While European nations are rejecting Catholicism far and wide on the grounds of theological disagreements, England finds fault with the mother church for political reasons. British succession to the throne draws the king of England into conflict with the papacy, forcing Henry VIII to split with the dominant religion and stand at the head of yet another branch of it. But opposition from Puritans further shapes the denomination.

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Shalom, and welcome to our history podcast. This is a production of Kingdom Preppers.org. I’m your host, Kingdom Prepper, and you’re listening to: Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. We continue with our history.

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Part 28: The Church of England

While Lutheranism was conceived in a monastery by a disillusioned Catholic monk, Anabaptist notions at a prayer meeting, and Calvinism at the desk of a traveling scholar, the Church of England was born largely out of political affairs. The crux of the problem was that of royal succession to the throne. Well, that was the first English Reformation at any rate, the constitutional one under Henry VIII, who would simply reject the authority of Rome and leave the nation’s doctrines virtually unchanged. Of course, this move became the standard and course of many nations. The second, theological reformation of England would come with the Puritans nearly a century later.

Unlike in other Protestant lands of the day, which had rejected Catholicism on the grounds of theology, England was not presently concerned with such things. The church of Rome and its repressive power over kings was at issue. The sixteenth-century state of affairs saw Scotland and France in close alliance, while England was an ally of Spain. Great Britain itself though existed as two British kingdoms at the time, divided between the Stuart kingdom in Scotland and England’s house of Tudor. Strong bloodlines ran between the two houses, but the intent was to unite the crowns at some point, though that would come during the reign of King James. During the sixteenth century, however, the British kingdoms were bitter enemies that were often at war. We discussed the reformation in Scotland at the end of the previous podcast, now we turn to the English reformation, which followed an entirely different course.

“Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, came to England in 1501, aged sixteen, and married, on November 14, Arthur, aged fifteen, oldest son of Henry VII.”

Writes Will Durant in his book The Reformation.

“Arthur died on April 2, 1502. It was generally assumed that the marriage had been consummated; the Spanish ambassador dutifully sent ‘proofs’ thereof to Ferdinand; and Arthur’s title, Prince of Wales, was not officially transferred to his younger brother Henry till two months after Arthur’s death. But Catherine denied the consummation. She had brought with her a dowry of 200,000 ducats (around $5,000,000). Loath to let Catherine go back to Spain with these ducats, and anxious to renew a marital alliance with the powerful Ferdinand, Henry VII proposed that Catherine should marry Prince Henry, though she was the lad’s elder by six years.”

Then came the gross misinterpretation of Scripture by Catholic officials.

“A Biblical passage (Lev. 20:21) forbade such a marriage: ‘If a man shall take his brother’s wife it is an unclean thing… they shall be childless.’ ”

This of course refers to the case of representatives on all fronts, both brothers and the wife in question, being alive at the same time. A brother was in fact lawfully allowed to marry a deceased brother’s widow and raise up seed unto him, prolonging his name. The Catholics mistakenly thought that the first law was contradicted by this one:

“ ‘If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child... her husband’s brother… shall take her to him to wife’ (Deut. 25:5).”

Needless to say, this was all Israelite business anyway and had nothing to do with English kings or Catholic authorities. Regardless…

“Archbishop Warham condemned the proposed union; Bishop Fox of Winchester defended it if a papal dispensation could be obtained from the impediment of affinity. Henry VII applied for the dispensation; Pope Julius II granted it in 1503. Some canonists questioned, some affirmed, the papal power to dispense from a Biblical precept, and Julius himself had some doubts. The betrothal—in effect a legal marriage—was made formal in 1503, but as the bridegroom was still only twelve, cohabitation was postponed. In 1505 Prince Henry asked to have the marriage annulled as having been forced upon him by his father, but he was prevailed upon to confirm the union as in the interest of England; and in 1509, six weeks after his accession, the marriage was publicly celebrated.”

Seven months after this, Catherine would bear a child, which resulted in stillbirth. In another year, Henry rejoiced at the birth of a son, a promising male heir to the Tudor throne, but in a few short weeks the child died. Two more sons would suffer the same fate in 1513 and 1514, which urged Henry to consider annulling his marriage to Catherine. Not to be outdone, Catherine tried once more, this time giving birth to a girl in 1516. They named her Mary, and she would be a future queen. Henry was consoled by her birth and saw it as the promise of the sons he longed for, which would surely come now that one child had survived. But those heirs never came. The people of England were not thrilled with Mary’s birth either, since the previous queen stained her reign with bloody wars over royal succession.

In 1525, Catherine was well past her prime at 40 years of age, and the lack of male heirs caused Henry to believe that a curse had befallen him for marrying his brother’s widow—the aforementioned misapplication of Leviticus 20:21. He even questioned whether Pope Julius was in error for approving the wedding. And if...