Charting a New Reformation, Part I 
The Background

On October 31, 1517, so the story goes, a solitary monk named Martin Luther approached the great doors of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on which he planned to post a document entitled The Dispute over the Power and Efficiency of Indulgences. History has renamed it “The 95 Theses.” It was designed to call the Christian Church into debate.

What Luther was doing on that day was not particularly unusual. In academic circles throughout Europe, it was normal to post topics for public debate in public places. This was the way theological exploration was conducted. What flowed from that posting, however, was a surprise to Luther. He had touched a match to a massive amount of incendiary material, creating an explosion and lighting a fire that Luther himself, could never extinguish or even control.

Wittenberg’s All Saints’ Church, known as “The Castle Church,” was uniquely qualified to be the place where this blaze was ignited. It was known as “The Church of Relics,” claiming among its treasures vials of milk “drawn from the breasts of the Virgin,” straw “taken from the manger of Jesus” and even the body of one of the “Holy Innocents,” those male babies said to have been murdered by Herod in his attempt to destroy in his infancy God’s promised deliverer.

In Luther’s mind it was clear that institutional Christianity had ceased to be the “Body of Christ” serving the world, but had become instead a profitable business, designed to increase its power. In order to finance its institutional needs, which included the building of a new Basilica at St. Peter’s in Rome, the Vatican had endorsed the practice of selling indulgences. A “sinner” could purchase an indulgence and thereby forego the need to repent. By challenging the efficacy of this practice, Martin Luther was striking a blow to the economic well-being of the Christian church of his time. Beneath that debate, however, was a deeper challenge to all of the authority claims being made by the church on its journey through history.

By the 16th century the power of the church was so deeply entrenched in the life of Europe’s culture that for anyone to challenge its authority to define truth was regarded as an act of heresy. That which was named “Mother Church” was the vehicle through which the Father God spoke to the world of men and women. An all-male ordained hierarchy, which stretched from the local priest all the way to the papal office, was acknowledged as the only proper source through which the will of God could be discerned.

Over the centuries this hierarchy had in fact defined the content of Christianity. The Nicene Creed had been adopted at the Council of Nicaea in 325 C.E. and was believed to have summarized the “essence of the Christian faith” for all time. The church clamed for itself the sole right to interpret the scriptures. That was not a difficult claim for the church to maintain in that day for few people, other than the clergy, could either read or write. Most of the great universities of Europe existed primarily to train the clergy. The average layperson learned the stories of the Bible not from reading the text, but by looking at pictures painted by the world’s great artists, whose actual knowledge of the Bible was minimal. Almost every church had something called “The Stations of the Cross” on its walls. This was a pictorial display of the final scenes in the life of Jesus. How closely those stations followed the biblical narrative was of little concern. No one bothered to check. The images were simply absorbed.

The 16th century was an age of almost unchallenged belief in a literal final judgment. God was regularly portrayed as a supernatural, all-seeing figure, who lived above the clouds, watching human behavior. God wrote down, it was said, the deeds and misdeeds of all the people in the “Book of Life,” which would determine the eternal destiny of each individual soul. The difference between heaven and hell was enormous, so the bliss of heaven and the peril of hell were regularly made quite vivid in both the sermons that people heard and the paintings depicting “Judgment Day” that they regularly saw. The fires of hell terrified the masses. Guilt was the coin of the church’s realm and it permeated the emotions of every “sinner” with which the church had to deal. Being able to buy an indulgence provided security, for the indulgence assured them of the forgiveness that was the doorway into heaven. Time in purgatory could also be shortened for loved ones by the purchase of these indulgences. A strict behavior controlling system was held in place by these practices. Unbeknownst to Luther, he was about to pull the linchpin on this entire way of life, causing it to come crashing down in ruins. For at least two hundred years after Luther, European history was roiled by this reformation conflict. Traditional circles tried valiantly to re-establish the religious authority of the past and to impose it anew on the entire social order. At the same time, those who had been the repressed victims of this religious control system reveled in their new freedom and rejoiced in the future challenges that were opening to them. They resisted any attempt to harness or to stop the winds of change. Conflict between yesterday and tomorrow engulfed the western world. A thirty-year war raged across Europe as traditionalists and reformers fought to impose their understanding of God on their opponents. The sinking of the Catholic Spanish Armada sailing toward Protestant England was said to prove that God was on the side of the reformers.

