"REFORMATION SUNDAY"

 “REFORMATION SUNDAY”

Yesterday was Reformation Sunday, the time when we remember the 509th anniversary of  Roman Catholic monk Martin Luther posting 95 theses for debate about the nature of the church – legend has it that he posted them on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany.  His actions were part of a movement to reform the church, but his actions also sparked a revolution in Western thinking and led to what we now know as the “Reformation.” He posted these articles for debate on All Hallows Eve,  also called Halloween.  

            One of my colleagues and friends from Ecuador, Laura Nieto, commented that only 25 years separated the landing of Columbus in the West in 1492 and the posting of Martin Luther’s “95 Theses” in Germany in 1517, a posting which was the match that lit the Reformation.   The landing of Columbus continued a long string of colonizing by European powers, and it also began it in the Americas.

            Some authors like Richard Marius have called Martin Luther the first “modern man.”  While this does seem to be a stretch, Luther’s sense of the lonely individual dominated by anxiety and existential angst, unable to find home and meaning in a brave new world, seems to resonate strongly in our post-modern world.  I am intrigued with the connection of Columbus with Luther, and it is striking that one of the outcomes of the liberation of the individual from the confines of medieval Europe and the Roman Catholic Church was not greater dignity for all people but rather rampant racism and exploitation of peoples around the world by the enlightened and beginning-to-be-liberated Europeans.  The idea of “race” developed post-Reformation in the Western consciousness as a way of acknowledging the dignity of individual European human beings, while exploiting those who seemed human on one level but under the classification of race were not seen as human beings like those classified as “white.”  

            The forces unleashed in the Reformation are still rolling through us 500 years later, and the anxiety that drove Luther to his revolution still speaks loudly in our lives, only amplified to the nth degree.  All of our community attachments seem to be disappearing, and there is a strong connection to the fact that in the 20th century when we had such technological advances and empowerment of the individual, we also killed more people in wars, revolutions, and genocide than in all the other centuries of recorded history combined.   I am not laying this development at Luther’s feet, because he would have never placed the individual above the community.  I am noting that the anxiety that drove his great insight that our sense of meaning and salvation and home are gifts rather than being earned, that anxiety has grown exponentially in relation to the empowerment of the individual and the diminishing and importance of community.

            So, I’m wondering if this is a time of another Re-formation, if someone(s) out there is already feeling and formulating a new way of balancing the importance of the individual with the necessity of authentic community.   We individuals cannot bear the weight of creating our own meaning.  Sooner or later, we will turn to community to provide the meaning for our lives.  If we are fortunate, we will be drawn to a community grounded in authenticity, where the values of both individuals and communities are affirmed and valued.  Most of us, however, will be drawn to inauthentic communities where individuals are crushed, where the community is valued over all other entities, and where strong boundaries must be drawn against the “outsider” to strengthen the community.   I call this inauthentic community “tribalism,” but I’m hesitant to use this word because it has such strong resonance in many cultures.  For a while, I tried calling it “clans,” until one of the participants in a workshop I was leading indicated that when they heard the word “clan,” they thought of the KKK.   I’ve stayed with “tribalism,” but I’ll be glad to hear from those who have a better term. 

            By tribalism, I mean the movement to join others in closing ranks and having strong boundaries to keep the “other” out, no matter who the “other” is.   We are seeing that movement now in the Trump election and presidency, as the tribe of Trump seeks to consolidate power and to hold on to it by seeking to make America great again, i.e. to make America white again.  Tribalism means that we must see the other as enemy, or at least a threat.  The anxiety that drove Luther to a great Reformation is now driving us all, and the white supporters of Trump are seeking to return to boundary-fixing, wall-building, “enemy” speech, which they believe will end their anxiety and bring meaning to their lives.  There are other alternatives, and we are called to look for ways to answer our anxieties by building communities whose boundaries are fluid and who welcome others.  I’ll look at that possibility in another blog sometime.  AND, DON'T FORGET TO VOTE - VOTING ENDS ON NOVEMBER 3.