When did the Reformation happen?

1523 is the traditional starting date – but it is on-going. The question is WHY did some in the 1400s feel that any “reformation” was needed?

Doctrinal Errors: worshipping of saints, excessive venerating of the Virgin Mary, indulgences scamming parishioners, offering the Mass in Latin (a language people didn’t understand), and clergy not keeping vows of celibacy, to name a few.

But it was a bit more complicated/involved than that. Luther was not the first – or only ‘reformer’. In the 1300s there were similar gripes/efforts by Jan Huss, of Bohemia (now the Czech. Republic); but he got burned at the stake for his ideas and efforts. There was also an English cleric at about the same time who had the same ideas and efforts. He died a natural death and was buried, but later dug up and burned at the stake, just to make the point.

The bottom line: most of the early reformers (and there were others) had many of the same goals as Luther. But Luther had a couple of things going for him that the earlier reformers didn’t. Luther was a ‘rising star’ priest; he had a PhD. and was a university/seminary professor. His thinking can be summed up in three principles/propositions articulated by Luther as he looked at the long history of the church up to his time:

1. The WORD ALONE,
2. GRACE ALONE,
3. FAITH ALONE…

… by which he meant that anything believed or taught by the Church that didn’t conform to/fit into/proceed from these three principles was contrary to the Bible/God’s word and needed to be changed. Some examples: the Mass in Latin, the immorality of much of the clergy, selling of bishoprics for profit, selling Indulgences, etc.

So, the church had some serious problems as Luther saw it. The question is: how was Luther able to ‘pull off’ a “reformation” when others before him couldn’t? He had three great advantages over earlier ‘wanna-be’ reformers:

1. The printing press with ‘moveable type’ had been invented in Germany just 30+ years before Luther was born and was his “secret weapon”. It allowed not only for the swift dissemination of his views but for illustrations picturing him as a heroic figure and “man of the people” challenging the authorities that maintained policies of inequality and kept the people in poverty. Before the printing press was invented, Luther’s predecessors had to rely on woodblock printing, which took longer and produced texts of poorer quality. The new press could produce pamphlets, posters, books, and anything else quickly, which were then made available to the public.

This enabled Luther to have his sermons, books, essays, and hymns mass-produced inexpensively rather than having to have them hand copied. He wrote his Large Catechism to educate priests and his Small Catechism for laypeople in 1529 and published the complete Bible in German in 1534. Lutherans use the Small Catechism to this day.

He also wrote theological works and participated in the Marburg Colloquy, an attempt at unifying the differing Protestant movements in Europe. At the conference, Luther and the Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) parted ways over their interpretation of the Eucharist. Luther continued to believe and hold that the Sacrament of the Eucharist is the real presence of Christ. The others denied the real presence and referred to communion as only the remembrance of Christ and not a sacrament. Other differences between Protestant parties proved equally insurmountable, and the various sects were left to develop their own visions.

2. Luther translated the whole Bible into German (the language that his people spoke) from the ORIGINAL Hebrew and Greek, rather than relying on the error-ridden copies of the “Vulgate”, the fourth century official translation of the Church. This got rid of many of the erroneous doctrines and practices which had crept into the church from translation mistakes of earlier words and situations in the “Vulgate”.
3. He translated the Latin Mass into German; he wrote and published several hymns for the congregation to sing in place of some of the Latin liturgical chants and actions previously rendered only by the clergy. Now the people were actual participants IN worship services, rather than just spectators OF the Mass. And singing is a mainstay in worship services today.

(Footnote added here by Rev. Bob Butterfield: To be a bit more thorough, there was another reason for the success of the Lutheran reformation. This happened when the Turkish invasion of Europe was in full swing, with the city of Vienna under siege. The Holy Roman emperor desperately needed a united German army to fight off the Turks and made concessions in religious freedom to the German elector princes to achieve this.  These Lutheran (actually “evangelical”) princes also used this to leverage reductions and/or abolition of papal taxes. The realization that the electors had motives other than zeal for the purity of the Christian faith was a major disappointment for Luther, and bitterness over this may well have had a role in the development of the antisemitism of his later years.)

