Livingstone Thompson, Guest Columnist
OCTOBER 31 each year is observed as the anniversary of the great Lutheran Reformation. It recalls the event in 1517, in which the Roman Catholic priest, Martin Luther, nailed 95 topics for discussion on the chapel of the University of Wittenberg in Germany, where he was serving as a monk.
In the main, the theses were directed at the sacrament of penance, as it was practised then in the Roman Catholic Church. The sacrament of penance has to do with the offer of absolution and the assurance of forgiveness by the priest, after the sinner in contribution makes an oral confession of sins committed. In medieval times, the requirements escalated to the point where the sinner was subjected to public disgrace, for example, standing at the gates of the church for months, as a way to make penance. In Luther's time and from the time of the Crusades centuries earlier, the Roman Catholic Church had a practice of receiving money in lieu of sinners making penance by public derision or other onerous requirements. This meant that instead of being exposed to public disgrace for the sin, the member of the church could make a financial contribution and receive absolution and assurance of forgiveness. This way of raising money was one of the ways in which the Roman Catholic Church financed the Crusades against the Muslims.
THE BIRTH OF PROTESTANTISM
The action of Luther in 1517, in which he posted the theses on the door of the chapel at the university, has come to symbolise the Reformation and the birth of those churches that protested against Roman Catholic extremes. However, the movements that gave birth to Protestantism were very complex and spread over a long period of time. Protests against the abuses and undesirable practices in the Roman Catholic Church came to maturity in the Czech Republic through Jan Hus (c. 1372-1415) long before Luther was born. The Hussite movement was a protest movement in the real sense of the word, because it was the first instance in which the urge for reform developed into a national revolt and resulted in the formation of a separate church. Jan Hus, the inspiration of that movement, who is regarded as the founding father of the Moravian Church, was martyred at the Council of Constance in 1415. Like Luther after him, Hus was concerned about the abuses of the sacrament of penance and the whole set of practices in which money was exchanged for spiritual things. Hus called the practice simony, which he defined as, "an evil consent to an exchange of spiritual goods for nonspiritual." (Oberman, Advocates of Reform, 201) Hus named simony as one of three kinds of heresies in Christianity; the other two for him were apostasy and blasphemy.
ONGOING REFORMATION AND DIVISION
In a real sense, when we speak of the Reformation of the church, we ought to speak of the old reform movements of the medieval period, the new reform movements of the Lutheran era and the later reform movements of the post-modern era. This means that the reformation should not be construed as a single event or a set number of events in the life of the Christian church. Rather, the reformation should be seen as an ongoing ethical, theological, moral and social process, in which the message of the Christian gospel is inserted and re-inserted in a given cultural and geographical context. The medieval period led to the formation of churches like the Waldensians and the Moravians, the Lutheran era led to the formation of churches like the Lutheran, Reformed and Baptist churches.
The movements in the post-modern era have led to the formation of the so-called Evangelical and Pentecostal churches. When we speak of Protestant churches we are often inclined to think of churches that emerged during these early periods. However, the churches that have emerged in the post-modern era, display with even greater clarity that inherent character of Protestantism, which is a propensity to divide.
The mind-boggling plurality of forms of authority and structures of oversight for the churches formed in later periods makes it virtually impossible to form a general or a traditional description of them as church. It was for this reason that some ecumenical organisations inserted in their constitutions a provision that was aimed at protecting the meaning of the word 'church'. According to the constitution of one of the ecumenical organisations, member churches of that organisation are not obliged to regard other members as church in the fullest sense of the word. This de facto questioning of the authenticity of other churches is one of the reasons that some churches neither receive members of other churches at their communion table nor allow other ministers to preach in their pulpits.
MAJOR PROBLEMS
The need for ongoing reform is the basis on which groups within the church press for changes. For example, the Pentecostal movement has challenged all the churches to re-think their worship forms. At the same time, however, appealing to the need for ongoing reform presents the Christian community with major problems, for example in dealing with the issue of homosexuality. One difficulty is that some people who press for the inclusion of homosexual ministers to be accepted in the ministry argue on the basis that the thinking of the church needs to be reformed. It should not surprise us if we were to see the birth of a church catering specifically for homosexual ministers. This possibility leaves us to wonder about the extent of reformation that does in fact take place when new churches are formed.
Rev. Dr. Livingstone Thompson is president of the Executive Board of the Moravian Church in Jamaica.
