Why is reformation significant

Since there have been decision-making structures connecting the EKD and the Kirchentag and since there has been an implementing association that is organising the joint events in and around Wittenberg.

German Protestantism is combining its organisational and financial forces, - and I think that this will have consequences for the future cooperation between the Kirchentag and the constituted church. Historically speaking, this is unprecedented: an ecumenically pacified Reformation anniversary distinguished not by delimitation and profiling but where the confessional differences are seen as generating a productive dynamic of history and the present.

It will be important to remember with shame the brutal anti-Judaism of Luther in his old age, but also to clarify what historically proven effects these terrible statements actually had.

Basically each of these indications, reflected in the culture of memory, allow us to realise that the Reformation was a deeply ambivalent movement. The Reformation narratives are not about saints but about saved sinners. The biographies of the Reformers are not a good source of heroic legends. Time and again, the discovered light of freedom was also betrayed and covered up during the Reformation period, it was denied and abused. This reminds us that the central achievement of the Reformation was the rediscovery of the Gospel, not the founding of a new church or their own confessional movement.

In all, however, I would dare to argue: even if this anniversary in does not flow into the planned channels, the dynamic already in motion will let the significance of the Reformation for the present and the future shine out with a particularly bright light. Unfortunately we have to admit that the thesis represented by German Idealism that the Reformation was the beginning of the Modern Age must be regarded much more sceptically than the authors of this contention did in the 19th century.

The modern concepts of participation and democratic participatory processes can be interpreted as great-grand-children of the Reformation. This access is quite compatible with modernity and allows the assembly of the faithful to be a church that organises itself pragmatically and functionally and likewise the distinction between priests and lay people. It thereby promoted a general ability to read that was the right of everyone, also girls. And in contrast to the unequal treatment of women still found in some Reformation churches, we can also focus on gender equality regarding the ordained ministry via the notion of baptism, when all other prejudices against them have been overcome.

It is beyond dispute that the educational momentum of the Reformation has long taken the form of boosting the academic discourses of each generation and not just receiving them as given. The historical-critical study of Scripture, qualifying the absoluteness of Christianity through the study of philosophy of religion, researching the scientific foundations of life, evolution etc.

Yet the Reformation churches should remain loyal to their calling for enlightened religion and also encourage the younger evangelical movements to engage with academic study and critique. Even for religions in the 21st century, enlightenment continues to be the best protection against fundamentalism. Naturally the concept of freedom in modernity is clearly different from the Christian understanding of freedom. Christian freedom is one essential source of the concepts of human rights and human dignity, although not the only one.

This light should not be placed under a bushel just because most Reformation churches fear that personal faith today is not something to raise their public profile. The Roman Catholic Church has also changed in confrontation with the Reformation and the two confessions have together developed a dynamic of demarcation from each other that, despite all the suffering it caused, has had constructive consequences.

The irreconcilable claim to truth of the confessions and the inability to tolerate differing beliefs in one territory led to the harshness of the Thirty Years War, the first European war of religion, which very soon followed political laws.

At the same time, however, this war also led to an understanding of the State and constitution that separated civil rights from religious rights, opened individual freedom of belief and conscience and ushered in the religiously neutral State. The Reformation churches and the Roman Catholic Church have no reason to be proud of the fact that the modern state emerged from their desire to annihilate each other.

On the whole, however, this — incomplete — view of the fundamental significance of the Reformation for the present leaves me rather perplexed. While it is possible to trace historical effects and highlight imposing historical connections, I still have the impression of being in a good museum.

Realising this perhaps calls forth respect from people interested in origins, perhaps even also gratitude and the impulse to cherish these sources. But is this more than the culture of remembrance?

Can this become a genuine place of remembering with relevant messages for the 21st century? Is this somehow about your and my identity today, a sense of identity that goes beyond commemoration and remembering?

Shelter in God and the assurance of faith The key question in this section is therefore: How do I get beyond the respectful memory of a Reformation that was once so imposing? In performing that duty, the Scottish radical John Knox wrote in , "all man is equal. He didn't mean that the way we would understand it today, and he very definitely meant men and not women.

But the idea had a life of its own. It wasn't true. They favored monarchy, good order and social stability. But their rulers had an intolerable tendency to defy God's will. Again and again, they were forced reluctantly to take matters into their own hands.

They insisted that their voices be heard, and, when forced to, they took up arms against rulers who persecuted them. If we all stand equally before God, it is hard not to conclude that we should all have a voice before this world's rulers.

Left to itself, this notion could have led to the creation of self-righteous theocracies like the one some New England Puritans tried to build.

But those have been rare, partly because Protestants are so ready to quarrel, but also because of the Reformation's third legacy to the modern world. Limited government. Protestants have sometimes confronted or overthrown their rulers, but their most constant political demand is simply to be left alone.

Going back to Christianity's roots in ancient Rome, they have tried to carve out a spiritual space where political authority does not apply and have insisted that that space, the kingdom of God, matters far more than this world's sordid and ephemeral quarrels. The results are paradoxical. Protestants have often been obedient subjects to thoroughly noxious rulers, taking no interest in politics so long as their own separate sphere is respected. They have also given unexpectedly stubborn opposition to rulers who won't respect their demand to be free of government intrusion.

In the process, they helped give the modern world the counterintuitive notion of limited government: the principle that a government's first duty is to get out of the way of its people's lives as much as it can. If Protestantism has given the modern world these three legacies, did it also give us a fourth one, capitalism?

The German sociologist Max Weber famously argued that the "Protestant work ethic" produced the modern economy, and though his evidence didn't really add up, the idea won't go away. His practice includes media, intellectual property, franchise and complex commercial litigation. Curry,Thomas J. New York: Oxford University Press, Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity, vol.

New York: HarperCollins, Sunshine, Glenn S. The Reformation for Armchair Theologians. Louisville, Ky. Ryrie, Alec. Rosi, Bruno Goncalves. Robb S. Protestant Reformation [electronic resource]. Other articles in Events. Want to support the Free Speech Center? Donate Now.