The traditionalists had the power of history and authority on their side. They could quote the doctrines and dogmas of the church, which they believed reflected God’s will. The reformers needed a counter claim and they found it in the authority of the Bible, almost always literally understood and called the “word of God.” So “the church teaches” became the claim of one side and “the Bible says” became the claim of the other. When both sides in conflict believe that they speak for God the result is that each side demonizes the other. That was the backdrop through which each side endured this bitter and destructive struggle we call “The Reformation.”
Martin Luther, almost the accidental originator of this 16th century reform movement, opened the doors for change that he would never be able to close again. Neither would anyone else. Feelings reached an emotional intensity never seen before. Was Luther talking about the Pope or the devil when he wrote: “The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him. His rage we can endure, for lo his doom is sure. One little word shall fell him.” That one little word was “alone,” It was by faith “alone,” not by works or deeds, that salvation was accomplished. Indulgences were works! The result of this struggle was inevitable. In time, Martin Luther was condemned by the church, excommunicated as a heretic and driven into hiding. His life in danger, he was protected by certain political princes of Germany, who saw in Luther’s upheaval a way to break the power and control of the Vatican and thus to allow both the nation states of Europe and their wealth to develop independently. It was a tumultuous time in European history.

For so much anger, hostility, war and bloodshed to be displayed, for so many lives to be persecuted, incarcerated and killed, it seems strange today to seek to identify the substance that broke Catholic hegemony apart. Strangely enough the battles of the reformation were not about the real issues of faith or belief. They were rather fought over the issues of authority and power.

Both sides read the same Bible, recited the same creeds and sang the same hymns. Liturgical patterns did change, but for the most part, they were all not only still recognizable, but they were also conducted in the same churches. Protestant polity became more democratic and less hierarchical. The people in Protestantism had more decision-making involvement, while Catholicism continued to operate under the slogan: “Father knows best.” For the most part, however, the essence of the Christian faith continued to be talked about in traditional and recognizable ways. The primary change was that doctrinal debate was no longer controlled by the hierarchy and the church was no longer thought of as the final arbiter of truth.

Then from the leaders of science, freed now from ecclesiastical control, came a new understanding of how the world operates, which challenged the Christian formulas of antiquity. Changes began to come in unceasing waves, each building on the last. First there were the insights of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo and a vision of an expanded universe. They were followed by Isaac Newton who presented us with an ordered world in which miracles had no place. Then Charles Darwin redefined human life, linking us to the world of nature in a dramatically new way, followed by Sigmund Freud, who began to suggest that God was nothing more than a human parental projection into the sky and that Christianity was only an attempt to deal with the human anxieties of death and meaninglessness. Albert Einstein next introduced us to the relativity of all things, including both time and space, which meant that there was no longer something called eternal or unchanging truth. The result of these cascading insights was that traditional Christian concepts became less and less intelligible to more and more people. Christianity, as we once had known it, became unbelievable to many.

Those are the facts that are today building pressure for a radically new kind of reformation. This one will not be about issues of authority, it must focus on the substance of Christianity itself. The questions Christians ask today are qualitatively different. Does the idea of God still have meaning? Are the historic creeds things we can still say with integrity? Are those 4th century creeds still authoritative? Can there still be a definition of ultimate truth? Are not the claims of an infallible Pope or an inerrant Bible both ridiculous in today’s world?

Today, through this column, we begin the process of “Charting a New Reformation.” In the coming weeks I will post a new set of Theses for debate. Then I will begin to address each Thesis in detail. So stay tuned. This may be the theological ride of a lifetime.

John Shelby Spong

Read the essay online here.

I read with interest the letter from John Nelson about finding a way to plan a funeral so that it does not drift into unintelligible piety and mediaeval imagery. Thank you for your kind pastoral advice.

