Looking Beyond Brexit

Bringing the Country Back Together

Graham Tomlin

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780281084272
• eBook ISBN: 9780281084289
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion, Politics & State

The referendum may have rent the country asunder like no other issue in recent memory, but there are significant resonances with events in the past. Almost 500 years ago, in a sixteenth-century version of Article 50, Britain made a break from Europe, declaring the King - rather than the Pope - Supreme Head of the English Church.

The split did not end the story. In the turmoil that followed, 'fake news' spread, families were divided and blood was shed.

However, an attempt was made to find a peaceable solution. In this brief but powerful book, Graham Tomlin draws on that history to remind us of the age-old political and spiritual task of harmonizing past and future, identity and openness, the local and the universal. The events of the last three years have shown how polarization can affect even those who are naturally generous and accommodating; the challenge of rising above division, of loving our neighbours - and even our enemies - has never been greater for us all.

Looking Beyond Brexit

Graham Tomlin is Bishop of Kensington.

First published in Great Britain in 2019

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge

36 Causton Street

London SW1P 4ST

www.spck.org.uk

Copyright © Graham Tomlin 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 (inclusive language version, 2001 edition) by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton, a division of Hodder Headline Ltd. All rights reserved. ‘NIV’ is a registered trademark of International Bible Society.

UK trademark number 1448790.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 281 08427 2

eBook ISBN 978 0 281 08428 9

Typeset by The Book Guild Ltd, Leicester, UK

First printed in Great Britain by Ashford Colour Press

Subsequently digitally reprinted in Great Britain

eBook by The Book Guild Ltd, Leicester, UK

To all my friends who voted
either Leave or Remain

Contents

‘Britain goes it alone’

A British solution

Brexit and learning from the Reformation

The local and the universal

How to love your neighbour

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

‘Britain goes it alone’

It’s a headline that could have been written nearly 500 years ago. For this is not the first time Britain has proposed breaking away from a big pan-European project, seeking to build a new set of relationships around the world while experiencing deep divisions at home. Over the past three years, many have spotted echoes between Brexit and the English Reformation. In 1533, after much debate within the nation over its relationship with the European-wide Catholic Church – which had been flexing its muscles and expanding its claims to power – Henry VIII decided on a different kind of Brexit. Desiring an annulment of his marriage, and taking advantage of religious and political turmoil, he agreed to the English Church declaring independence, not this time from Brussels, but from Rome. The 1534 Act of Supremacy – a sixteenth-century version of Article 50 – recognized the Monarch as Supreme Head of the Church in England rather than the Pope.

Some on the ‘Leave’ side of the Brexit debate, such as Ian Duncan Smith and Giles Fraser, have argued that the Reformation was an example of Britain releasing itself from the domination of an overblown, dictatorial European institution that had become top-heavy and too ambitious in its claim for control. Historians on the ‘Remain’ side, such as Diarmaid MacCulloch and Simon Sharma, have disputed this reading of events, pointing out that the Reformation was not a national independence movement, but was every bit as pan-European as the Roman Church. Indeed, Reform-minded churchmen kept up a remarkable correspondence and maintained communication across the Continent.

What has less often been remarked on is the long and difficult task of bringing a divided society together after the split from Rome. 1534 was not the end of the process of creating a new Britain; it was the beginning. Similarly, Brexit would by no means be the end of the process of our departure from the EU (despite all the talk of ‘let’s get Brexit done’ and ‘a clean break’). The English Church’s declaration of independence was deeply contentious. Some, welcoming freedom from the ‘tyranny of Rome’, saw it as an opportunity for the nation to forge a new path in the world, with the glories of Elizabethan literature, the flowering of the English language and the growth of the British Empire yet to come. Others deplored it as a betrayal of solidarity with our continental neighbours and the Church that held Europe together, and foresaw disasters ahead.1

The immediate impact of the separation in England was traumatic. The nation lurched from Henry’s ambivalence (despite manoeuvring to secure an annulment of his marriage, he was conservative when it came to church change), to the brief reign of his young son Edward VI (with a Privy Council that tried to push through Protestant reforms), to Mary Tudor’s reign (which briefly attempted to bring England back under European papal control). Arguments raged and divisions ran deep. Truth was one of the casualties as lies were told to secure convictions; rumours spread to create scapegoats. The Pilgrimage of Grace, for example, a regional revolt of Yorkshire ‘commoners’, was fuelled by fear that local feudal rights were being overridden by a centralized government. People were also alarmed by unfounded reports that, as part of the religious changes, Henry was about to impose taxes on baptisms and confiscate all silver vessels, replacing them with tin. Thomas Cromwell’s visitors routinely exaggerated the vices and extravagance of the English monasteries to justify Henry’s policy of dissolution and the appropriation of resources for the crown. Fake news is nothing new.

Memorials in towns and cities throughout the country, and across the rest of Europe, still bear witness to this harrowing time, marking the sites of the ceremonial burning of martyrs for one cause or the other. Many had to emigrate for fear of persecution, and families were riven with conflict. In England, the path led through a civil war, whose causes were complex yet undeniably connected with some of the divisions laid bare by the Reformation a century earlier.

Nonetheless, an attempt was being made to find an alternative path.

A British solution

As a result of the Reformation, most nations and regions on the Continent tended to become either Protestant or Catholic, under the principle cuius regio, eius religio – which effectively meant that a ruler dictated the religion of those they ruled. In England, however, as Elizabeth I ascended the throne in 1558, constructive efforts were made to bring healing to a divided nation by combining the Catholic and Protestant strands of sixteenth-century religion within one national Church.

At the heart of the Reformation was a tussle between the local and the universal. Was Britain better off with an independent church under the authority of the monarch? Or tied into the broader, international Roman Church with links across western Europe? Would the Church of England thrive better as a loose collection of essentially independent local churches, or held together nationally under the authority of bishops and the crown?

There were diverse views in different parts of the country, even in neighbouring towns and villages. The Church of England that emerged was independent of Rome. It was rooted locally through the parish system inherited from the distant past. The relative independence of parishes – small geographical units under local leadership – enabled churches to embrace different styles, some more Catholic, some more Protestant, and adapt to neighbourhood sensitivities. Yet they were held together nationally through a commitment to creeds, a common form of worship, and allegiance to bishops and the Monarch, who was both head of state and head of the Church.

The Protestant, non-conformist Church that grew out of what is sometime...

Table of contents

• Contents