Lawyers have been the punchline of jokes since the time of Shakespeare. According to one Stanford law professor, 60 percent of Americans regard lawyers as greedy while only 20 percent regard them as honest and compassionate.
Thomas More (1475-1535) was a reputable lawyer in his day. He gave serious consideration to becoming a monk but sensed his true calling in the legal profession. He worked as a high-ranking advisor to King Henry VIII and represented the English monarch on several important diplomatic missions. He became Speaker of the House of Commons and lord chancellor in 1529, second only in authority to the king. King Henry VIII had married his late brother’s wife Catherine of Aragon. When she failed to produce a male heir to the throne, Henry petitioned the church to have his marriage annulled. He cited as biblical justification an obscure passage about a man who married his brother’s wife and became cursed and childless (Lev. 20.21). When Henry failed to gain church support for his annulment, he manipulated the legal process to become head of the new institution, the Church of England, thereby making it possible to divorce Catherine and marry Anne Boleyn.
Thomas resigned his post as chancellor and refused to attend Henry’s wedding and Anne’s coronation. Henry pressured Parliament to pass the Act of Supremacy, giving him official status as head of the church. When Thomas refused to sign the act, he was imprisoned for fifteen months, during which time he wrote some of his most penetrating works of Christian theology. He was found guilty of treason in a mock trial and executed in 1535. His final words before death are instructive, “The King’s good servant, but God’s first.”
Protestants don’t always give Thomas More his due, given his testy letter-writing challenges to Martin Luther over disrupting church unity and undermining its seven sacraments. But surely, his integrity as a lawyer and his impactful prayers have much to offer Protestants and Catholics alike: