From the Reformation to Brexit: Divorcing Europe

In 1517, five hundred years ago this month (November), Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral. Six years later, the Catholic Church excommunicated Luther and by 1526 he began organizing a new church. This was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

            From its beginning, the reformation was both religious and political. Where reformers had political backing, it succeeded. Where Catholicism had political backing, it failed. Many German dukes and princes supported Luther, while other dukes and the Holy Roman emperor, who was nominally superior to them, stayed with Catholicism.

            In England, King Henry VIII remained without a male heir. When the pope refused to annul his marriage, Henry had himself appointed the head of the Church of England in 1534. Henry was not a reformer and English church goers experienced little change in their weekly worship. Henry’s move was really a political rejection of the pope’s authority over England, and his actions emphasized the English refusal to be governed by Europe.

            That was just as well, for back on the continent matters deteriorated. New Protestant champions, John Calvin and his fellow Reformers, gained ground in Switzerland.

            Meanwhile the conflict between Luther’s church and Catholicism grew worse and had to be settled by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, which stated that the duke of a region could determine its religion, Lutheran or Catholic. Calvinism was not an option.

            Conflict continued nonetheless. The Calvinist Dutch Republic fought for independence from Catholic Spain in the Eighty Years War. In Germany, the Thirty Years War began as a fight between Lutherans and Catholics. By the time these conflicts were settled by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, millions of Europeans had died through war, famine and disease.

            The Westphalia treaty finally included Calvinists as well as Lutherans and Catholics.

            The religious wars on the continent had little direct impact on the British Isles. England experienced neither the frequent battles nor the widespread deaths; although it occasionally sent troops to support one side or the other.

            The English and ultimately British religious conflicts took a complete different shape. Henry’s son, King Edward VI, brought in protestant reforms after 1547. Drawing mostly from Calvinist ideas, these included the rejection of images (stained glass and statues) and worship reforms carried out through the Book of Common Prayer. Lutheranism never got a foothold in Britain.

            When Queen Mary came to the throne in 1558, she reversed these religious changes, working to make England once again subordinate to the papacy. Ultimately, this resulted in heresy trials and executions.

            Her successor, Queen Elizabeth I, established a set of religious compromises that provided the foundation for the Anglican Church, combining a largely Calvinist-Protestant foundation with Catholic elements.

            The political struggle between the Anglican Parliament and the sometimes Catholic monarchy in the 1600s was ultimately drawn along religious lines, with Anglicans and (Calvinist) Puritans supporting the Parliament and Catholics supporting the Royals.

            The ensuing English Civil War lasted from 1643 to 1651 and established England under the rule of Parliament, even though it also brought back the monarchy. Conflicts in Ireland and Scotland took longer to settle. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia essentially went unnoticed in the British Isles.

            Britain took another half-century to work out a stable solution to the Protestant-Catholic divide, but problems continued. Many Puritan members of the Anglican Church came to the Americas to escape religious discrimination. Ireland remained unsettled, divided by both religion and politics until the southern part gained independence in 1922; conflict continued in the north until recent times.

            What does the Reformation reveal about Brexit, the current plan of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union? 

            As with Henry VIII, large parts of England want to divorce the country from Europe, to rid itself of European control over Britain. This time it is solely political, not religious at all. Immigration control constitutes one of several disputes.

            The claim is that what happens in Europe is largely irrelevant in Britain. If it were not for the laws of the European Union, there would be little need for a deep connection to Europe. 

            That claim is of course widely and hotly disputed. Both Scotland and London voted against Brexit by a wide margin, seeing their futures irrevocably tied to Europe.

            But the myth of an England free from continental authority, promoted by Henry VIII during the Reformation, beats in many English breasts. And they can point to 150 years of separate courses of the Protestant Reformation, one on the continent and one in the British Isles, as providing historical backing for separation. Is that historical example still valid in modern times? We will see.

