In the U.S.
today, there are more than 150 million Protestants worshiping in close to 300,000
churches.
With more than 630 different denominations, they worship in vastly
different ways.
The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ...
But they all trace their roots to one book, the Bible.
And specifically, the English Language Bible, which today most of us take for
granted.
Translating the Bible into English was no simple task.
Behind the book is a dark and deadly story of subversion, smuggling, imprisonment,
and murder.
For centuries, the church hierarchy carefully guarded the text from common
interpretation, until a few indomitable men questioned the church's authority and
devoted their lives to bringing the book to the masses.
John Wycliffe,
Thomas Cranmer,
and William Tyndale.
I refuse him as Christ's enemy and the Antichrist!
Their struggles transformed England, helped create America, and paved the way
for modern day Christianity.
These men were the martyrs in the battles for the Bible.
To most Christians today, these words are literally the words of the Bible.
Let thy kingdom come.
Thy will be fulfilled as well in earth as it is in heaven.
But in fact, the original words were written in Hebrew and ancient Greek,
and few could understand them.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses.
This translation was only made in England in 1526.
Even then, its creation was an illegal act.
The English authorities feared that if the common people could read the Bible for
themselves, they would question the authority of the church.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.
Amen.
The very first English translation appeared in the 1380s.
Its arrival launched a religious revival and political upheaval.
At that time, there was only one Christian church in all of Western Europe.
The institution known today as the Roman Catholic Church.
At its apex was the Pope.
The church certainly had a monopoly on the way that people experienced Christianity.
It was the only game in town.
There was no other church in which one could find salvation.
And going to church was not voluntary.
You didn't get a choice.
It was required.
But in the middle of the 14th century, dramatic events began to destroy the old
world.
Between 1348 and 1350, a great plague spread across Europe.
The Black Death killed more than a third of the population.
Whole communities were wiped out.
To the religious survivors, the only rationale for the carnage was a powerful
act of God.
Europe was a world dominated by death.
And the church, with its promise of salvation, was the only escape.
In those days, the Catholic Mass, not the Bible, was at the heart of
Christian practice.
Performed by priests, the Mass was a sacrament with the power to confer eternal
life.
During the ritual, bread and wine were believed to transform into the actual body
and blood of Jesus.
But the congregation played little part in the ceremony.
The priests faced the altar and away from the people.
They spoke in Latin, a learned language few others understood.
When they read from the Bible, that too was in Latin.
And it was an archaic translation from the original Greek and Hebrew that was more
than a thousand years old.
The congregation simply performed the rituals and followed the priest's
injunctions.
That was their path to heaven.
It gave the church enormous political clout.
The status of a priest would be extremely powerful because they are capable,
with their words, to perform this miracle.
And that's a tremendously powerful place to be.
That position at the altar, handling what is a great mystery and having the words
that unlock it, must be remarkably moving to people who do not understand the actual
words being said.
But in the 1370s, one man challenged the influence of the priests.
He condemned the wealth and political power of the church.
He questioned its holy sacrament, the Mass, and he attacked the spiritual
authority of its leaders.
His name was John Wycliffe, and he was the leading theologian of his age.
Close reading of the original Greek scriptures led Wycliffe to believe that
the church he saw had drifted widely from the purity of the Gospels.
What Wycliffe's own reading of the Bible convinced him was that the church had
gotten it wrong, that their claim of their own power was, in some sense, contradicted
in scripture.
And so that made the Bible the source of authority for Christianity.
Outraged, Wycliffe called for a renewed, pure Christianity and an English-language
Bible to guide it.
Now, knowing this, why may we not write in English the Gospel to the edification of
men's souls?
With his words, John Wycliffe started a revolution.
He and his followers began translating the Bible into their own language.
In the slang of their time, they were called lollards, or mutterers,
perhaps because they were always uttering prayers under their breaths.
They turned the Latin Bible into their everyday speech, a precursor to today's
modern English.
In the beginning God made heaven and earth.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the
deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light.
And there was light.
And the evening and the morning were the first day.
