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He became the head of both church and state, they were still separate.
by b112 4y ago
He became the head of both church and state, they were still separate.
- pjc50 4y agoNo they weren't! That's what the Americans were rebelling against and specifically wrote the church-state separation to prevent. The result was both Crown control over the appointment of bishops, bishops having temporal legislative power in the House of Lords, and (relevant to this story) the seizure and in some cases destruction of basically all Church property. The UK then spent hundreds more years fighting over this relationship. People are still writing angry articles about the monarch being inextricably linked to the church in 2011: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-absurd-for-britain-to-allow-catholics-to-marry-the-monarch-2011-11?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-absurd-for-britain-t... The Church of England is a state religion. It is part of the state (Crown), controlled by the state (King), and until the 19th century participation in it was effectively mandatory to participate in public life. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_Acts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_Acts)