From the Reformation to Brexit: Divorcing Europe

In 1517, five hundred years ago this month, Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral. Six years later, the Catholic Church excommunicated Luther and by 1526 he began organizing a new church. This was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

            From its beginning, the reformation was both religious and political. Where reformers had political backing, it succeeded. Where Catholicism had political backing, it failed. Many German dukes and princes supported Luther, while other dukes and the Holy Roman emperor, who was nominally superior to them, stayed with Catholicism.

            In England, King Henry VIII remained without a male heir. When the pope refused to annul his marriage, Henry had himself appointed the head of the Church of England in 1534. Henry was not a reformer and English church goers experienced little change in their weekly worship. Henry’s move was really a political rejection of the pope’s authority over England, and his actions emphasized the English refusal to be governed by Europe.

            That was just as well, for back on the continent matters deteriorated. New Protestant champions, John Calvin and his fellow Reformers, gained ground in Switzerland.

            Meanwhile the conflict between Luther’s church and Catholicism grew worse and had to be settled by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, which stated that the duke of a region could determine its religion, Lutheran or Catholic. Calvinism was not an option.

            Conflict continued nonetheless. The Calvinist Dutch Republic fought for independence from Catholic Spain in the Eighty Years War. In Germany, the Thirty Years War began as a fight between Lutherans and Catholics. By the time these conflicts were settled by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, millions of Europeans had died through war, famine and disease.

            The Westphalia treaty finally included Calvinists as well as Lutherans and Catholics.

            The religious wars on the continent had little direct impact on the British Isles. England experienced neither the frequent battles nor the widespread deaths; although it occasionally sent troops to support one side or the other.

            The English and ultimately British religious conflicts took a complete different shape. Henry’s son, King Edward VI, brought in protestant reforms after 1547. Drawing mostly from Calvinist ideas, these included the rejection of images (stained glass and statues) and worship reforms carried out through the Book of Common Prayer. Lutheranism never got a foothold in Britain.

            When Queen Mary came to the throne in 1558, she reversed these religious changes, working to make England once again subordinate to the papacy. Ultimately, this resulted in heresy trials and executions.

            Her successor, Queen Elizabeth I, established a set of religious compromises that provided the foundation for the Anglican Church, combining a largely Calvinist-Protestant foundation with Catholic elements.

            The political struggle between the Anglican Parliament and the sometimes Catholic monarchy in the 1600s was ultimately drawn along religious lines, with Anglicans and (Calvinist) Puritans supporting the Parliament and Catholics supporting the Royals.

            The ensuing English Civil War lasted from 1643 to 1651 and established England under the rule of Parliament, even though it also brought back the monarchy. Conflicts in Ireland and Scotland took longer to settle. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia essentially went unnoticed in the British Isles.

            Britain took another half-century to work out a stable solution to the Protestant-Catholic divide, but problems continued. Many Puritan members of the Anglican Church came to the Americas to escape religious discrimination. Ireland remained unsettled, divided by both religion and politics until the southern part gained independence in 1922; conflict continued in the north until recent times.

            What does the Reformation reveal about Brexit, the current plan of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union? 

            As with Henry VIII, large parts of England want to divorce the country from Europe, to rid itself of European control over Britain. This time it is solely political, not religious at all. Immigration control constitutes one of several disputes.

            The claim is that what happens in Europe is largely irrelevant in Britain. If it were not for the laws of the European Union, there would be little need for a deep connection to Europe. 

            That claim is of course widely and hotly disputed. Both Scotland and London voted against Brexit by a wide margin, seeing their futures irrevocably tied to Europe.

            But the myth of an England free from continental authority, promoted by Henry VIII during the Reformation, beats in many English breasts. And they can point to 150 years of separate courses of the Protestant Reformation, one on the continent and one in the British Isles, as providing historical backing for separation. Is that historical example still valid in modern times? We will see.

Note: On October 15 and 16, the Religious Studies Department at the University of Wyoming will host a mini-conference Protestant Reformations: 500 Years and Counting. There will be a public lecture on Monday the 16th at 4:10, by Philip Cary, “How Luther Became Protestant” in Berry Center 138. For more information, visit uwyo.edu/relstds.