The printing press had not yet reached England, so every Wycliffe Bible was
copied by hand, a monotonous six-month process.
At first, the translations were written in English.
A Wycliffe Bible is not printed, so every single one is a unique object.
The earlier Bibles almost look like primers of Latin-English translation,
word for word.
They come closer to a word for word translation instead of thought for
thought.
Reading Wycliffe's Bible encouraged his followers to think for themselves.
That was not something the authorities could tolerate.
It undermined the power of the church.
And the king.
Wycliffe died in 1384, but soon after, the English government carried out a
series of repressive measures to end the Lollard movement.
In 1407, Wycliffe's books were banned, and the English translation of the Bible
was declared illegal.
From then on, possession of the English Bible was considered evidence of heresy.
And the punishment for heresy was death by fire.
In 1415, a church council posthumously condemned Wycliffe himself as a heretic.
Thirteen years later, a macabre ritual ensued.
As a last act of revenge and a warning to the remaining Lollards, the church ordered
the exhumation of his corpse.
This holy council declares, defines and determines the same John Wycliffe to have
been a notorious and persistent heretic.
Indeed, to have died as a heretic.
As if that wasn't enough, Wycliffe's body was then burned and his ashes scattered.
Likewise, this council anathematizes him utterly and condemns his memory,
and decrees and orders that his body and bones, if they can be distinguished from
the bodies of the faithful, be exhumed and cast far from the cemetery of the church,
according to the legitimate sanctions of canon law.
The authorities hoped that banishing Wycliffe in death would at last cast out
his dangerous ideas.
But it was a futile hope.
The Lollards continued to follow his teachings, and more copies of the Wycliffe
Bible survive today than any other medieval text.
Wycliffe's thoughts don't die.
They are less mortal than his body, and they persist in the inspiration that
he gives his followers.
So, what happens to Wycliffe Bibles is actually kind of interesting, because we
have lots of them.
So, despite this ban, they must have been produced in droves.
So, it both is outlawed, and as an outlawed text, it's extraordinarily
popular.
The Wycliffe Bible circulated secretly among the Lollards for the next hundred
years.
The movement never grew big enough to truly threaten the Catholic Church's
power, but church authorities still made sporadic attempts to eliminate it.
Local bishops would conduct occasional purges, and each time, they would discover
that Wycliffe's followers still lingered.
In one case in 1506, 60 people were arrested in one village alone,
and two were burnt as heretics.
The deadly game of hide-and-seek continued until the reign of King Henry VIII in the
1520s, when a new attack was launched against the established Catholic Church.
Not surprisingly, the new threat coincided with the Renaissance, the expansion of
critical thinking in Europe.
Explorers had reached the Americas, astronomers were creating new maps of the
stars, there was a revolution in art and literature, and the printing press had
increased the number of books in circulation.
Bible scholarship, too, was reaching new levels of proficiency, and the discovery
of ancient manuscripts had sharpened the study of Greek and Hebrew, the ancient
languages in which the Bible was originally written.
In 1515, the research culminated in a groundbreaking edition of the New
Testament.
It was a text of the original Greek Gospels, with a new Latin translation.
Although not in English, it gave educated Christians the opportunity to examine the
original words of the Apostles for themselves.
The new translation was a far cry from the thousand-year-old text the Catholic Church
was using.
This is a sensationally important printing.
The New Testament is a Greek thing, and anything else is a translation.
The impact of that was colossal.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by it, and without it was made nothing that was made.
The fresh edition of the Greek New Testament was an inspiration for a young
English scholar named William Tyndale.
Born in 1494, he was a remarkable linguist, fluent in French, Greek,
Hebrew, German, Italian, Latin, Spanish, and his native English.
And the light shineth in the darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not.
Like Wycliffe before him, Tyndale hated the Church's ban on the English Bible.
He felt it created an unnecessary barrier between believers and the Word of God.
Who is so blind to say they cannot be showed the light who walk in darkness?
For they cannot but stumble, and where to stumble is the danger of eternal
damnation.
Though there's no proof, it's likely Tyndale grew up in Lollard's circles and
was familiar with their English Bible.
