Today there are many people who draw on the legacy of the Reformation, usually because it's to lend an aura of legitimacy to a movement they are involved with or are promoting. It's easy to refer to a movement as a continuation of the Reformation or as a new Reformation, but just because they claim such a thing doesn't make it so. I do not believe that a new Reformation is possible due to a wide variety of social and cultural factors and referring to a movement that broke the dominance of Catholicism and using that paradigm to break away from doctrinal Christianity is dubious at best. You cannot call people involved in Emergent,Word of Faith, or any other group that claim to be enacting another Reformation reformers because the Reformation was primarily against a corrupt and oppressive religious institution, medieval Catholicism, that when it hit swept across Europe like an out of control wildfire. At the time everyone was Catholic, you were Catholic because they did not allow other denominations like we have today. You were Catholic or else you'd probably be killed as a heretic. The Reformation changed that. What it won for us wasn't another a system of belief but it caused the church to constantly revise and reevaluate its theology and relationship to culture. We already had a cultural revolution, sure it was in 1500s but it paved the way for us and how we see things today. It took a static institutional dinosaur and changed it into a constantly evolving and shifting church . The Reformation brought back into focus doctrine that had been de-emphasized for so long that it seemed to have been forgotten. We are not at that point now because there is no one institutional church controlling and ruling on all things theological. Scripture ever since the Reformation has been constantly reviewed and interpreted so the primary doctrines of our faith are no longer hidden from view, no longer dependent on specific people to share it because scripture is available to all.
There are many things wrong with the church in America today: Hyper-prosperity, televangelism, ultra-fundamentalists who apply the letter of the law not the spirit of the law, and people who de-emphasize so much of our faith that it becomes nothing more then just a story of Jesus or a dialogue with people about where they are and why Christianity sucks and why it must change drastically. There is a lot of American culture that has become tied into Christianity. There is a lot of cultural garbage that does at time need to be filtered out but don't use the Reformation as a beacon to radically change something that has already been radically changed and tested and strengthened throughout the past 500 years. The Reformation that we should be focusing on is not one of doctrine but the reformation of the heart. David wrote in the Psalms for God to create in him a clean heart; the prophets said that God would take the law and write it not on tablets of stone, but on our hearts. The reformation we need is the one we must try and live out: our ongoing process of sanctification. We need everyday to turn our hearts to God, to hear what he is saying to us through his word and through his children and to let his spirit renew us and keep us focused on the things that matter: doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God.
Sola gratia, sola scriptura, solus Christus, sola fide.
Very well said my friend. I think that the "movements" have been so set on reforming that they have lost the true heart of the Gospel. I attended a Youth Specialties conference and sat in a breakout session with one of Emgergent's leaders(ironic since they don't believe in a hierarchy) and he was essentially breaking down how we should treat those that come in to our churches; a list of do's and don'ts. When the time came to ask a question I took the opportunity to ask this: wouldn't all this be solved by merely focusing on developing a heart of love; love as Jesus loved. Now I can't imagine anyone could disagree with that, so his response shocked me. But before that I noticed that his demeanor had changed, and immediately became a little standoffish. Again the irony is amazing considering I was talking about the love of Jesus. His response was we've tried that, it doesn't work. WTF! Seriously?! For a movement that prides itself on getting back to the essence of the ancients, and rages against dogmas and formulas, this is the best answer he could give me? Now I will give him the benefit of the doubt and perhaps believe that I misunderstood him or he, me. But it seems that these movements have been so focused on what others have been doing wrong they have lost sight of what's right. And that is to "everyday to turn our hearts to God, to hear what he is saying to us through his word and through his children and to let his spirit renew us and keep us focused on the things that matter: doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God." (Michael Landsman; Sept. 2009)
ReplyDeleteI asked a popular Christian author, Donald Miller, once at a church service what he thinks we as Christians are getting right because he spends so much time talking about how much we get wrong. It stopped him for a few seconds and he apologized if it came across that way and began to talk about what he thinks Christians get right. There is a stream of Christianity right now that is politically liberal and leaning theologically liberal and views everything in the church as outdated and in need of reform. Then funny thing is we had this battle already of religious and political liberal thought in the church 60 years ago and the reactions of Christians against what they saw, rightly in some cases, as an attack on the faith has evolved into a myriad of splinter movements. This is not a reformation at all nor should it be compared to one. G.K. Chesterton said, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." He was right then, and he's right today.
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