Magna Carta Anniversary: Oops! I almost missed it!
As the son and daughter-in-law of an Englishwoman, Ray and I think it is pretty cool to remember not only Ray’s birthday on June 15, but also the fact that June 15 is the date of the signing of the Magna Carta. Just yesterday I was reminded that this June 15 was a big anniversary of the Magna Carta. It was signed 800 years ago this past Monday. Before the week is out, I’d like to commemorate that historic event.
We Americans got many of our ideas about freedom from Great Britain– ideas that backfired on the British when they decided to take away American rights in the mid-to-late-1700s in order to pay for the French and Indian War (or the Seven Years War, as it was called in Europe). That’s when English citizens who lived in thirteen colonies along the coast of North America decided they wanted to be free and independent and become just Americans instead of Englishmen who lived in America.
King John was on the throne in England in 1215. A large group of English barons got fed up with some of his policies and forced him to set his seal to a document called the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta limited the power of the king and gave rights to citizens.
The Magna Carta is considered one of the most important political documents in the history of the world. It is important for three reasons:
- The Magna Carta was written down. Once written down people could refer to an actual document; no king could declare, “No, that’s not what I said.”
- The Magna Carta states that government is not all powerful, but rather it has limits.
- The Magna Carta says that law is superior to the power of a king.
Each of these principles became part of the Constitution of the United States.
In 1939 one of the four remaining copies of the Magna Carta that date from 1215 came to America — the copy owned by Lincoln Cathedral in Lincoln, England (Lincoln Cathedral was first commissioned by none other than William the Conqueror). When New York hosted a World’s Fair in 1939, the Lincoln Cathedral copy of the Magna Carta was placed on display in the British Pavilion. The parchment document was then transferred to Washington, DC, for safekeeping during World War II. On November 28, 1939, Lord Lothian, English ambassador to the United States, deposited the Magna Carta into the Library of Congress.
The Magna Carta was placed on display along with the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. However, when America entered the war, too, the Library of Congress sent the Magna Carta to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for safekeeping. The Lincoln Cathedral copy of the Magna Carta returned to England in 1946.
As patriotic American homeschooling Christian mamas, we have some conflicting principles in our own lives that we must figure out how to teach our children. While we pray that America will stay true to our Constitutional guarantees of a limited government where law is superior to individual leaders, we realize, too, that as Christians we do have a King Who is truly Sovereign. I believe it is particularly hard for Americans to submit to our King with our whole hearts, souls, minds, and bodies because we live in a country where the majority can change things if we try hard enough, where we can argue that our own way is superior to another, where people every day define what is “right” for themselves, without reference to the Creator of the Universe Who deserves and demands our complete obedience to Him and to the teachings He gave us in His Word.
I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things,
and of Christ Jesus, who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate,
that you keep the commandment without stain or reproach
until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ,
which He will bring about at the proper time—
He who is the blessed and only Sovereign,
the King of kings and Lord of lords,
who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light,
whom no man has seen or can see.
To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen.
1 Timothy 6:13-16