Lollardy was very alive and it would have been phenomenal if he hadn't been aware of
it as a boy.
Tyndale would have appreciated the inclusiveness of the Lollard texts.
What was remarkable about Lollardy was that everybody was in the picture.
The Bible was read to everybody.
But the new Greek text inspired Tyndale to begin his own modern translation.
At Magdalen College in Oxford, he began tutoring other students.
While he was at Magdalen, Tyndale read scripture privily to certain students and
fellows.
So I think he's reading the Greek New Testament translated by him to them.
And I think the vocation happened on the arrival of the Greek New Testament.
Tyndale was not alone in his efforts.
Throughout Europe, the new Greek translation was becoming a lightning rod
for religious reform.
The biggest uprising was in Wittenberg, Germany, where a monk named Martin Luther
was engaged in his own close study of the New Testament.
He was on a collision course with the Church.
He believed its power and wealth was a disgraceful exploitation of the faithful.
Luther's rebellion began what today we call the Reformation.
It splintered Europe and ignited a series of religious battles that would devastate
the continent for the next century and a half.
I don't think there's anything inevitable about what happened in the Reformation.
But it was a struggle about something very profound indeed, how you are saved,
how you get to heaven.
And what Protestants said was that you and I can do nothing for our own salvation.
It's all in the hands of God.
Now that's Luther's message.
The trouble was that the late medieval church had said to people, well actually
you can do things to be saved.
There is a place called Purgatory, you can stay there for a while,
you can have prayers said for you, and these will help you get to heaven.
That was what Luther objected to, the idea that you and I can do things.
Luther insisted that faith and faith alone was the key to salvation.
He denounced the Catholic priest's role as intermediaries between believers and their
God.
His teachings became the foundation of Protestantism.
Luther wouldn't shut up when the Pope told him to, and that moment was what caused
the split.
Unlike England, Germany had no ban on Bible translations.
So in 1522, Luther published a German version of the New Testament.
Despite its heretical origins, the book was a bestseller.
The first edition of thousands of copies sold out in weeks.
Back in England, Tyndale continued his own clandestine work, hoping to emulate
Luther's success.
But Catholic England was a dangerous place for anyone with unorthodox religious
views.
And Tyndale faced harsh resistance as he spread his controversial beliefs.
At one point, he was called before the local bishop for spreading heresy.
Though Tyndale managed to defend himself, the incident heralded the strength of the
opposition.
This only increased Tyndale's commitment.
If God spare me, and many years, I will cause a boy that driveth a plough
shall know more scripture than thou dost.
We who sit under the protection of Jesus and under the light of his light,
we have nothing to fear.
In Germany, Luther's protests were supported by his local ruler.
Wittenberg became an island of reform in a Catholic sea, with services in German and
a Bible to match.
But in England, such official approval was out of the question.
So Tyndale decided it was time to go elsewhere.
Determined to publish, he fled the country in 1524.
Although there are no records of where he went, given Luther's success, Germany
seemed like a likely destination.
With Luther firmly in charge of a vigorous and ruler-supported reform movement,
Tyndale would surely have felt he could continue his work there as well.
But if Wittenberg was his final destination, he kept a very low profile en
route.
Even in Germany, there were people who would betray him as a heretic.
Fortunately, he may have left one tantalizing clue in the matriculation book
of Wittenberg University.
Every student had to register and swear allegiance to the university rules and
statutes.
Under the entry for 1508 is the name of brother Martin Luther of Mansfeld.
That name is expected.
But a careful examination of the book reveals another startling entry.
For 1524, the exact year that Tyndale fled England, the ancient manuscript reads,
William Dalton of England.
But if the two syllables of the last name are swapped, it reads, William Tyndale.
Could this have been William Tyndale's alias?
A code name to hide his true identity?
No one knows for sure, but what is certain is that while abroad, Tyndale finished his
English translation of the New Testament.
With the clatter of foreign speech all around him, he persevered in his native
tongue.
With his assistant William Roy, a former English friar, he worked from the
original Greek, as well as Luther's German translation and the 1515 Latin version.
