Our debt to the Tudors

‘The Reformation was a process of both renewal and division among Christians in Europe,’ said the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in a ‘joint reflection’ statement marking 500 years of Protestantism. ‘In this Reformation anniversary year, many Christians will want to give thanks for the great blessings they have received to which the Reformation directly contributed.’

Many will want to? OK, but what about you? Why this timid slippage into the third person? Some journalists reported the statement as an apology. They were technically wrong, but tonally correct. It reminded me of the day after Brexit, when Boris and Gove were so nervous of seeming cocky that they forgot to seem glad. This statement was similarly careful to balance affirmation with hand-wringing.

To most of us, the Reformation is little more than a supplier of plot twists in Tudor costume dramas. If we’re devotees of art, we’ll shake our heads at ripped-out rood screens and whitewashed apocalypses in rural churches. If we’re religious, the whole business might mean something more. But, if we’re Anglican, we might not be sure whether to cheer or repent; we might echo the archbishops’ ambivalence.

Just a few decades ago, things were rather different. There was still a lingering assumption that Protestantism was at the heart of Britain’s identity. For most of the 20th century this assumption was very strong. Protestantism was felt to be a key ingredient in our core ideological tradition, which might be summed up as ‘liberty’.

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You didn’t have to be religious to think so. Ever since Victorian times, atheists and agnostics had thought of themselves as honorary Protestants. John Stuart Mill, for example, recalled his atheist father urging him ‘to take the strongest interest in the Reformation, as the great and decisive contest against priestly tyranny for liberty of thought’.