The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum The Church of England

Yes Henry, you're absolutely right <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/BigThumbUp.gif" alt="" /> However, totalitarian States of all sorts have always regarded it as important to control religion. You can see this in Dan 3 where everybody had to worship the statue that Nebuchadnezzar erected. It was felt that if people were allowed to worship as they wished, they'd be wanting to have a say in government next!

Even the early reformers wanted one territorial church in each area. Hence their persecution of the Anabaptists. When that evil man, Henry VIII of England, split with the Pope, he was determined to keep religion firmly under his control. To show his impartiality, he beheaded six Romanists and burned six Protestants on the same day; the former for treason because they refused to recognize him as head of the Church, the latter for heresy because they would not accept the doctrine of transubstantiation.

After they kicked out James II in 1689, the British decided that they would have no more Romanist Monarchs. So until 1910, the King or Queen at his/her coronation had personally to disavow the doctrines of the Church of Rome. Even the present Queen had to promise, 'To uphold the Protestant Religion, reformed by law', and to this day, no English monarch is permitted to be married to a Roman Catholic.

The downside of this is that the State (Anglican) Church is now almost totally apostate and the vast majority of Britons do not have the first idea of what Christianity is. In the national Census of 2000, 71% of the population described themselves as Christian <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/wow1.gif" alt="" />, yet only about 7% of them ever go to church. They believe that because they're British, because they're not atheists and because they were 'christened' into the C of E as babies, they must be Christian.

I know this because it was what I believed for thirty years <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

Blessings,
Steve