This week in Christian history: Dwight Moody dies, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Sunday, December 18, 2022

Canterbury Archbishop objects to Queen Elizabeth – Dec. 20, 1576

Edmund Grindal (1519-1583), an English clergyman who served as Archbishop of Canterbury and was placed under house arrest by Queen Elizabeth I when he refused to crack down on the Puritans. | Wikimedia Commons

This week marks the anniversary of when Canterbury Archbishop Edmund Grindal wrote a letter to Queen Elizabeth I objecting to her efforts to curb Puritan preaching in England.

The queen had become concerned over Puritan efforts to reform the Church of England and ordered Grindal to suppress the meetings of Puritan preachers to practice their sermons, also known as “prophesyings.”

“However, Grindal was very much in favor of them. He believed they were a good way of educating the people into the doctrine of the new faith, and for providing religious instruction, as some places were without ministers,” explained the website Elizabethi.org.

“His letter to her was remarkably bold, as were his further petitions. He told her that although she was the highest authority in the land over political matters, she did not have the same authority over spiritual matters, and that he must put the will of God above his duty to her as sovereign.”

In response to his message, Elizabeth I had Grindal placed under house arrest and largely suspended from his duties as archbishop from 1577 until his death in 1583.