Thomas More, The Rise of State Supremacy and Modern Day Persecution of Faith

For the first millennia and a half after Christ first walked the earth, to be Christian was to be Catholic. There were no other “interpretations” of Christianity.  Then in 1517, a rather obscure Catholic monk and scholar by the name of Martin Luther penned his grievances in the form of “95 Theses” that decried much of what he correctly saw as corruption within the Catholic Church. He was not correct however, according to Orthodox Catholic belief, in his new interpretation on sola fide (salvation by faith alone) and sola scriptura (Biblical scripture as the only authority for Christians).  But that is a topic for another time.

That said, the horse was out of the barn, and the genesis of the Protestant Reformation was at hand.  No longer was the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, considered to be the first among equal brother bishops when it came to Christian authority for many Christians following this schism.

A little over a decade later in 1529, King Henry VIII of England appointed Thomas More, a deeply religious Catholic lawyer and scholar as his Lord Chancellor for the kingdom.  At that time England had not yet fallen to the Protestant schism and was still united with Rome in its Catholicity.  Then King Henry VIII desired an annulment from his wife Catherine in order that he could marry Anne Boleyn.  He drafted a letter requesting the Pope’s permission to obtain the annulment and requested that his good and faithful chancellor, Thomas More, endorse his request.  More, due to the dictates of his Catholic faith, respectfully refused.

Henry was enraged and over the next couple of years he isolated More in ever greater measure as he purged many of the clergy who supported the Pope that had refused to grant him his annulment.  It was becoming obvious to Thomas More that King Henry VIII was breaking away from the church in Rome.  This was something that Thomas More could not abide and thus he offered his resignation to the king in 1532.  King Henry accepted the resignation but was deeply vexed by what he considered to be More’s failing loyalty towards him.

By 1533, King Henry VIII had already declared himself to be the head of the Church as well as the State so that he no longer fell under Rome’s Christian authority thereby allowing him to establish the Church of England which subsequently allowed him to marry Anne Boleyn.  Thomas More, still a loyal English subject, refused to attend the wedding or coronation of Queen Anne but sent a letter of congratulations instead.  King Henry was highly insulted by this perceived slight from his friend.

King Henry, on April 13, 1534, ordered Thomas More to take an oath in which he acknowledged the legitimacies of Anne's position as queen, of Henry's self-granted annulment from Catherine, and the superior position of the King as head of the church. While acknowledging Anne as queen, More refused to acknowledge Henry as head of the church, or his annulment from Catherine.  The king was furious and had More arrested, tried, and imprisoned in the Tower of London accordingly.

Exactly 482 years ago today on July 6th, 1535, Thomas More was executed for his "conspiracies against the king" accordingly.

Five hundred years later, we now have closer to 30,000 different Christian denominations, all proclaiming their own authority for their beliefs and wildly varying interpretations of Christ’s message for all of us.  Sadly, as the world has become ever-increasingly coarse, crass, and not coincidentally more secular, the more orthodox Christian faiths are becoming ever more under attack from society and the state.

There are signs of this rising secularism and attack on sincere religious belief everywhere.  Indeed, a little over two weeks ago Sweden’s Prime Minister, Stefan Lofven,

“suggested that all Church of Sweden priests be compelled to perform gay marriages, despite the Lutheran church’s position that clergy members should have the right to refuse… The prime minister indicated in an interview with a church magazine that if a priest cannot bless a gay marriage, they should consider another vocation. 

‘We Social Democrats are working to ensure all priests will consecrate everyone, including same-sex couples,’ Lofven told Kyrkans Tidning magazine.

‘I see parallels to the midwife who refuses to perform abortions. If you work as a midwife you must be able to perform abortions, otherwise you have to do something else… It is the same for priests,’ he said…

In the interview, Lofven, who is not religious, defended the perceived political incursion into the practice of religion, saying ‘the church must stand up for human equality.’"

This seems to be the trend in which our modern enlightened society is inexorably heading.  Indeed, our neighbors to the north in Canada have passed “hate speech” laws that are chilling for Orthodox Christians to say anything negative about the sin of homosexual acts, even from the pulpit.

The government of Wales has proposed registration and inspection of religious schools and churches to evaluate if they are complying with “fundamental values”—an option Welsh evangelicals call highly intrusive and “an unwarranted incursion into private religion and family life.”

