Where Protestantism Went Wrong

THE GERMAN NATIONAL Tourist Board has fallen in love with Martin Luther. In 1517, he nailed 95 theses protesting Catholic Church practices to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, an act considered the start of the Protestant Reformation. In honor of the 500th anniversary of this event, a 36-page tourist board brochure outlines eight different routes you can take through Germany featuring “36 authentic Luther sites” with itineraries offering “surprises aplenty.” They’ve even produced a Luther Playmobil figure for ages 4 through 99.

Reformation anniversary observances officially started in October in Lund, Sweden, with an ecumenical worship service convened by the Lutheran World Federation and the Vatican, attended by Pope Francis. Since then, countless events, conferences, exhibitions, and observances are being held not just in Germany but around the world as we approach the official anniversary day, Oct. 31, 2017.

But what exactly should we Christians do on this 500th anniversary of the Reformation? Celebrate? Commemorate? Confess? Or repent?

The impact of the Protestant Reformation, combined with the advent of the Gutenberg Bible and the dramatic increase in printed literature and literacy in Europe, produced revolutionary changes in religion and society. As the German tourist board exclaims, “trade, industry, art, architecture, medicine, and technology flourished like never before.” A glowing narrative of the Reformation’s impact on the church and Western culture tends to dismiss any words of thoughtful critique.

It’s indisputable that the inspired actions of Luther and other reformers challenged the foundational authority of the established church with the power of God’s Word, the efficacy of God’s grace, and the direct access of believers to God’s truth, changing fundamentally the structure and governance of the church. Authority in the church had become hopelessly corrupted, epitomized by the sale of indulgences, but also thoroughly compromised by avarice, greed, and prelacy, muting any resonant witness to the message and values of the gospel. Luther’s protest saved the church from itself. As one who led a Protestant denomination with roots deeply embedded in this historical movement, I gratefully claim the Reformation’s achievements.

But it also had unintended consequences that injured the church’s life and witness, continuing to this day.

A splintering church

First, the Reformation established the precedent that a group of believers, convinced of God’s revealed truth and its demands in specific circumstances, could break away from the authority of the church, and even denounce it as heretical, establishing their own separate church structure. This practice has become so commonplace, and so prolific, that we barely give it a second theological or biblical thought. Looking at world Christianity’s landscape, the reality is that what we confess as “the one holy catholic and apostolic church” has, in fact, become endlessly and ceaselessly divided into separate denominations.

Here’s our present shameful and sinful state of affairs: Today, there are an estimated 43,800 denominations in the world, often living with sectarian distrust and judgment of one another. This staggering proliferation of divided institutionalized churches never could have been imagined in the first 1,500 years of Christian history. Despite the significant accomplishments of the ecumenical movement over the past 60 years, today we still assume impunity for ongoing actions that continue to sever the Body of Christ and disobey the consistent, clear, repeated biblical commands to reconcile divisions and live together in unity. This is a legacy of the Reformation.

Neglecting the inner life

Second, as Richard Rohr once said to me, “The Reformation focused on the individual but missed the inner life.” The individual’s ability to know, think, and believe for him or herself, rather than having the terms of faith dictated and mediated through the authority of the church, became primary. But as the Reformation spread, especially into northern Europe and England, faith became codified in creeds and confessions requiring the intellectual consent of the individual believer.

At the same time in the turbulent 16th century, practices focused on reviving and deepening one’s inner spiritual journey were growing in the Catholic Church, particularly seen in Spanish mystics such as John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and Ignatius of Loyola. Ignatian spirituality in particular—with its practices of retreat, spiritual direction, detachment, “examen” of consciousness, finding God in all things, and union with Jesus—became a framework for deepening interior spirituality. But as this movement, and the emerging Jesuit order, became part of the Counter-Reformation, it all was rejected by the Protestant Reformers.

Certainly, other forms of piety emerged within the widening and splintering world of the Reformation. Historians argue that hymnody, for example, played a central role. Yet an emphasis on rational articulations of right doctrine often prevailed, even to this day, combined with a suspicion toward “Catholic” practices of spirituality, which were frequently alleged to be another form of “works righteousness.” It has taken the crossover success of Catholic writers such as Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen to open the Protestant world to rich spiritual practices that were long ignored. It’s only in the last 30 years that contemplative prayer, spiritual direction, detachment, intentional retreat, and the examen have emerged in the lexicon and experience of Protestants.

Rejecting art and beauty

Third, the Reformation bred a mistrust of aesthetics. This is particularly true of those branches following Calvin, and certainly Zwingli. One sees it most in architecture and worship style. Reformed church buildings shunned art, rejecting the “idolatry” they saw practiced in the unreformed church. Walls were blank. The focus was on the pulpit, to hear the words of the Word. The emphasis, here again, was on right articulation of doctrine. “Smells and bells” were dismissively forgotten.

In some ways, protecting the church from the influence of art and aesthetics derived from a strong division between the spiritual and the material worlds. The appendix to The Westminster Directory of Public Worship even declares, “no place is capable of any holiness.” This reflexive desire to keep matter and spirit detached from one another continues to infect much of Protestant thinking. The more recent movements toward liturgical renewal, including even sensory-saturated worship, as well as the recovery of liturgical arts and dance within mainline and evangelical congregations, can be understood as finally rejecting the Reformation’s war on aesthetics.

Distrusting individual leaders

Fourth, the Reformation poisoned how we understand religious leadership. “Papists” became the derogatory term for those whom the Reformers opposed. The actions of corrupt, craven, and desultory bishops, including the Bishop of Rome, convinced many Reformers that no sole individual should be trusted with religious authority. For most branches of the Reformation, this created forms of polity and governance that placed authority in councils, committees, synods, conferences, or other groups. At their core, these methods of governing the church are based on the mistrust of any leadership vested in a person.

The wisdom of such a corrective is obvious. But it also has its deficiencies. Sociological wisdom shows that any group has some persons who function in a leadership capacity. When such leadership is not identified, there’s no method of accountability, which frequently results in covert attempts to exercise influence and authority, resulting in dysfunction and chaos.

So the Reformation implanted a distrust of any personalized leadership within historic Protestantism. But even John Calvin was not against bishops in principle—he was simply opposed to the corrupt bishops he witnessed. The challenge 500 years later, for Protestants and Catholics alike, is how to affirm the gift of leadership but also hold it firmly accountable in the collegial governance of the church.

Into the future

Martin Luther never intended to break completely from the established church; he desired its reform. But power was threatened, and positions became polarized. Recent decades of theological dialogue have minimized those differences, which some now call “misunderstandings.” But they were costly. The antagonism generated by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation led to the 30 Years War a century later, killing 20 percent of the German population.

Yet the Reformation also began the process of separating the church from the political authority and military power of the state, which originated with the Roman emperor Constantine the Great in the fourth century. That challenging process continues today. As this 2017 anniversary year begins, the whole church would be well advised to strengthen the best effects of the Reformation, but also repent from its worst.