structural:summarization
Anglican Communion

In 1980, despite their staunch opposition to the English Reformation, More and Fisher were added as martyrs of the reformation to the Church of England 's calendar of "Saints and Heroes of the Christian Church", to be commemorated every 6 July (the date of More's execution) as "Thomas More, scholar, and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, Reformation Martyrs, 1535". The annual remembrance of 6 July, is recognized by all Anglican Churches in communion with Canterbury, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, and South Africa.

In an essay examining the events around the addition to the Anglican calendar, Scholar William Sheils links the reasoning for More's recognition to a "long-standing tradition hinted at in Rose Macaulay's ironic debating point of 1935 about More's status as an 'unschismed Anglican', a tradition also recalled in the annual memorial lecture held at St. Dunstan's Church in Canterbury, where More's head is said to be buried." Sheils also noted the influence of the 1960s play and film A Man for All Seasons which gave More a "reputation as a defender of the right of conscience". Thanks to the play's depiction, this "brought his life to a broader and more popular audience" with the film "extending its impact worldwide following the Oscar triumphs". Around this time the atheist Oxford historian and public intellectual, Hugh Trevor-Roper held More up as "the first great Englishman whom we feel that we know, the most saintly of Humanists...the universal man of our cool northern Renaissance." By 1978, the quincentenary of More's birth Trevor-Roper wrote an essay putting More in the Renaissance Platonist tradition, and claim his reputation was "quite independent of his Catholicism." (Only, later on, did a more critical view arise in academia, led by Professor Sir Geoffrey Elton, which "challenged More's reputation for saintliness by focusing on his dealings with heretics, the ferocity of which, in fairness to him, More did not deny. In this research, More's role as a prosecutor, or persecutor, of dissidents has been at the center of the debate.")