The “reformation” ideas spread throughout Germany and much of the rest of Europe. A ‘reformation’ of sorts also occurred in England, though for reasons other than biblical or theological. King Henry VIII wanted a divorce from his Spanish wife, Catheryn of Aragon. But the Pope would not allow this (Catheryn was the pope’s sister”). King Henry then denounced the Roman Church and declared himself “Head of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith”. He did, however, adopt virtually all of Luther’s theological positions, which became “The Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith of the Anglican/Episcopal Churches” to this day.

Finally, after years of arguing and wars, it was obvious that the Reformation was not going to go away, so the Roman Church relented and allowed Lutherans to be the dominant religion of the Northern part of Germany. And in the process, the rulers of other counties (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland) established “Lutheranism’ as the State Church of those countries. This meant that anyone born in those countries automatically was a “Lutheran”.

This is where this “Reformation” stuff impacts us–for, as people from these countries (and others) immigrated to America, each group brought their own language, their own liturgies, hymnbooks, and worship customs. And it wasn’t just Scandinavians – it was also Germans, Dutch, Baltic, etc., folks.

And not all of these nationalities agreed with each other. So, we ended up with several different Norwegian groups, and different Swedish groups, etc. – all still “Lutheran”, but with different practices and variations of the same hymns, liturgical practices, etc.

This continued until 1918, when a few Scandinavians (mostly Norwegians) “merged” their small groups into a body known as the “United Lutheran Church”. But there were still many small groups of Scandinavians: the “United EVANGELICAL Lutheran Church”, the “Lutheran Free Church”, the “Lutheran Church Missouri Synod”, the “Wisconsin Synod”, the Texas and Ohio Synod, etc.

Then, in 1930 more of these smaller groups ‘merged’ with the “United Lutheran Church” and became the “American Lutheran Church”. But, notably, the “Missouri Synod”, the ‘Wisconsin Synod’, the “Ohio Synod”, and the “Texas Synod”, remained separate.

These groupings remained until 1957-58, when the “American Lutheran Church” and the “United Lutheran Church) ‘merged’ To become “THE American Lutheran Church” (note the “THE”).

However, concurrently, another group of independent Scandinavians were in separate ‘merger’ talks and were unwilling to end those, so they became “The Lutheran Church in America”. At this point there were three major Lutheran groups: “TALC”, “LCA”, and the ”Lutheran Church Missouri Synod”.

In 1987-88, TALC & LCA merged to become “THE Evangelical Lutheran Church in America” (the ‘ELCA’), which is where we are today. There are TWO MAJOR groups: the “ELCA” and the Lutheran Church Missouri synod (“LCMS”, which is mostly German). The “Wisconsin Synod” still exists, but is very small, and makes the “LCMS” look like flaming liberals.

There are two more “movements” worth mentioning. In the 1970s there was a big LCMS doctrinal “fuss-up” at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis concerning critical scholarship.  As a result, a large group of LCMS pastors, seminary professors, and congregations left the LCMS. They briefly formed the AELC and became the catalyst for the unification of the AELC, ALC and the LCA, currently about two-thirds of the Lutherans in the USA.

Then, in 1997, after more than twenty years of “theological talks”, the ELCA and the “Episcopal Church USA”, the Presbyterians, the United Church of Christ (the old “Congregational Church”), and a few other smaller groups, declared “Altar and Pulpit Fellowship”, which meant that they would recognize each other’s clergy, liturgies, etc., as valid and inter-changeable. This meant that Lutheran clergy could serve Episcopal Churches, and vice-versa.

The United Methodist Church was considering also joining in this, but they had a continuing split over “LGBTQ” issues, so, they decided to take no action at the time.

One final point is significant: each of these mergers produced a new Hymnal/Liturgy book. Mostly these new books were updates of language, the liturgical calendar, vestments, more uniform versions of the Creeds, common liturgical music, etc.

To this day the “Reformation” is on-going, and you might hear references to the “Red Book”, the “Green Book”, or the “Cranberry Book”, each, in its turn a product of reforming efforts and mergers of their times.

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by Rod Platte, Pastor Emeritus, Paradise Lutheran Church