The Reformers' Cry 1/5 | Reviving The Reformation

We live at an exciting and challenging time in history. The post-Christian West is engaged in a civil war of ideas between the proponents of the old heritage (Judeo-Christian values) and the new, humanistic values of materialism.  Jihadism in the East has declared war against the West and her decadence. Communism is crumbling worldwide, its foundations cracked, and the structures built upon it crumbling. 

Will Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet Union emulate the modern hedonism of the West, or will the Church provide a non-materialistic, Judeo-Christian alternative?  Will the West return to the foundations laid by Judeo-Christian values and resist the slide into a culture of death?  Will God’s people respond to the crying need among Muslims with love, service and a set of ideas that will real hope? Will the Church respond to the crying need of physically and spiritually hungry people?

The Roman Catholic scholar and author Michael Novak has written extensively on the influence of ideas and values on economic development, including the following:

Not long ago, the United States was a colony of Europe's greatest power.  Not long ago, it was trapped in the same immemorial poverty and underdevelopment as other nations.  At its founding, it was at least as poor as the colonies of Spain in Latin America.  These two Americas, North and South, equally colonies and equally underdeveloped, were founded upon two radically different ideas of political economy.  The one attempted to recreate the political-economic structure of feudal and mercantilist Spain.  The other attempted to establish a novus ordo seclorum, a new order, around ideas never before realized in human history.[1]

The outcome of the two sets of ideals was radically different.  North America ended up far wealthier and with more freedom than South America! Why?  Novak's answer is that the principles of the Protestant Reformation, as manifested in the political-economic life of Northern Europe and North America, produced a very different result than the values and ideals of the Roman Catholic Church, as manifested in Southern Europe and South America.  Similarly, the 19th century German sociologist and political scientist Max Weber calls this unique principle "The Protestant Ethic."

The form of government resulting from the Reformers' understanding was contrasted with the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church in which the Pope or the Patriarch sits atop a pyramidal church structure and exercises authority from the top.  The civil government in these societies mimicked the church in that a small group controlled the government.  Often the church and civil governments contributed to an oppressive economic structure in which the people were little more than slaves.

The Reformation of the 16th century responded to the humanistic Renaissance of the 14^th and 15^th  centuries.  This and later reform movements launched Northern Europe and later North America into an unparalleled era in history.  A culture was established and values articulated and embodied that ultimately ended hunger and poverty for the average citizen of these reformation countries.  The era was marked by freedom and opportunity, the rise of science, the unparalleled generation of wealth and the corresponding impact in health, literacy, education, agricultural production and general development.

What are these values and ideals?  What are the principles of the Reformation?  Can they not be applied in our generation?  May they not be adapted to the current needs in Eastern Europe, the post-Soviet empire, the Middle East, North America and the hungry world?

We would argue that they can and should be revived.  A revolution to change structure is not sufficient to bring freedom and prosperity.  To simply change the guard or the structures that they manipulate will not solve the problem.  The problem lies deeper, in the minds and hearts of the people that build and control the structures.  A new reformation is needed.  The transformation of people's hearts and minds is foundational for any lasting change in the practical areas of politics and economics.

Credit: Scott Allen and Darrow Miller | Disciple Nations Alliance 

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[1]     Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1982), p. 22.