Leaving aside the anti-Catholic animus (as well as what seem to be some dubious historical assertions) this is an interesting piece by British journalist Rod Liddle on the deep connections between English culture and Protestant Christianity.

There has been a revisionist view, popularized by Eamon Duffy in particular, that Catholicism represented the authentic religion of the English people which was stripped away by the heavy hand of Henry VIII and the English state. Liddle is here taking the more traditional view that it was a matter of England throwing off the shackles of Roman tyranny.

As it happens, I’ve just finished Own Chadwick’s history of the Reformation (Owen, brother of Henry, edited the Penguin series on the History of the Church in which Henry’s volume on the early church also appears). Chadwick takes more of a middle of the road view. He sees the decline in the church’s power in relation to the state as something that happened across the board, in Catholic as well as Protestant countries, and probably necessary for a more modern and rational form of government to emerge. Chadwick, in other words, takes a somewhat “Whiggish” view of the Reformation.

Chadwick also contends that, while reform could hardly be called a populist movement in England, the people accepted it fairly readily, and even among conservatives those calling for a restoration of the pope’s authority were a minority (of course, Chadwick’s book, having been written some time ago, doesn’t take Duffy’s scholarship into account). One of the virtues of Chadwick’s book is that he takes “reform” to be something that took place throughout Europe, but took different forms in different countries. This enables him to see the “counter” Reformation as more than simply a reaction to Protestantism, but also as a genuine Catholic response to the drive toward reform.

There’s a lot of interest in using this history polemically. Not just Roman Catholics, but Anglo-Catholics tend to emphasize the “catholic” elements of English Christianity and even take a somewhat dim view of the Reformation. One occasionally hears that Anglicanism has its theological and liturgical sources in the Fathers and the early church rather than in the Reformers (why not both?). On the other side, as in Liddle’s essay, Reformed Christianity is identified with English culture and nationhood, while Catholicism remains an essentially foreign, and somewhat menacing, force.

Either way, history, by itself can’t settle theological disputes. It’s certainly possible that the Reformers were right in their main criticisms of the medieval church even if the Reformation often made progress by means of state power. (For that matter, Catholicism hardly foreswore the use of the sword.) Success doesn’t prove truth, but it doesn’t prove falsehood either.