I know—you're sick of hearing about it. My mailman complains because he has to deliver enormous bags of angry letters and postcards from you guys. But I need to talk about the Reformation some more.

In England, King Henry VIII was butting heads with the Pope because the Pope refused to bless Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon so he could marry Anne Boleyn. So with all this Reformation going on, Henry said 'Dash it—why don't I start up my own bally church?'* and created the Church of England. Of course he put himself in charge of it. Henry kicked the Catholic nuns & monks out of nunneries and monasteries and destroyed Latin bibles and holy relics.

"Here you are, lads. Hot off the press, what?"

This wasn't any big improvement on the corrupt mediæval Church. Henry cleverly inserted himself in between the regular shmos and God, so power descended from heaven, to Henry, to you. It was still the same old top-down power that got distributed through earthly government. Henry VIII had the Bible translated into English.** The title page has a picture of Henry in the middle of the universe with G-d above filtering His might through him. This picture is telling you that Henry gets his authority to rule directly from G-d. It's the divine right of kings.

* I asked P G Wodehouse to write Henry's dialogue.
** From the Oops-I-Changed-My-Mind file: Henry's Great Bible has big chunks of Tyndale's translation in it. I mean, Woolsey has Tyndale burned at the stake for translating the Bible, then Henry's team uses the translation Tyndale was executed for?

https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item101943.html
http://textusreceptusbibles.com/Great
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Divine_Right_of_Kings
Good article but it's manner not manor:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/henry-viii-the-reformation-and-the-first-authorized-bible/

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