Christianity in Britain

Last updated 2011-04-27, BBC

 

 

This article charts the course of Christianity in Britain from its first tentative steps to the final settlement of a Protestant faith.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Constantine and Augustine

The rise of Christianity from a persecuted sect to a global religion is a remarkable story of guts, faith, chance, politics and Providence.

This article charts the course of Christianity in Britain from its first tentative steps to the final settlement of a Protestant faith.

In the 1st Century AD, Britain had its own set of religious icons: Pagan gods of the earth and Roman gods of the sky. Into this superstitious and violent world came a modern, fashionable cult from the east: Christianity.

We tend to associate the arrival of Christianity in Britain with the mission of Augustine in 597 AD. But in fact Christianity arrived long before then, and in the 1st Century AD, there wasn't an organised attempt to convert the British.

Emperor Constantine ©

It began when Roman artisans and traders arriving in Britain spread the story of Jesus along with stories of their Pagan deities.

Christianity was just one cult amongst many, but unlike the cults of Rome, Christianity demanded exclusive allegiance from its followers. It was this intolerance of other gods, and its secrecy, which rattled the Roman authorities and led to repeated persecutions of Christians. Christians were forced to meet and worship in secret.

But a single religion with a single God appealed to the Roman Emperor Constantine. He saw that Christianity could be harnessed to unite his Empire and achieve military success. From 313 AD onwards, Christian worship was tolerated within the Roman Empire.

During the 4th Century, British Christianity became more visible but it had not yet won over the hearts and minds of the population. Pagan beliefs still abounded and Christianity was a minority faith.

It looked as if Paganism might again get the better of Christianity when, after the departure of the Romans, new invaders arrived: Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Yet somehow Christianity survived on the Western edges of Britain, even during the Dark Ages. Missionary activity continued in Wales and Ireland, and in Western Scotland Saint Columba helped to bring a distinctly Irish brand of Christianity to mainland Britain.

It could be argued that it was Augustine's famous mission in 597 AD from the Pope in Rome to King Aethelbert of Kent that really set up the future course of Christianity in Britain, creating a strong alliance between Christianity and Kingship. Certainly the Venerable Bede wanted to see it this way. For Bede, a Christian England was part of God's master plan. It was Providence that meant it was the destiny of the Anglo-Saxons to become Christians, united in a single Christian nation. But how would this come about?

In the account of the Synod of Whitby in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Bede describes the showdown between the Irish Christianity epitomised by Saint Columba and the international Roman brand of Christianity which had been brought by Augustine.

Bede ends his Ecclesiastical History bemoaning the laziness of the Anglo-Saxons who he saw as half-hearted Christians still holding onto Pagan practices. An organised and disciplined parish life which would regulate the beliefs and behaviour of the British people was still to mature.

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Alfred and the Normans

Lindisfarne - site of the first Viking raid ©

Christianity rose from a minor cult to demonstrate the potential to be a major national religion, but had yet to win the hearts and minds of the population.

The faith had already proved that it was able to survive invasion and attack. But just as Christianity's rise looked to be unstoppable, the Viking invasion of Lindisfarne in 871 AD marked the start of a series of attacks which threatened to destroy the Christian church. Monasteries and churches were plundered, and priests fled for their lives. It looked as if Paganism would again crush Christianity.

It was Alfred, the Christian King of Wessex, who turned things round. Alfred saw the Viking attacks as punishment from God.

Once Alfred had secured a victory over the Viking warrior Guthrum at the Battle of Eddington, he set about creating a new system of Christian learning that would reach the illiterate country people. It was Alfred's hope that this would enable Christianity to begin to capture the imagination of the ordinary people.

In the 10th Century, lords began to provide small chapels on their land where local people could use the services of a priest. This sowed the seeds of the parish system, still in existence today.

It was the Norman Conquest that really cemented the power of the church in England. William the Conqueror implemented a colossal building project at both monastic and parish level. In Winchester, for example, the old Saxon Minster made way for a new Norman building. These new stone churches continued to play a central role in community life: they acted as schools, market places and entertainment venues.

The medieval period in Britain is really a story of how Christianity came to dominate the lives of the ordinary people, both at home and on the long and perilous journeys of pilgrimage.

