Video for October 9th, 2025
Hello everyone, and welcome to this week’s video.
On October 6th the Church remembered William Tyndale on the anniversary of his death in 1536. One of the first translators of the Bible into English, his work provided a foundation for the King James translation. He was in exile in Antwerp when betrayed by Henry Phillips, imprisoned for 14 months, tortured and eventually executed. The accounts of interdenominational religious brutality in those days make the Taliban look like the Mother’s Union. It was truly a ghastly time of intolerance borne of a religious certitude on both sides of the Catholic Protestant divide. His only crime was attempting to translate the Bible into English so everyone could read it.
As with any of the disputes of the time, this was as much about power as it was religious conviction. If any old bod could read the Bible in their own language, it was a fundamental political challenge to those who used their interpretations of it to control and dominate. Tyndale walked in the footsteps of Jesus and the apostles who faced similar challenges from the religious leaders of their day. The Pharisees and teachers of the law had so overlain the grace filled commandments of the Old Testament, given for human flourishing, with their own traditions that the original purposes of the commands had been lost. Jesus had no time for that at all and said so. It contributed to him getting killed. The apostles were challenged by the religious authorities in the book of Acts to stop preaching about Jesus because the resurrection pointed to the fact that Jesus was killed first and the leaders were responsible. In Acts 4: 18, Peter and John were called before the Council who, “commanded them not to speak at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.””
There is an honourable tradition of non-violent Christian disobedience to unjust authority. Generally, we are exhorted to pray for those in authority and submit to them, since authority properly exercised is part of God’s ordering of society. The Bible is not a charter for anarchy. But Jesus also said, “give unto Caeser what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”. Sometimes legitimate authority oversteps the mark. The authorities declined initially to punish the disciples because they were afraid of the people. It was power without principle. It is fascinating how even despots like Putin rely heavily on opinion polls. He knows that he can only push things so far before dissent grows to a point at which his power would become unsustainable. The monolithic power of despots can collapse very quickly. The fall of the communist regimes in eastern Europe in 1989 is a case in point. Let us pray that the Russian regime goes as quickly; one hopes in a way that doesn’t give way to a worse nationalism.
The sort of principled resistance demonstrated by Tyndale is not the same as social media cynicism, or childish party politics. It presupposes a foundation of God revealed justice against which to judge contemporary political behaviour. As citizens of the kingdom of God who are just passing through, we pray for such principles to inform our common life. As Bishops in the House of Lord’s I pray we will always speak truth to power whichever party holds power at the time. At our Bishops meeting this week we have been thinking about proper structures of accountability so people can speak truth to power to us.
I was introduced to the 20th C British poet U A Fanthorpe by the Archbishop of York at that meeting. She wrote a series of poems imagining the last days of William Tyndale as he awaited execution. This section based on Psalm 119: 161, “princes have persecuted me without a cause”, seems particularly relevant. I’ll finish this video with that.
What can you do with power except misuse it?
Being so mighty makes these men afraid
That we, their subjects, might guess they're men too.
That I can understand. It's the followers
Who turn my stomach. The glib climbers
Greedy for money, land, influence, jobs for the boys.
They're drawn by the power and the glory,
And kings aren't fastidious. Consider Henry's men -
Cuthbert the cloth-eared Bishop of London;
Wolsey the Suffolk wolf; and foul-mouthed More,
The bitterest tongue in England. Consider also
Their noble master Henry, the subject-harrier,
Who drove me here. Well then, consider them.
They fear me. So they should. I plan
The invasion of England by the word of God.
And it will come. Just now, they burn my books.
An easy step from that to burning clerks,
Burning this clerk for doing what God wants,
Turning God's word to King's English.
But not the King's;
The people's; England's English. That's where Christ is.
Not a king to do business with Popes and chancellors,
But a servant, a man beneath us, who washes our feet,
Who goes before to try out the hard things first,
Who opens gates so we can go easily through,
That is the king, one and only, who speaks our own words.
The powerlessness and the glory.
Princes have persecuted me. Perhaps they have a cause.
+Richard