English Evangelicals and Tudor Obedience, c.1527–1570

Book excerpt: The heart of this book lies in the important discovery that a pivotal Tudor argument in favor of the Royal Supremacy—the argument from Psalm 82 that earthly kings are ‘gods’ on this earth—is in fact Zwinglian in origin. This teaching from Psalm 82, which originated in Zurich in the mid-1520s, was soon used extensively in England to justify the Supremacy, and English evangelicals—from Tyndale to Cranmer—unanimously embraced this Protestant argument in their writings on political obedience. The discovery of this link shows conclusive, textual proof of the ‘Zurich Connection’ between Swiss political teachings and those popular under Tudor kings. This study argues, then, that evangelical attitudes towards royal authority were motivated by the assumption that Protestantism supported ‘godly kingship’ over against ‘papal tyranny’. As such, it is the first monograph to find a vital connection between early Swiss Protestant similar teachings on obedience and later teachings by evangelicals.