His work transformed the Greek text into the cornerstone of all subsequent English
literature.
His phrases, written to be read aloud, created our lexicon.
He went up into a mountain, and when he was set, his disciples came unto him,
and he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.
The language Tyndale used was revolutionary.
His style was simple, and he emphasized the ordinary, everyday speech of England,
earthy and direct.
And this has an effect, I think.
This certainly shows in the words that he chooses, and his own particular poetic
sensibility.
He's a master wordsmith, like Shakespeare.
And it came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth, a city...
And when the centurion which stood before him saw that he so cried, and gave up the
ghost, Ye are the salt of the earth, then they having no law, are a law unto
themselves.
It's remarkably influential.
His language persists into our world today.
Tyndale's translation was revolutionary in other ways as well.
By starting again from the original Greek and Hebrew, he transcribed a version of
Christianity very different from that of the Catholic Church.
Like Wycliffe and Luther, he believed the Church had willfully obscured God's true
meaning.
And though I bestowed all my goods to feed the poor, and though I gave my body,
even that I burned, and yet had no love, it profiteth me nothing.
Tyndale carefully chose words that illustrated the Christianity he believed
in.
Instead of priest, he used presbyter, or elder, to dilute the Church's sacred
power.
Instead of charity, which implied you could buy your way into heaven with good
deeds, he chose love.
Now abideth faith, hope, and love, even these three.
But the chief of these is love.
And in Tyndale's translation, the mighty hierarchy of the Church became a simple
congregation.
And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my
congregation, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
To change these in any way was heresy, because you were changing what the Church
said.
The Church could do no wrong.
By August of 1525, Tyndale was ready to publish, and reveal his changes to the
world.
He had his New Testament, a prologue, and some notes on the text.
He found a printer in Cologne, but on the night they were to begin,
disaster struck.
The printer was raided.
Someone had tipped off the Church authorities.
Tyndale the heretic got away, but lost part of his text during his escape.
Undaunted, he began again, and in 1526 his New Testament was finally printed.
Only a few inches tall, even its size was subversive.
Church Bibles are great big things, but a Tyndale New Testament can be a very
small book indeed.
It was of course in its inception seen as a dangerous book, that's why it's small,
so you can sneak it into places.
But it also means that it fits in the hand, and that which fits in the hand
becomes a part of somebody's everyday life.
Within weeks of its printing, the first copies of Tyndale's New Testament began
making their way into England, where they were sold on the black market.
The illegal book was a hit, but the Catholic government's reaction was swift
and fierce.
Tyndale's New Testament was publicly burned.
The flames would soon spread to the readers as well.
Preachers distributing and reading the text to groups of passers-by were brutally
arrested.
But their determination bore witness to the potency of Tyndale's words.
Tyndale's followers were burned at the stake, and the violence of the English
government's prosecution kept him in exile.
But Europe was not much safer.
The entire continent was sliding into a vicious period of religious conflict
between the Catholics and the would-be reformers.
Tyndale remained hidden during this time, but he continued his translations,
and eventually his books themselves revealed where he was lurking.
He had gone secretly to Antwerp, Belgium, where even his printer worked
undercover.
He presented himself not only as Martinus Kaiser, or Martin the Kaiser, or Martin
Lampereur, which was his real name, but he also called himself Baltasar
Bekend, Baltasar You-Know-Who, Adam Anonymous, Adam You-Don't-Know-Who,
and various other names.
For an illegal printer and an English heretic on the run, Antwerp was a good
place to be.
Just across the North Sea from England, it was one of the largest ports in Europe
and had a sophisticated English merchant community.
It was also a fiercely independent city.
Protestants were safe there as long as they kept under the church's radar.
Best of all, the printing industry in Antwerp was massive.
The city had five times as many printers as London.
They printed books in huge numbers, and if there was a chance to make money,
they didn't care too much about the law.
It was a cat-and-mouse game, actually, with the Inquisition.
It was a matter of smuggling.
It was a matter of hiding the tiny leaves of these illegal books between the large
leaves of books that were not forbidden.