My wife of nearly fifty years, the only girl ever in my life, died quite suddenly last Easter Day after three weeks in the hospital following a single dose of chemotherapy. On her deathbed she was terrified that she was destined for hell. I am sure that this belief originated in the sermons she heard fifty years earlier in one of London’s most prestigious evangelical churches. Fear and hell and simultaneously fear of what she might experience in an afterlife, emanated from that distorted picture of the divine.

An Anglican priest, who knew her well, constructed a service which reflected her life in contemporary words and poetry which spoke to the heart of who she was, simply a kind woman whose self-image failed to recognize how rare and how wonderful that characteristic is. Two other priests, who also knew and understood her, participated in the service. I appreciate that I am lucky to know such sensitive and understanding clerics and would add to your advice just that. John and his wife should try when the time comes to have his or her funeral service conducted by people who know the deceased. It makes such a difference to the survivor.

I admire their planning. I wish we had planned more seriously earlier. My wife as she lay there did issue a number of instructions – no photograph, no eulogy and so on. But apart from that we had never really discussed what she would like. But maybe in the end the service is far more for those who are left behind than for those who are gone.

Kindest regards and infinite gratitude for your ministry in combating that authoritarian and harsh picture of the divine.

Dear Arthur,

Thank you for your kind and sensitive letter. I hope John Nelson, the author of the letter to this column to which you refer, will be able to read your words through this column. So will all those who face the same issues that you and your wife faced.

One does not intend to express hostility toward our brothers and sisters in Christ who have, through the literalization of religious symbols, turned Christianity away from a faith designed to expand consciousness, to increase love and to enhance life, into being the dispenser of guilt and fear. The fact remains that religion no matter how sincere can still be horribly wrong. The religion of the Christ, which has been used over the centuries to control behavior, is responsible for great human evil. It has portrayed God as a fierce judge or as a punishing parent. It has insulted our humanity with tales of the hopelessness of our fallen state. It has lowered our sense of self-worth. It has reduced us to slaves, beggars and petitioners for mercy. It has threatened us with the devil, who is about to get us and with the fires of hell that will consume us. It has portrayed God as a bloodthirsty one whose offended righteousness will not be satisfied without a blood offering or a human sacrifice. One wonders what has happened to the Jesus who was reported to have said: “Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy laden and I will give you rest,” Or the Jesus to whom John attributes the words: “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

To be critical of this negative religious mentality is not to be religiously intolerant, it is to push back the religious darkness that threatens to consume our faith tradition. Through the centuries, the Bible has been used to justify anti-Semitism and the Crusades in which we Christians defined Muslims as “infidels” worthy only of being killed. It has been used to justify slavery, segregation, apartheid and racial prejudice. It has been used to diminish women and to make them feel that their presumed and male-imposed identity as second-class human beings is God-given and therefore must be not just correct, but true. It has been used to justify homophobia, to make war and suffering look like virtues and quite literally, as you suggest in your wife’s case, to fill people not with the love of God, but with the fear of God.

Your letter raises that negativity to consciousness and hopefully frees us to challenge it openly. I am pleased that your previous contacts with the Anglican Church have introduced you to clerics about whom you speak so lovingly. As you are aware, I know one of them; he is Peter Francis, the warden of St. Deiniol’s Conference Center, now known as the Gladstone Library, located in Hawarden, Wales. He is one of the finest human beings, as well as one of the finest priests, I have ever known. His grace has blessed not only your life and that of your late wife, but my wife’s life and mine as well, to say nothing of countless others. I am glad that you are among that host.

John Shelby Spong

A Special Invite from Bishop Spong to Join in the Debate!!

Join readers from all over the world as we engage in conversation and debate around the brand new series by Bishop Spong that began today, titled: Charting a New Reformation. Over the course of this series, Bishop Spong will be paying close attention to online comments on these essays and will use some of them in the Q and A section. He invites you to comment, share your thoughts, and engage in discussion!

In this series, Bishop Spong will post a new set of 12 Theses for debate. As Spong takes a close look at the history of Christianity and the Reformation of the 16th Century, he asks these and other imperative questions: