On this day in 1543, King Henry VIII made reading the Bible illegal for commoners. To the day, 243 years later, Thomas Jefferson finally succeeded in getting the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom passed - an act which established complete freedom of religion. A person should be, he argued, free to spread their own religious opinions without punishment from the "state church" or government.
There was a time when a person's tongue might be cut out for preaching without a license or a person's ears cut off for listening to unapproved preaching. Even in our nation's history, people were taxed to support the state-sanctioned church, regardless of whether they believed in the stated doctrines or not.
Praise God for the freedoms that we now have! Do you treasure your freedom to read the Bible? Do you devote some of your day to studying the Word of God? I pray that it doesn't take some degree of persecution for us to value what we dismiss so casually today.
Fact source: This Day is Christian History, A. Kenneth Curtis and Daniel Graves (eds.), Christian Publications, Inc., 2005.
There was a time when a person's tongue might be cut out for preaching without a license or a person's ears cut off for listening to unapproved preaching. Even in our nation's history, people were taxed to support the state-sanctioned church, regardless of whether they believed in the stated doctrines or not.
Praise God for the freedoms that we now have! Do you treasure your freedom to read the Bible? Do you devote some of your day to studying the Word of God? I pray that it doesn't take some degree of persecution for us to value what we dismiss so casually today.
Fact source: This Day is Christian History, A. Kenneth Curtis and Daniel Graves (eds.), Christian Publications, Inc., 2005.
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