But it would be wrong to think of medieval Christians as devout church-goers who flocked to church every Sunday. Professor Ronald Hutton of Bristol University suggests that on average people would go to church just a few times a year, when there was a real spectacle to take part in.

But even those who weren't regular churchgoers could not escape regulation by the Church. As Dr Sarah Foot of Sheffield University explains, you could argue that Christianity had an impact on "every single aspect of every member of the population's lives". Indeed "the Church regulated lives by controlling what people did during the day and what they did in bed".

From the cradle to the grave, and every stage in between, the Church could be your ally or your foe, and ultimately your passport to heaven or hell.

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The Reformation

At the beginning of the 16th Century there was nothing inevitable about the Reformation in England. England was not bound to turn Protestant like its Northern neighbours - indeed a bookmaker would have given pretty high odds against it. No one could predict what was to happen over the next 150 years, least of all the king who started the process.

Reform movements on the Continent were successfully influencing their governments to bring about change. In England reformers were a tiny minority: people who wanted changes in the medieval Catholicism that had dominated for centuries.

There was criticism of the 'magic-like' qualities of medieval Catholicism, the rituals that cluttered up the relationship between the individual and God. There was talk of corruption and money-making that had distorted the true and simple meaning of the gospels.

But these criticisms were not the cause of Henry VIII's decision to break from Rome. Henry wanted to divorce and re-marry in order to try and secure an heir, but the Pope would not grant him permission.

So Henry divorced England from the Pope instead. He was happy to endorse a few religious changes so that his decision to split from the Catholic Church didn't look too blatantly driven by self-interest.

Religious changes under Henry were minimal in comparison to those wanted by the reformers wanted but they made a big difference to the individual believer.

Until then the Bible had been in Latin: the priest alone told people what it meant. Suddenly there was to be an English bible in every Church. There would be no more pilgrimages to shrines with hospitality laid on by the Church, no more relying on prayer to the appropriate saint for ailments and grievances.

The monasteries, an entrenched and influential symbol of medieval Catholicism, were closed and their lands sold off.

Reformation really took off under Henry's Protestant educated son, Edward VI.

He changed the ritual of the mass and abolished the sacraments of penance and the last rites of the dead. He declared that Purgatory no longer existed and prayers for the dead were written off as useless; God alone decided whether you were saved or damned. Churches were stripped of their artefacts and priests no longer had to be celibate.

By the end of Edward's reign the Reformation was much more than political: it felt personal since it cut so deeply into people's habits and beliefs. Dissent was punishable by death.

Six years after his coronation Edward VI died and his Catholic half-sister, Mary, set history into reverse. England once again became Catholic. English Bibles were removed from churches, the Latin mass said again. The trappings of old Catholicism reappeared in the churches. Priests who had married were suddenly banned from seeing their wives without a chaperone. Henry's changes were barely 20 years old, so most priests had been trained and most parishioners baptised as Catholics.

For those who did not want to slip back into the Catholic fold the only road was persecution and martyrdom. Under Mary's orders hundreds of Protestants were burned at the stake. Then after five years the unexpected happened again. The queen died. She had no heir and her sister Elizabeth took the throne. The nation once again became Protestant and the Protestant simplicity of the churches was restored by force.

By the end of Elizabeth's reign a stunning transformation had occurred. There was no single clever tactic that achieved this, merely the passing of time. By now, the majority of the population had only known Protestantism because the generation baptised into Catholicism had died. For the first time the majority of the nation felt Protestant. To be Protestant was to be English and those stubbornly remaining Catholic were traitors. Elizabeth refused to abolish bishops - disappointing the more extreme Protestants, the Puritans, but keeping the vast moderate majority on side. The balancing act was maintained by her successor, James I.

The King James Bible defines the nation and encapsulates its religion. The Protestant propaganda machine had finally won the battle, with its religious catechism uniquely and brilliantly pitched at each social and intellectual stratum. From school children to soldiers, each citizen was expected to know the core Protestant doctrines, to read from its custom designed text. The old religion had by and large been flushed out and the new one successfully implanted. The Reformation has been sold to the English and it looked like nothing could challenge it.