In America, bakers, photographers, and other business owners with deeply held religious beliefs have been excoriated in the press, secular society, and even the courts for their refusal to bend to secular law in its requirements to provide goods or services for same sex couples when celebrating what they deem as a religious rite of marriage.

Even former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders recently questioned Russ Vought, the nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, in antagonistic fashion because of Vought's Christian beliefs, specifically in the form that those that do not accept Christ as their Lord and savior are condemned by God.  It is a belief that is common amongst all three of the orthodox Abrahamic faiths that refusing acceptance of their core beliefs invites possible damnation.

Now never mind the minor detail that the United States Constitution itself states that there is to be NO religious test administered for those seeking public office, the fact remains that we, as Americans, should be free to exercise our religious faith and answer to our own consciences in line with our first amendment, and more importantly, God-given rights.

When the state, president, or king would usurp those rights of conscience given to us by God, are we not obligated to follow our faith in God over that of the laws constructed by man?

Sanders wrote in his defense of his statements against Mr. Vought:

“In a democratic society, founded on the principle of religious freedom, we can all disagree over issues, but racism and bigotry—condemning an entire group of people because of their faith—cannot be part of any public policy.”

Senator Sanders fails to understand that even people of deeply held religious convictions, (and sometimes especially those very people) absolutely can and do work with and befriend others of differing or no beliefs on a daily basis.  Senator Sanders, by his pronouncement would basically preclude any Christian, Muslim, or Jew from holding office by his own secular PC standard.  Only the secular world and man’s law should hold sway over our governance in Sanders' world, it would seem.

Saint Thomas More, the patron saint of lawyers, politicians, civil servants, and religious freedom, refused to compromise his own beliefs five hundred years ago in order to accommodate the powers of the secular world as commanded by King Henry VIII.  He refused to surrender his faith and his integrity even for the crown and at the pain of the forfeiture of his own life.  He understood the supremacy of God’s law foremost.  More saw it as scripture teaches, 

“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” ~ Mark 8:36

If only our modern day public servants and leaders were to exercise such integrity and follow the enormously brave example of conscience demonstrated by St. Thomas More.

Ascending Secularism

About a year ago, a traveling exhibition of The Dead Sea Scrolls went on display at the local museum near where I live.  These early manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible dated as far back as the 3rd century before Christ and are the second oldest known manuscripts of the type in existence.  The finding of these scrolls was a truly remarkable discovery.  I figured it would be fascinating to see these in person, so I sauntered on down to the museum to spend the afternoon perusing them.

Immediately upon entering the exhibit, I noticed the museum placards describing various artifacts and scroll fragments were all listed in the ridiculous Before Common Era (BCE) and Common Era (CE) notations.  At first I was borderline amused, which quickly turned into extreme annoyance.  A museum placard at the beginning of the exhibit explained with politically correct reasoning that the museum did not want to upset those people viewing the exhibit that might be offended by the notations of Before Christ (BC) and Anno Domini (AD) [Latin for “in the year of our Lord”].

Really?!?!

I would bet that anyone that was interested in coming to see these scrolls which were a part of the Hebrew Bible (aka part of the Old Testament) would probably not be offended by the non-secular “BC” and “AD” notations.  While I had been aware of the ever-encroaching foolishness of political correctness manifesting itself in hyper secularism, this really sent me over the edge and made my teeth itch.  Had the most remarkable religious discovery of the 20th century fallen victim to politically correct secularism?

Secularism.  What the hell is that?  It is not necessarily the same thing as atheism, although the two often go together like the ACLU and hypocrisy.  Secularism, in the classical understanding of the term, is used to mean those things that dealt with earthly matters or the temporal order.  Today, the term seems to be used in the context of an absence of religious belief or participation thereof.  Indeed in the modern era, seemingly more and more people embrace a type of purely self-sufficient humanism – a secularism aimed at one’s material flourishing without any consideration whatsoever of a transcendent order and reality.  And that in and of itself is fine with me, if such is a person’s choice.  More power to him or her. After all, we still live in a free country – well, kind of anyway.  