And they were stored here in the Antwerp warehouses and then shipped to England.
Books smuggled into England by boat could turn a vast profit, and the Antwerp
printers were cashing in.
Huge quantities of Tyndale Bibles streamed into England.
They crossed the channel as individual pages hidden in legitimate books,
then were put back together once ashore.
They were a hot item.
Seditious contraband in high demand.
But the more popular his books became, the more dangerous life got for Tyndale.
He remained in exile, always at risk of capture and death.
Antwerp was a progressive city, but it was still Catholic, and it only
took one person to betray him.
Sometime in the spring of 1535, a young Englishman named Henry Phillips
arrived in Antwerp.
Phillips had good contacts within the expatriate English community, and was
introduced to Tyndale.
The two became friends.
On May 21st, 1535, Phillips invited Tyndale to dinner.
He invaded his way into Tyndale's interest.
He pretended a great interest in the details of translating the Bible.
He was a horrible man, was Phillips.
The dinner was a setup.
I go forth this night to dinner, and you shall go with me and be my guest.
After 12 years on the run, Tyndale was finally caught.
To this day, no one is sure who paid Phillips to betray him.
But there is little doubt, the plan was hatched in England.
I think his chief enemy in England was the new Bishop of London, John Stokesley.
And I think Stokesley was behind this hideous man, Henry Phillips, who was the
one who actually trapped him.
Phillips wrote to everybody saying, I need money, and Stokesley must have
heard of this and employed him.
Tyndale was taken from Antwerp to a castle near Brussels.
He was left in solitary confinement, without even his beloved Bible,
for more than a year.
From that moment, what I think is the man with the greatest command of the English
language, after Shakespeare, never heard English spoken for 500 days.
It would be Flemish or Latin, 500 days without light, without books, without
anything.
There was never a question about Tyndale's fate.
In October of 1536, he faced his final ordeal.
With death only moments away, he remained committed to his cause.
To the end, he prayed for his country to embrace his life's work.
Lord, open the King of England's eyes!
The authorities decided to spare Tyndale the horror of being burned alive by
strangling him before the pyre was lit.
But as the flames rose around him, he regained consciousness.
William Tyndale died without ever hearing his English Bible read on his native soil.
He had no way of knowing that only a few months after his death, his wishes would
come true, and his Bible would be legalized in England.
Ironically, the shift was a matter of paternity, not theology.
The man whose eyes Tyndale had hoped to open was the Catholic King Henry VIII.
Henry later became most famous for having six wives, but at the time, he was still
on his first.
His queen, however, could not provide him with a male heir.
So he desperately wanted a divorce.
But the Pope wouldn't grant him one.
Henry did not have good enough representation at Rome.
And therefore, the Church was not going to grant him his annulment.
If the Church could not grant Henry a legal divorce, he had to find a Church
that could.
Find one, or found his own.
Spurned by the Pope, Henry made himself the head of the English Church.
All over England lies the fallout from the split.
The ruins of medieval Catholic monasteries that were closed by King Henry.
The remains are an enduring symbol of the turmoil of the times.
The King's right-hand man in charge of the transformation was the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer.
But Cranmer had bigger goals than the King's divorce or even a national church.
He wanted to endow the Church with true Protestant ideals.
Just like Wycliffe, Luther and Tyndale before him, Cranmer placed reading the
scriptures in one's own tongue at the heart of his reformation.
And he went further than just legalizing the English text.
He authorized the first official English Bible.
It was called the Matthew Bible.
Supposedly the work of a man named Thomas Matthew, but the name was a fake.
The Bible was printed in Antwerp, and ornate initials inside reveal who had
really done the work.
W.T.
for William Tyndale.
Two years later came Cranmer's Great Bible.
Most of the text was still Tyndale's, but this was the first truly national
Bible.
By royal command, it was placed in every English church.
Every parish in the land was forced to buy one, and Archbishop Cranmer publicly
encouraged everyone to read it.
It is convenient and good for the scriptures to be read of all sorts and
kinds of people, and in the vulgar tongue.
