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Why Did Henry VIII Turn England Protestant?
England’s King Henry VIII founded the Church of England — not from Protestant conviction — but because he wanted to divorce his queen, Catherine of Aragon, and marry his mistress Anne Boleyn. But a king in the 16th century needed the people to view his actions as sanctioned by God and the church. The advent of Protestantism provided his solution, and his dilemma provided an ally to the persecuted English Protestants.
Henry’s Reasons for Reformation
Henry had only one daughter by Catherine and lost affection for her as early as 1514 when he took his first known mistress. He had a son out of wedlock in 1519 and continued to commit adultery through the 1520s.
In the early 20s, Henry allied with Habsburg Emperor Charles V against France’s King Francis I. In 1525, that alliance crumbled, and this caused him to view Catherine — Charles’s aunt — as the symbol of a rejected alliance.
Henry suddenly found himself enlightened to the Biblical revelation of Leviticus 20:21 that it’s an abomination for one to have his brother’s wife. That his brother Arthur — Catherine’s first husband — was dead didn’t seem to matter. This was a dubious piece of theology and hotly contested, particularly because Deuteronomy 25:5 specifically commanded the Israelites to marry their brothers’ widows. But…