That said, America as a nation was founded with an acknowledgement of our “firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence” and those most precious inalienable rights bestowed upon us not by the government, but by our Creator; thus states our Declaration of Independence.  Regardless, the idea was that Americans could worship as they choose, in public and indeed in government buildings and institutions, or they could choose not to do so.  Today, with the rise of this seeming virulent secularism, some twisted notion that faith should never intrude into the public arena seems to be the rule of the day.

And so we see this infectious secularism now spreading to a historical religious exhibit at the local museum in the guise of BCE and CE notations. This is really nothing more than a mere change of a name.  It is as if some secularist decided, “Don’t bring this Lord stuff into the debate!”  Okay.  Fine, but then tell me, what is the single defining event that separates BC and the silly BCE from AD and the sillier CE?  Is it not the birth of Christ regardless of the terms?  I suppose if one were to ask some quasi-scientist or politically correct historian what was The Event that delineated BCE from CE, he could shuffle his feet and mumble something about a non-theologically significant event --- or he could tell you about Christ.

Whether one accepts the divinity of Christ or not, the historical fact of His existence and the undeniable fact that He changed the history of the world since His human incarnation is the lone event that ends the era “Before Christ” and ushers in the era “In the Year of Our Lord”.  The changing of the names of the eras to something that is politically correct does nothing to change the actual event that delineates those eras.  Rather it simply points out in glaring fashion the degrees to which secularism has ascended in our Western culture today.

The BC/AD to BCE/CE debacle is only one small thread in this new secularist tapestry being woven by many of the politically correct and secular humanists today.  There are other issues on the secularist’s loom that they are trying to remake too.  For example, a denial of our country’s history and its founding as a Christian nation is a pervasive meme found taught by many of higher academia’s teachers today.  Even President Obama has insisted in the past that we are not necessarily a Christian nation.

The secularist’s axiom seems to be as science and reason spread, religious belief will wane.  The notion that science and faith are inextricably linked seems like an utter impossibility to the secularist, and any mention of God or faith in the public sphere is something to be shunned lest it lead society backwards into the dark ages of superstition and the supernatural.

Because of these new ideals, public prayer or Christmas nativity displays are often banned in many cities today.  And yet debauchery is on display in some of those same cities with gay pride parades and the like where members openly mock Christ and those things that a majority of Americans still consider sacred.  Even during the Christmas season, it is often seen as an affront to PC Secularists to wish someone “Merry Christmas!” instead of the more benign and ambiguously indifferent “Happy Holidays”.

And what have we gained by this metastasizing secularism?  Are we a kinder, more generous and caring people because of this?  Is ours a society that strives to take care of the least of our brothers and sisters in desperate need?  Or do we simply focus on the humanistic secularism that says we must “get ours first and foremost” in a Darwinian survival of the fittest?

It has generally been my experience that those people whom are the most militant in their secularism are often times the most disagreeable and abrasive of souls too.  They seem to be very unhappy, and indeed how could they not be?  If one believes in nothing more than materialism and temporal matters alone, how could one be truly happy?  Love, beauty, and life itself are not magnificent gifts from God to the militant humanist secularist.  They are subjective things to be used as tools for a means to an end to further one’s earthly gains.  With such an outlook, I suppose I would be grumpy and acerbic too!

Unfortunately though, it is not enough that they alone hold this merely as a personal opinion.  Rather, it becomes incumbent upon them to spread this secularist mindset to all of society so that nobody might be offended by God, His son Jesus, or religion at all.

Myself having once traveled down an atheistic, if not secular road before, I found life to be very unfulfilling.  It was lacking in purpose – in meaning – and certainly in true agape love.  My heart was restless and often very saddened until, through God’s grace and mercy, I eventually was lead back to Him.  Indeed I pray that this secularism is nothing more than a trend that will eventually pass like a strong winter storm.  In its passing, we will once again come into the Spring of God’s blessings and perhaps many of those lost secularists will return or perhaps for the first time come into Christ’s fold. Their need to replace or wipe away any vestige of things that are overtly religious or even having religious connotations, such as replacing BC and AD with secularist substitutions in our museums, will no longer be necessary for them.  Perhaps these would-be secularists can then finally find some semblance of peace.  St. Augustine said it best regarding God, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they find rest in you.”

Indeed!