All shall therein find all they ought to believe in, what they ought to do,
and what they ought not to do.
Hearing the words of God in English was a powerful revelation for the congregations.
Trading Latin for English instantly shifted power away from the clergy,
many of whom still clung to their Catholic convictions, despite Cranmer's edicts.
Reading the Bible could be a political act, particularly in the early days.
Very often, this was turned into an act of defiance against the old church.
A mass would be going on at the other end of the church, up at the high altar,
and people would stand shouting out the words of the Bible.
And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
What really is going on in that is an essential Reformation declaration that you
and I, individuals, stand in front of God.
We don't need clergy, we don't need priests.
That's, in itself, a hugely political statement.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.
The changes were dramatic, and Henry was soon having second thoughts.
For the rest of his life, he would struggle to find balance for his new
church.
If not recognizing the authority of the Pope is being a Protestant, then Henry was
a very good Protestant.
If it is actually a central belief that you are saved by faith instead of your
good works, Henry is not a Protestant.
He is very conservative.
The decades after Henry's split from Rome were turbulent ones in England,
as Catholics and Protestants struggled for power.
Henry died in 1547 and was succeeded by his son Edward.
Edward was Cranmer's godson, so the religious pendulum swung towards the
Protestants.
But King Edward died after only five years in power.
He was succeeded by his sister Mary, a fierce Catholic.
Mary reversed Edward's policies and reintroduced the old Catholic ways.
She ordered the burning of more than 300 Protestants, earning herself the nickname
Bloody Mary.
And she orchestrated the arrest of Thomas Cranmer on grounds of treason and heresy.
Cranmer was forced to recant his Protestant beliefs and acknowledge the
validity of the Catholic Church.
The Catholics wanted to make an example of him for all Protestants to see.
This is the biggest catch that the old church had from any Protestant leader,
and now they had him in their grasp.
They had a speech prepared for him, which he had written out himself,
which was in print, and that was the speech which he would give from the pulpit
in the university church in Oxford.
But at the last minute, Cranmer cheated his captors by changing the final
paragraph.
As for the Pope, I refuse him as Christ's enemy and the antichrist with all his
false doctrine.
In life, Cranmer fought tirelessly for his Protestant beliefs.
He went to his death with his convictions held firm and his head high.
Therefore shall my hand be first punished, shall be first burned!
Cranmer's death was a blow to the Protestants, but two years later,
Queen Mary succumbed to ill health and was succeeded by her sister Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was Protestant, so again, the pendulum shifted.
But this time she tried to stop it in the middle.
Her church was Protestant in doctrine and use of English texts.
But like today's Church of England and the Episcopal Church in the U.S., it retained
many of the forms of the medieval Catholic Church, including the rituals,
regalia, and bishops.
Elizabeth was attempting a compromise, but the Catholic overtones were not well
received by the Protestant faithful.
What distinguishes the Church of England is that it remains an Episcopal Church
with bishops and archbishops, but they are no longer led by the Pope.
Instead, the head of state is actually the supreme head of the Church on Earth.
But for people who wanted to see the English Church more reformed, we
eventually call them Puritans, they see that Episcopal structure as the
root of its corruption.
The Puritans demanded the simplicity of the early Church they read about in their
Bible.
No bowing, no candles, and definitely no bishops.
The text they favored was one of three English Bibles circulating at that time.
It was called the Geneva Bible, and it came complete with rigorous
commentary in the margins.
The Geneva Bible is often called the Puritan Bible because it is a favored
version for what we might call the hotter kinds of Protestants, people who are hot
for reform, who want more reform than the Church often seems to allow them.
The Geneva was a one-sided text.
Its commentary attacked the authority of the English Church and called for further
reform.
To counter it, some exiled Catholics produced their own English language volume
called the Douay Bible.
But in keeping with Catholic doctrine, it was meant to be read by the priests
alone, not the congregation.
Both the Geneva and the Douay challenged the official Bishop's Bible, which was
required daily reading in every English Church.
With so many different versions of the Bible so readily available, the words of
God in English percolated deep into the hearts of the population.
When I was a child, I spake as a child.
