The Curse of Martin Luther

(Church History Part I)

There was a pretty church building a few miles from where I lived as a child. It was small, built of red brick and had a white steeple with a plain cross on the top. The Catholic church we attended was large and darkly cathedral-like and for some reason this small simple church attracted my curiosity. Maybe could we go there some Sunday, I asked my mother. She told me no, that we were Catholic and the small church was not a Catholic church. I was young enough to only have a Catholic worldview at that point, and thinking that all churches were, of course, Catholic, asked my mother how come that church was not a Catholic church. She told me that a person had a disagreement with the pope and decided to start a new church of their own, but it wasn't really God's church, just that person's idea of what a church should be. I tried to wrap my five- or six-year-old brain around this monumental theological revelation and spent the next year or two with the somber knowledge that somewhere in the world, living in opposition to both God and the pope, was a wicked woman named Grace Lutheran...

Grace Lutheran Church, Bellmore, NY, as it looks today

Needless to say, my grasp of the Protestant Reformation has expanded somewhat since that day. And living my church life on the Protestant side of the fence for the past 27 years has made me appreciate Martin Luther as more of a hero of the faith than the villain of my childhood (who I was surprised to find out, eventually, was a man...). Still, I do feel the tension between my Catholic upbringing and the evangelical protestant faith I presently dwell within. I now live functionally popeless, but I do admit to being a little sad at the plethora of denominations that have sprung up since Luther first nailed a copy of his 95 theses to the door of a Wittenberg church. In traveling around the country in the past several decades, I would often pass the time in the hotel counting the number of non-Catholic churches listed in the yellow pages of the phone book. A medium-sized town would have one, maybe two Catholic Churches, but dozens of Protestant churches of various denominations with additional subsets within denominations. Since Martin Luther and the Protestant reformation, the freedom of the individual and local church to read and study the Bible naturally led to different interpretations and/or emphases which led to divisions and different denominations within the Protestant church. The doctrine of salvation by faith alone and the belief in the sole authority of scripture are the blessings of Martin Luther. The tendency to divide into denominations and subdenominations over doctrinal disagreements is his curse...

To understand the Haban's Hutterite roots, we first need to understand the Protestant Reformation's role in creating the atmosphere that emboldened groups such as the Anabaptists to appear and spawn communities such as the Hutterites. But I promised this blog would be both interesting and readable, so I will now attempt only a very brief, very condensed version of church history from Jesus to the Protestant Reformation.*

First Century – Jesus lived, died, was resurrected, ascended into heaven, sent the Holy Spirit, and presto - the Church is born!

First Century – 1054 . - The Church was persecuted, grew wildly in numbers, had some political alignments, was generally ruled by the spiritual descendants of the apostle Peter known as popes.

1054 - The Church splits geographically and culturally into East and West in a Great Schism. The pope in Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople mutually excommunicate one another. East goes on to become the Eastern, Greek, and Russian Orthodox churches, the West goes on as the Roman Catholic Church.

1054 – 1500s – The Roman Catholic Church is the Church in Europe, chugging along largely intact and in alliance with the Holy Roman Empire.

1517 – 1521 – Martin Luther, a German Catholic priest, writes his Ninety-five Theses (1517), takes issue with some Catholic practices, indulgences being one of them, refuses to renounce his writings, and is excommunicated by the pope (1521).

1534 – 1538 - Henry VIII of England, in disagreement with the pope over the validity of his first marriage, declares himself “the only Supreme Head on Earth of the Church of England” (1534). The Church of England (Anglican Church, eventually the Episcopal Church in America) is born. The pope not so promptly excommunicates him (1538).

1500s – The Protestant Reformation takes hold. Martin Luther spells out what he feels the Catholic Church has gotten away from, that salvation and eternal life are not obtained by being good (or being bought, as in the case of indulgences) but are the free gift of God's grace when one believes in the death and resurrection of Jesus as the only means to salvation. He also declares that the Bible is the one and only source of God's revelation. Martin, and to some extent, Henry, wrest spiritual authority from the priests and pope and put it in the hands of the Bible-reading, believing common men and women. For Protestants, everyone gets to be his or her own pope, his or her own priest now.

And so the proliferation of denominations begins...

*To any of my seminary-educated readers out there, I beg – BEG! - for your mercy...

Next:

To Baptize Or Not To Baptize (And When To Do It...Or Not To Do It)

(Church History Part II)