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English Civil War

 

In 1625, when Charles I came to the throne, church and kingdom were in good working order; loyalty to King meant loyalty to the Reformation. There was a Catholic minority but it was cowed and reduced to worshipping in secret.

 

The only danger to the Protestant order was from the other end of the spectrum: the Puritans, Protestant extremists who wanted the Reformation to go much further.

 

People seemed happy to overlook the king's marriage to a Catholic, but within a short time Charles got into trouble with the Protestants. He appointed a bishop known to be sympathetic to a more Catholic interpretation of doctrine. The despised Bishop Laud began tampering not only with church décor but with the very heart of established Protestant ideology. Not content with this grave miscalculation, Charles then appeared to start looking for real trouble.

 

The Reformation in Scotland had been different. Scots Protestantism was more extreme and far reaching than Protestantism south of the border. When, in 1637, Charles insisted that the New Anglican Prayer Book should be extended to Scotland he sent a signal to the Scots that their Reformation was to be brought into line with the English.

 

Charles had deeply underestimated the passion with which religious doctrine was held and had at a stroke made himself an enemy of his Scottish people. To prove his point the king opted for a show of force, but parliament was only prepared to help him raise an army under certain conditions. Charles' response was staggeringly tactless. He turned to Catholic Ireland in search of men for his army.

 

The very idea of Catholic Irish against Protestant Scots was dynamite. The image of the antichrist, Catholics in arms, had suddenly appeared - and they claimed to be acting on the king's orders. Suddenly to fear the Popish antichrist seemed not paranoid but reasonable.

 

Protestantism was based in prophecy. They believed the battle between good and evil was always close at hand, and now Puritans saw the moment as fulfilling the most dramatic prophecy: the Day of Judgement was upon them.

 

The religious battle lines had never been so clearly defined and parliament took up the Puritan cause. The vast majority of moderate Britons had no alternative but to take sides; back their Catholic-leaning King, or Puritan-leaning Parliament. Within months the English Civil War, England's War of Religion, had begun.

Oliver Cromwell wanted to wipe out Catholicism ©

It took 7 years for the king to be defeated and executed, opening the way for the first and only 'religious' government.

 

The general who had emerged triumphant, Oliver Cromwell, was determined to install nothing less than an Assembly of Saints on earth. They were to be chosen according to the intensity with which they experienced God. Their task was to institute a programme of moral regeneration and education.

 

Oliver's army of saints were fighting God's battle on earth. Any traces of Popish idolatry were removed once and for all. Now only the utmost simplicity would be tolerated. A New Order was indeed being established: God's order.

 

It was not long before this New Order resembled exactly what it had fought to replace: the monarchy.

 

The Assembly of Saints had decided that religious radicalism needed social conservatism; it was not society that needed to be reformed but the sinners within it.

 

But by the time Cromwell died, the sinners had not reformed. When new elections were called people finally rejected the New Order Cromwell had established and Charles II was recalled. Cromwell had failed.

 

With the accession of Charles II the Puritan way of life ended. Festivities resumed, theatres reopened, Maypoles went back up and Christmas reappeared on the calendar. The Church of England was re-established, Bishops and all.

 

Then came the Plague, the Fire and the Dutch War and euphoria turned to depression. Then depression turned to anxiety as it became clear that the heir to the throne James II was a fully-fledged Catholic.

 

The old paranoia was returning. Had the papal peril never really gone away? It appeared not, for James believed that once Catholics were allowed to worship publicly and evangelise openly hundreds of thousands would surely return to the faith.

 

When his queen gave birth to a son the horror of a dynasty of Catholics stretched out before the nation's fevered imagination. James had to go. Anglicans and Dissenters combined and the next plausible and Protestant heir to the throne, William of Orange, was in effect encouraged to invade England. James took flight and William assumed the throne.

 

The 1689 Act of Toleration finally granted freedom of religious worship to all Dissenters - though not to Catholics. The state had surrendered the idea of imposing one faith on its people, recognising there was not one faith within the nation but many. In accepting this, the door from many faiths to no faith had been opened. The next century would rock the very foundations of religion.