Two anniversaries are colliding this year. One will dominate headlines, but the other will go unnoticed. They are separated by 250 years, an ocean, and one extraordinary Englishman.
As America is preparing to turn 250, I’ve just returned from London, where another milestone quietly reaches its own anniversary: It’s 500 years since a man named William Tyndale translated the Bible into English.
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At first glance, the two events seem entirely unrelated. One celebrates the birth of our great nation, and the other remembers an English reformer who was martyred more than two centuries before America even existed.
Yet as I stared through glass at one of the three remaining fragile copies of Tyndale’s 1526 masterpiece at St. Paul’s Cathedral last week, the thought hit me: “Without Tyndale, would there even be a United States?”
Before there was an America, there was an English Bible. Before the Declaration of Independence, there were words, ideas, and convictions that crossed the Atlantic and undoubtedly helped shape the very foundations of our nation.
Few people are more responsible for our inheritance than Tyndale.
Most Americans have never heard his name. He never made it across the pond, but the scale of his influence is quite remarkable.
In the early 16th century, the Bible was read in Latin, and only the priests could access it. But Tyndale believed Scripture was for everyone. He famously said that if God spared his life, “even the plough boy” would know more of the Bible than the clergy trying to silence him.
Unable to complete his work in England, Tyndale fled to Germany, where he translated the New Testament directly from Greek into clear, accessible English. Once printed in 1526, thousands of copies were secretly smuggled back to England, hidden among commercial cargo. Church authorities hunted them down, and copies were confiscated and publicly burned. Owning one could carry severe consequences.
Yet demand only grew.
The small format of Tyndale’s New Testament, now familiar to anyone who owns a pocket Bible, was born not from convenience but necessity. Smaller books were easier to smuggle and hide from the authorities.
Tyndale’s mission eventually cost him his life.
After more than a year in prison near Brussels, he was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536. His final prayer was, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.”
Amazingly, two years after his execution, every parish church in England was ordered to provide an English Bible. Within a generation, affordable English Bibles were finding their way into ordinary homes. The translator was dead, but his prayer was answered. The mission lived on.
Tyndale did not simply translate Scripture. He helped shape the English language itself. “The powers that be,” the signs of the times,” “fight the good fight,” and “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” all entered the language through his pen. Scholars estimate that roughly 80% to 90% of the King James Bible is built directly on Tyndale’s earlier translation.
Whether you approach American history from a religious perspective or a secular one, the influence of Scripture on our nation is difficult to deny. Biblical language has permeated America’s political speeches, legal arguments, education, and everyday conversation. Our culture and our very foundation were formed on the Word of God.
George Washington famously said that it is impossible to rightly govern a country without God and the Bible. Presidents throughout the years have quoted Tyndale’s words and stood firmly on Scripture.
America’s story did not begin in 1776. Our independence was the culmination of years of inherited language, ideas, and beliefs that had already crossed the Atlantic. Tyndale helped carry many of them.
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It was an honor to visit London and trace some of Tyndale’s footsteps. As president of EEM, a ministry that gives away more than two million Bibles a year, I am grateful for his commitment and fight.
As America celebrates 250 years, Tyndale deserves to be remembered not as a footnote to history, but as one of the men who helped shape the nation long before it was born.
Dirk Smith is president of EEM, a Christian ministry that publishes and delivers approximately two million Bibles free every year across 35 countries in more than 30 languages. See www.eem.org for more.