Morality: The Face of Public Christianity

A non-Christian who read recent newspapers to learn about Christianity might arrive at the following picture. Christianity believes that marriage is between a man and woman, so no marriage between members of the same sex. Christianity believes life begins at conception, so no abortion and no stem cell research. Christianity believes that that God created the universe, so evolution should not be taught. 

In this picture, Christianity is about actions that people should or should not do; it is about morality. What is missing from this public Christianity are the religion’s core features. Salvation, Scripture, faith and belief have disappeared from public view. How did this happen?

The story begins in the early 1500s, with the Protestant Reformation. Prior to that, the Christianity of Western Europe was Catholic and centered on community. Based on their doctrinal interpretation of Scripture, Catholicism raised a group of men out of the community to become priests. These priests then mediated between God and the people to bring salvation, forgiveness, and blessings from God to the people. The church stood with individuals before God, buffering them in His majestic presence.

Starting in 1517, Martin Luther changed all that. Instead of the church standing with the individual, Luther held that individuals stood alone before God, with only their faith, based on their understanding of Scripture, alongside them.

Despite this theological change, the social reality altered surprisingly little. Individuals still lived in communities and these communities shared a single doctrinal interpretation of Scripture. Individuals did not interpret Scripture on their own, but rather followed their community’s understanding.

Often these communities were formed around the teachings of influential theologians and leaders. Luther founded the Lutherans, John Calvin founded the Reformed Church and influenced the Puritans, while John Knox organized the Presbyterians. And these are just a couple of the communities, the churches if you will, created from the Reformation.

So, early forms of Protestantism took a similar structure to Catholicism: Each was a community who brought a common interpretation to Scripture, which in turn led to common social norms (i.e., morality).

The Puritans brought this communally-organized Christianity to America, where they established a new community that would help individuals lead moral lives in keeping with the Puritan interpretation of Scripture.

But Luther’s dictum of the individual alone still rang out. When Roger Williams interpreted Scripture for himself in the 1630s, the Massachusetts Puritans expelled him. Williams believed in a radical understanding of Luther’s dictum: The church should be separate from the government so that the church could not use government powers to enforce doctrine and interpretation on individuals.

Williams’s idea become the foundation of America’s religious freedom. By the 1680s, variety was the religious flavor of the era. Formulations of Christian beliefs called catechisms proliferated. Puritan preacher Increase Mather thought that “over 500” different catechisms were circulating at the time. Over the next century or more, European immigrants brought in new Protestant denominations and Americans created their own.

By the 1800s, Christians realized all this religious freedom fragmented Christianity and interfered with its ability to accomplish the great deeds needed. So they banded together into non-denominational organizations to take on moral projects. To accomplish this unity, they overlooked doctrinal features which divided them.

Thus, the great ethical movements of the century were founded: anti-slavery, temperance, women’s suffrage, and missionary projects to evangelize both foreign peoples and the USA’s “unchurched” masses. By the mid-20th century, new non-denominational groups joined with those of a more secular bent in the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements. The lesson of these movements was that if the divided Christian populace overlooked matters of doctrine and Scripture interpretation, they could unify on moral issues.

Toward the end of the 20th century, a new alliance of Christians was formed. Since the great moral concerns of slavery and personal civil rights had been resolved (more or less), these groups took up new ones. Thus, the Right to Life movement, for example, took up the cause of the unborn. This brought together an alliance of conservative Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons, who were able to overlook their differences on doctrine and Scripture, to unite on what they saw as a great moral concern.

Thus, morality is the great religious unifier, where different religious groups can agree. They may arrive at those moral positions through different doctrinal interpretations of Scripture, even from different versions of Scripture. But to strengthen their unity, they ignore those differences. The public unity of Christianity, as apparent in American news coverage, comes from morality rather than doctrine.

Who Was Against Christmas?

