Appealing - Elizabeth Bunyan

CA. 1641–92

Jesus told a parable of a woman who pestered an unjust judge until he finally ruled in her favor. Elizabeth Bunyan lived out that story. Her husband, John, was imprisoned, basically for preaching without a license. Over the twelve years of his incarceration, she begged several magistrates to release him, or at least to hear him. Unlike the judge in the parable, these ones did not relent.

Bunyan had four children with his first wife, who died about 1658. The following year he married Elizabeth, who was seventeen or eighteen. By then, he was already preaching at an independent Baptist church and in surrounding villages. But England was going through big changes. Charles II was the king, and fringe religious groups were not tolerated. As the preacher at an unlicensed church, John Bunyan was convicted and jailed in 1661. While he had a few temporary releases, John refused to promise to stop preaching, and this kept him in the clutches of the law until the law changed.

Though she suffered from poor health, Elizabeth proved tireless in her efforts to win John’s freedom. Not only did she pester the local judges in Bedford, but she also traveled to London, appealing to the House of Lords and even the king. “He desires to live peaceably and to follow his calling, that his family may be maintained. He desires a fair trial and freedom; but because he is a tinker and a poor man he cannot have justice,” she insisted. While such pleas impressed many along the way, John’s obstinate lack of repentance kept the original charges in place.

Meanwhile, in prison, John made shoelaces for his family to sell, wrote devotional material, and kept preaching. Finally, in 1672, King Charles issued the Declaration of Indulgence, decriminalizing the independent churches. John was free. Six years later he published a book he had begun in prison, an allegory of the Christian life called Pilgrim’s Progress. It rapidly became the best selling book in the English language, apart from the Bible.

As John’s book indicates, the Christian life is a journey. We go through swamps of depression, distracting sideshows, and castles of doubt—but there is a heavenly city ahead. No one knew this better than his hardworking advocate, Elizabeth.

Don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night?

Luke 18:7