I understood as a child.
I imagined as a child.
But as soon as I was a man, I put away childishness.
By the time Elizabeth died in 1603, the English words had engendered a new
freedom of thought, but also strengthened religious divisions.
The great thing about the Bible is that you read it yourself.
It is there for you to read, and people did.
Now what that means is that you can make up your own mind on things.
And one of the peculiar, precious features of 17th century England was that people
did make up their own minds.
They made up their minds, and stood by their convictions.
King James of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth to the throne, and quickly had his hands
full with religious dissent.
To try and unite the warring factions, James called a conference at his palace
outside London.
The Puritans were thrilled.
They thought James would eliminate the detested bishops, just as his relatives
had already done in Scotland.
But the conference lasted three days, and not surprisingly, the English bishops
took every opportunity to portray the Puritans as dangerous radicals.
Their tactics were successful, and it began to look as if no compromise
would be reached.
But then, one of the Puritan divines suggested a new, more moderate English
translation of the Bible.
Both sides pounced on the idea.
A new Bible could be just the olive branch England needed.
So King James commissioned a new Bible, whose stated aim was to satisfy all
parties, to provide the basis for a truly national church, in which everyone could
participate in the same Christian rituals.
Of course, the plan didn't satisfy everyone.
The bishops and formal ceremonies remained, an abomination to the more
separatist Puritans.
They liked the new Bible, but refused to worship in the Church of England.
So, like Tyndale before them, they set out to find religious freedom on their own
terms.
These Puritans, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony they founded in 1630, were grounded
in the Protestant belief that the Bible should be interpreted by the people,
not the priests.
The Puritan democratization of Christianity was a groundbreaking
experiment in both politics and religion.
Similar communities sprang up throughout New England, and the King James Bible,
which was the heart of their faith, became a vital part of American religious
life.
For most people, the 17th century language of the King James Bible is the voice of
God.
It is what the Bible is supposed to sound like.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be
filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
The language of the King James Bible is rich and beautiful and aesthetically
stimulating.
And for many people in a Protestant tradition which does not emphasize visual
art, this language becomes, I think, the sole aesthetic pleasure.
For people who are denied it, not only because of religious reasons, but because
they're living lives of hard work on farms or in rural areas, places where other
forms of culture are not available.
But the New England experiment was dependent on a sustained sense of
enthusiasm for the Church and the Bible.
And by the 1730s, the religious conviction of the original Puritan settlers had
cooled.
Until, that is, a new revival took Protestant fervor to powerful new heights.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who
believes in Him may not perish, but may have eternal life.
In Northampton, Massachusetts, a minister named Jonathan Edwards noticed
an upsurge of excitement when he emphasized immediate personal connection
during his sermons.
Edwards called it the Great Awakening, and its evangelical effects are still felt
in churches today.
I think the kind of fervor that someone like Edwards brought to the preaching of
this word in some sense inspired people to pursue salvation in ways that could not be
contained within one particular kind of denominational structure.
So what you have is this kind of untamed emotion, I suppose, with the Bible
articulating it, using the Bible as a script.
The Revival boosted the already growing number of churches and denominations in
America.
Presbyterians, Baptists, Anabaptists and Methodists, Lutherans, Congregationalists,
Episcopalians, Christian Scientists, Anglicans, Latter-day Saints, Jehovah's
Witnesses, Unitarians.
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven, because of righteousness.
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Thomas Jefferson, in his Statute for Religious Freedom in Virginia,
said, No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship,
place or ministry, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious
opinions or belief.
These ideals were incorporated into the new nation's Bill of Rights.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof.
As important today as it was then, the freedom secured by this edict is the
culmination of centuries of religious conflict.
Conflict generated by the simple desire of believers to read and interpret the Bible
for themselves.
They began on English soil more than 600 years ago.
And like Jefferson, the early Reformers placed their trust in the people.
Many paid for their convictions with their lives.
But in so doing, they, and the English language Bibles they created, formed a
lasting legacy of new language and progressive thought.
A freedom of choice, freedom of conscience, and freedom of speech.