Picture the following scenario: Crowds of Americans rioting in the streets. Two opposing groups shout loudly, vying to have their messages heard and heeded. The groups meet. Confrontation ensues. Fistfights break out. Church windows are smashed.

What are these rioters fighting about? Christmas. One group favors celebrating Christmas. The other opposes all Christmas observances. Is this an imaginary future event? No, it is history. It happened in Boston on Christmas day in 1706.

In America’s increasing love-affair with Christmas (both the Christian and commercial versions), we have forgotten that there was a time when much of European and American Christianity thought that Christmas should not be celebrated.

Who thought this? In the riot described above, the anti-Christmas group consisted largely of Congregationalists (Puritan descendants), Baptists and Presbyterians, while the pro-Christmas group comprised mostly Anglicans (Episcopalians). The notion that Christians of any stripe should not want to celebrate Christmas is so foreign to our present concept of the holiday that we need to review some history to understand it.

Before the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, Roman Catholicism celebrated the “Christ Mass.” It was one of many special masses and feasts of the Catholic Church that celebrated key events in Jesus’ life or the birthdays of saints. The three main Protestant movements that ultimately came to America had three different reactions to this situation.

First, although the Anglican Church developed a Protestant theology, it kept much of Catholic liturgy, including festivals that celebrated aspects of Christ’s life and the feast days of many saints. It gave special emphasis to the celebration of Christmas.

Second, after Martin Luther nailed his “95 Theses” to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517, special liturgical observances began to be frowned upon. The Lutherans thought that the celebrations of saints’ days were too much and cancelled them. But they still emphasized observing events in Jesus’ life, and so continued with joyous Christmas festivities.

Third, the Calvinists in Switzerland banned all Christian holy days not mentioned in Scripture. That approach meant that the Sabbath was acceptable, but nothing else. Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and other celebrations were to be treated as normal days with nothing special about them.

The Calvinist position became quite influential in Great Britain, even though it never altered the position of the Anglican Church. John Knox brought Calvinism as Presbyterianism to Scotland, where Christmas was banned in 1583. The Puritans brought Calvinism into England, where it became influential in circles both within and outside of the Anglican Church. During the Civil War in 1647, Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan followers outlawed Christmas observance. It was brought back at the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660.

From England, both sides brought their Christmas beliefs to America. The Puritans (who later became the Congregationalists) were joined by Presbyterians, Quakers, Methodists (despite their founders’ pro-Christmas predilections), and Baptists on the anti-Christmas side, while the Anglicans dominated the pro-Christmas side. The Baptists were later joined by the Lutherans and the Dutch Reformed.

In Boston, the Puritans outlawed Christmas in 1659. Although the ban was lifted in 1681 when the British government took over the colony, the governor still had to be protected by an armed guard on his way to church on Christmas 1686. When the colony reverted to local control in 1689, Christmas again fell out of favor.

The objection to Christmas by Americans was two-fold. First, for Calvinist theology, it reflected the “pagan character” of Catholic worship. Christmas was not a biblical holiday and had not even become a Christian festival before the late 300s. It was a creation of the church, not of Christ.

Second, the holiday was accompanied by extensive revelry. Celebrations were not primarily worshipful, but involved feasting, game playing, heavy drinking, shooting and gambling. For the over-indulgers, it brought out the worst of their excesses. Since the holiday celebrated the Savior’s birth, such immoral behavior was seen as sacrilegious.

During the 18th century, Christmas observance began to be more accepted. Church-goers turned their attention to purifying the holiday of its excesses, rather than rejecting it altogether. By the 1750s, even New England hymnbooks contained Christmas carols. By the early 1800s, Christmas was observed with an emphasis on family and children.

In 1836, Alabama became the first state to make Christmas a legal holiday. Other states followed suit; even Massachusetts legalized Christmas in 1856, almost 200 years after its ban. But the last state, Oklahoma, did not join in until 1907. In this way, Christmas became the first religious holiday in which its celebration is sanctioned by law across the United States