From "First Things": A Review of "God Is An Englishman"

Rhys Laverty reviews God is an Englishman*: Christianity and the Creation of England by Bijan Omrani for First Things. *Not to be confused with R.F. Delderfield's novel!

Of course, I particularly noticed the comments about the treatment of the English Reformation in the review:

While I would recommend Omrani’s book without hesitation, his treatment of the Reformation irked me a little. Omrani at one point refers to the “trauma” of the Reformation, alongside that of the English Civil War. This feels a lopsided term for how the English now see the Reformation, and even for how they saw it by the end of the sixteenth century, when Elizabethan England was a confident Protestant nation set self-consciously against its Catholic foes. Chapter 4 focuses on the history of religious art in England, with much lament over Reformation iconoclasm. Whatever one thinks of it, that iconoclasm and the resultant restrained aesthetic of most Anglican churches is now a part of Christianity’s formation of English identity, a fact Omrani doesn’t really acknowledge.

Furthermore, chapter 8, which outlines the English Reformation’s legacy of political liberty, contains two notable flaws. First, and somewhat pedantically: Omrani suggests that “the foundations were being laid for the divine right of kings” when Henry VIII argued that the fifth commandment (“Honor thy father and mother”) entailed obedience to the governing authorities. Yet this interpretation was novel neither to Henry nor even the Reformation. One can easily find it in Thomas Aquinas.

Second, Omrani fails to moderate his otherwise commendable account of Protestant political liberty with the English Reformation’s particular emphasis on conservatism and good order. . . .

With the comment that Omrani neglects to even mention Richard Hooker's Laws Ecclesiastical Polity, which Laverty notes "bridged the gap between medieval scholasticism and early modern political thought . . . and in a tumultuous time articulated the need for “orderly public judgment to prevail over private judgment” (to quote my friend Brad Littlejohn)." I think Robert Reilly would agree, as he included Hooker in his America on Trial.

Here's a link to the publisher's website; there's a preview offered there.

We're on a break from our 2025 anniversaries series on the Son Rise Morning Show for Memorial Day and the next week, but I'll be back soon with the double anniversaries this year for Saints John Fisher and Thomas More: Martyrdoms AND Canonizations!