Differences between the First and Second Reformations July 5, 2008
Posted by Zack in | 5 comments
One of the books I’ve been nibbling at these days is: Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries. It paints a picture of a population of believers in the Netherlands in the 1500’s bailing out of the established (Catholic) church looking for a more authentic relationship to God. They were skipping established church services (the Latin Mass, which they couldn’t understand) to listen to lay preachers (and renegade Catholic priests) in fields on the outskirts of town and in secret basement meeting places.
Their desire for a different kind of relationship to God in worship was so strong that they risked arrest, torture and even death to attend those sermons. A lot of our knowledge of these believers comes from their heresy trials: They were mostly skilled and semi-skilled laborers. They were a mix of literate, barely literate and illiterate. Their beliefs were an eclectic and contradictory mix of the theologies of the pioneer Reformation leaders.
Above all, they cared about getting back to the Bible. For many it was the first time in their lives that they heard the actual Gospel read and interpreted in a language they could understand. Many printings of Dutch translations of the New Testament floated around, small enough to easily hide, long before a single unified Dutch translation of the Bible was made.
The established church and the secular government at the time responded to this bottom-up revolt of belief by restricting the teaching of the Bible. That only served to sap even more credibility from the established church.
The movement seems to have some strong similarities to what America has seen over the last couple decades in the abandonment of the mainline churches for non-denominational, more Bible-based evangelical churches.
The big difference that stands out to me: In the Reformation, everyone was yelling at each other. You couldn’t support the new way without condemning the old way. And you couldn’t support one particular new way without condemning all the other (competing) new ways. The Reformation leader theologians argued with each other bitterly. And the rank and file argued with each other bitterly too, even though they often had only a loose understandings of the views of the theologians who inspired them.
Contrast that to today: A thousand different popular books pointing toward a new kind of Christianity, and almost all of them take issue with each other only in the subtlest, most loving tone. As carefully as possible, they refuse to name the authors they might be (you can never be sure) writing in disagreement with. Meanwhile, Christians of different very different views happily mix at the same conferences, and even in the same churches. Tolerance abounds.
I know that’s not the case with *everyone*. It’s possible to find cranky, argumentative leaders in the church today, but not in the “Revolution,” which some have called a Second Reformation.
In the 1500’s (in the Netherlands anyways) many believers were willing to die rather than attend Mass because they saw it as a site of idol worship. Today, so many non-denominational Protestant “revolutionaries” are happy to attend Catholic Mass. They even get a certain nostalgic kick out of it. Could it be the that lack of persecution today is what takes that edge off?
Tags: history, reformation