What are some ways that Thomas More's Utopia impacted religion in sixteenth-century England?

Thomas More's Utopia was a great success when it was first published in 1516. Although written in Latin, and therefore read only by a learned minority, it caught the temper of the times and proved in due course to be hugely influential. Its impact on religion was especially notable. This is not altogether surprising when one considers how pervasive religion was at that time. It is no exaggeration to say that, for most people, religion meant everything. It was not just confined to private prayer or church attendance, it determined how people lived their whole lives. Religion was also virtually synonymous with one's political ideas. In such an environment, punishment by the state of seditious acts and opinions rapidly turned into persecution of religious minorities.
It is inevitable, then, that Sir Thomas More would accord religion such a prominent place in his ideal society. The picture he portrays is remarkably ecumenical, one completely at odds with how religion was practiced in sixteenth-century England. In Utopia, there is complete toleration. (Except for atheists, who are considered completely beyond the pale.) There is one God but many different paths. The different religions coexist in a spirit of peace and harmony.
More presents us with an ideal of how religious life may manifest itself within society. However, his position with regards to religion, as with all aspects of Utopian life, is ambiguous. It is not entirely clear that More subscribes to the vision that he puts forward. Certainly, his own behavior during the early days of the Reformation should give us pause for thought. Despite his reputation as an urbane man of letters, More was a fanatical persecutor of heretics, genuinely believing that they were wicked individuals richly deserving of savage punishment, both in this life and the next.
The direct impact of Utopia upon sixteenth-century England was that it captured a growing desire for change within the Church. The Church was widely held to be corrupt and full of abuses. Men like Thomas More and Erasmus understood this all too well, but they never wanted to see the Church replaced altogether as some of the more radical Protestants did. The kind of change More wished to see is implied quite strongly in Utopia. Utopian priests, for example, are men of outstanding piety and personal integrity. More would have known that his learned readers would recognize this as a subtle critique of the less than scrupulous standards of most clerics at that time.
Utopia helped shape and articulate a developing demand for more rigor in religious conduct and practice. Unfortunately for More and other loyal defenders of the Catholic Church, this attitude was also shared by the people he regarded as heretics, Protestant reformers for whom the Church as it stood was irredeemibly corrupt, the "Whore of Babylon." The message of Utopia with regards to religion, though clear in some respects, was much more ambiguous on the whole. This meant that its plea for higher standards of piety for both lay and clergy alike could be used in radically different ways. Either one could, with More and Erasmus, enjoin the Church to reform itself from within, or one could, with radical Protestant reformers, advocate the replacement of the Catholic Church with an entirely new one, an institution more in keeping with the word of God as set out in Scripture.
As to the question of tolerance, it almost goes without saying that Utopia had little direct influence on contemporary religious life. Almost no one in England at that time envisaged different religions living together in an atmopshere of mutual tolerance and respect. Virtually everyone passionately believed that their way of worshipping God was the right one. Their opponents were not simply wrong or misguided, they were propagating evil docrines offensive to the Almighty. Toleration, for most believers, was simply a means to an end which allowed one's chosen denomination to prevail over its rivals. Once domination had been achieved, it was then necessary to persecute one's opponents with utter ruthlessness. His utopian vision notwithstanding, this is what Thomas More himself passionately believed with every fiber of his being. It was a credo by which he lived and died.