Anglican Biopolitics: Michel Foucault, King Josiah, and the Prophet Jeremiah in the Regimes of Edward VI and Elizabeth I

Abstract

By building upon my previous publication on Michel Foucault and Lutheranism, this article examines the English Reformation as a crucial early laboratory for the emergence of disciplinary and governmental techniques that Michel Foucault typically associated with modernity. Through an analysis of two complementary configurations – Edward VI’s regime of liturgical discipline and Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker’s governance of tradition – the study argues that Protestantism reconfigured the Christian pastorate into a system capable of shaping conduct, regulating memory, and producing subjects oriented toward self-surveillance. Under Edward VI, vernacular liturgy, iconoclasm, and communal reading created a field of continuous visibility that disciplined conscience and behavior. Under Elizabeth I, Parker’s medievalism constructed a genealogy of Anglo-Saxon continuity that grounded political obedience in historical fidelity. Parker and his collaborators did so by collecting, annotating, and reexamining medieval manuscripts. Taken together, these dynamics reveal the theological matrix of biopower: a form of government in which the care of souls and the administration of life become structurally inseparable, anticipating the techniques of modern population management.