Riverwood Presbyterian Church

On “God’s Chosen People,” an earlier version…

by Jimmy Hopper

I am a member of the cult that believes Patrick O’Brien’s series of novels about the Napleonic sea wars are the best historical novels ever written, so it was natural that I would be interested in Arthur Herman’s history of the British navy, To Rule the Waves, especially since it had a painting of the battle of Trafalger on the front. I was not disappointed. The influence of the British navy on world history is interesting history.

As always, however, I read through a Christian lens and Herman’s ongoing commentary about a book, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (he cites it some 15 times in his book) really fascinated me. I have heard of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs numerous times, mostly in terms of persecution of modern missionaries. For that reason, I had in my mind that it was probably a relatively recent book; or even an early book that is updated as different eras come and go. I was shocked to find out that there is only one version, and that it was written in Elizabethan England in 1563. It became the mostly widely read book in England; even more than the Bible. Its author was John Foxe, born in Boston in Lincolnshire which, by the way, was the reason for the naming of the American Boston in the Puritan colony of Massachusetts and speaks to the prominence of Foxe in Protestant England in his day. Its chief focus was the Catholic persecution of Protestants under Mary and Philip II of Spain. Foxe himself was forced to flee to the continent to avoid said persecution. But it is not the contents but the pervasive influence of the book that Herman speaks of so often.

Herman believes that Foxe’s Book of Martyrs was responsible for a feeling that the English were God’s chosen people. Foxe describes Elizabeth as “the new Constantine, sent by God to protect the true religion and bring peace and harmony to the world.” Herman adds this commentary:

All this was a travestry of historical facts, although very flattering for the new Queen: but Foxe’s message went beyond mere political propaganda. He had deliberately recast the history of England by turning it into a religious community embarked on a sacred mission. (Readers) learned that being English meant enjoying a privileged relationship with God, much as the Jews had enjoyed before the coming of Christ. Foxe had set in motion the idea of England as God’s Elect Nation, and a view of the cosmos summed up by Elizabeth’s Bishop of London, John Aylmer, when he simply proclaimed that “God is English.”

The arrogance of the English aristoracy is legendary throughout history but Herman argues that a form of arrogance was also part and parcel of the the psyche of the common people because of the attitudes fostered by Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. The obvious problem to Christians (such as myself) who read Herman’s theory has to do with his association; that this attitude was responsible for attempts at genocide in areas of Ireland, and was justification for conquest. While I think Herman carries it a bit far (surely the wealth of the new world and Asia had something to do with it,) there is something of a basis for his theory.

So what does this have to do with the 21st Century? First and most obviously, Christianity, the church of Jesus Christ, is not and will never be a political or national entity. It is so much more that there is no comparision possible. When man declares that God’s special province is something of man, i.e. a nation or political system; he speaks of something untrue Biblically after the coming of Christ and the demise of the original “chosen people.” God’s “chosen people” is His church, and they are from every nation and tongue. When they are declared to be otherwise, I always look askance at it and wonder why. Is it simply spiritual elitism or is there a profit or power motive?

Secondly, when these declarations are made; and when they carry real political power, eventually there is going to be denigration of Christ’s church by the world because, at base, the declarations are false and because those making or profiting from them are human and fallen. We, as Christians, are constantly finding that we must explain/excuse the fallenness of man, or we are simply tarred with the same brush.

God’s Church in the first century was made viable by the martyrdom of the saints. God’s Church was advanced throughout the ages by the martyrdom of saints who considered their lives as nothing because of Christ. A recounting of their deeds and sacrifices is a laudable enterprise. It’s just not right, though, in Elizabethan England or today to assign the Church of Jesus Christ to the province of man’s institutions.