Tyranny, Anti-Catholicism, and the Birth of a Country

(Cross posted from American Creation)

I just finished a little piece on the shifting definition of tyranny and it’s anti-Catholic roots in the American colonies

Anti-Catholicism has a long and storied history going back around 500 years to the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Following Henry VII’s split with Rome in 1534, anti-Catholic bias was elevated from being an articulated position within the Church to an institutionalized bias within the British government. This was codified with the Act of Supremacy, which replaced the Pope as the head of the Church with the English Crown….

With Catholicism and the French inextricably mixed, the words tyranny, liberty, virtue, vice, etc. were commonly used in both political and theological arenas.

Within 2 years of the end of the (Seven Years)war, the Stamp Act was passed. With the memories of the bloodshed still fresh in the colonists minds, it wasn’t too much of a stretch for the religious leaders to subtly shift the target of who the tyrant was from the Catholic French and their Pope to the English Crown.

You can read the full piece here