This year marks the 500^th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. There was a theological and a political aspect to the Reformation. Both aspects of the Reformation tore Europe apart, leading to religious wars among Christians. The politicization of religion that occasioned the Reformation lead to Henry VIII declaring himself the new head of the Church in England. The wounds of those events are still with us in the Orangemen pounding their big drums while parading through Belfast or the remembrance of the St. Bartholomew’s Day’s mob violence. When we sing, “A Mighty Fortress is our God”, a hymn written by Martin Luther, we sing the hymn that is considered the battle hymn of the Reformation. When we drive by the blizzard of Christian communities here in Oro Valley, we ought to remember that fractured Christianity was not always so.
 
Over the last 500 years, it is not enough to think of the struggle, but also the great accomplishments in Christianity. The Reformation spirit was part of the cultural development leading to an openness to different roles in society for women. Protestant abolitionists were the catalyst for the manumission of the slaves here in America. Methodists in England were prime movers in England outlawing the slave trade. Protestant countries fostered innovation, economic growth and, ultimately, our own Constitution and Bill of Rights. The separation of church and state fostered by Deists, another religious innovation in the line of the Reformation, was critical in breaking the fateful link between Church and state. That lead to the Second Vatican Council’s decree on freedom of conscience in the Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanum. St. Paul’s letter to the Romans teaches, “Brothers and Sisters, we know that all things work for good for those who love God….” 
 
You might recall that ‘justification by faith’ was at the heart of the theological aspect of the Reformation. St. Paul and the reading today were a central issue. St. Paul wrote,
 

For those he foreknew he also predestined
to be conformed to the image of his Son,
so that he might be the firstborn
among many brothers and sisters.
And those he predestined he also called;
and those he called he also justified;
and those he justified he also glorified. Rm. 29-30.

 
The term justification refers to how sinners are made right before God. Both sides of the Reformation believed in grace, but at least one issue was whether grace worked through nature or was extrinsic to it. That in turn affected sacramental theology, ecclesiology, moral theology and most core beliefs in Christianity.
 
500 hundred years of finger pointing back and forth has obscured whatever issue was present in the 16^th Century. This month, the World Communion of Reformed Church’s, that would be the branch of the Reformation related to Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin, signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification signed by the Lutheran World Federation and Roman Catholic Church in 1999. The World Communion of Reformed Churches includes the Presbyterians, Reformed and a variety of other denominations. The World Methodist Council signed that Declaration in 2006. Some parts of the Episcopal Church have, apparently, affirmed the document, but not signed. The plethora of non-denominational churches lack the kind of church structure necessary to engage in the conversation. As part of the Joint Declaration, all the signatories agree that the joint condemnations issued 500 years ago “no longer apply.”
 
This statement, hopeful as it is, does not bring about communion between Catholics and other Christians. In the intervening 500 years, we have drifted apart on so many other issues. The most fundamental casualty of the Reformation was the confidence that the Church knew what God wanted. What I love about this joint statement is the recognition between the combatants of the Reformation that fundamental truths about God both can be known and matter terribly. Here is a moral example by long divided Christians that, with painstaking commitment to dialogue, wounds can be healed and truth can be confidently taught. In a post-truth American culture, fundamentally divided religiously and politically, that is very hopeful indeed.
 
The Gospel declares that the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field or a pearl of great price, that a person goes out, sells everything they own, and buys that field or acquires that pearl. The Kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea that gathers all sorts of things. There really is only one thing that matters at the heart of real religion, the truth about God. The field and the pearl of great price. The net that gathers us in.

If you want to read the Joint Declaration on Justification by Faith, click here.
If you want to read an article about the heirs of the Zwingli and Calvin signing the JDJF, click here.