoughts,
00:14:26.76\00:14:28.30
but just like all
movements have not restricted,
00:14:28.33\00:14:30.70
its excesses
undid, its gains undid.
00:14:30.73\00:14:33.94
And its excesses,
00:14:33.97\00:14:35.64
would you see it's fair to say
00:14:35.67\00:14:38.04
that their excesses
00:14:38.07\00:14:40.88
came to bear
00:14:40.91\00:14:42.24
when they recognized that
if they could be in power,
00:14:42.28\00:14:45.58
they could call all
the shots for their own.
00:14:45.61\00:14:48.65
Absolutely.
00:14:48.68\00:14:50.02
And the one thing
00:14:50.05\00:14:51.82
that is a stain against that era
00:14:51.85\00:14:54.69
was Oliver
Cromwell's Irish expedition
00:14:54.72\00:14:59.49
where he put the
island under the sword.
00:14:59.53\00:15:01.13
Sure.
00:15:01.16\00:15:02.50
We'll be back
after a short break
00:15:02.53\00:15:03.87
to continue this
review of Puritan history
00:15:03.90\00:15:07.40
and English history
00:15:07.44\00:15:08.77
and perhaps some applications
00:15:08.80\00:15:10.14
for the United
States in the world today.
00:15:10.17\00:15:11.94
Stay with us.
00:15:11.97\00:15:13.31