The Reformation in the Context of Global Change

An Age of Discovery, Exploration and Expansion

Aug 22, 2009

The very page of human history into which the Protestant Reformation was born was a great century of global change. It was an age of discovery, exploration and expansion.

The point in time marked by the Protestant Reformation is beautifully summarized by church historian Phillip Schaff, who says, “The air was stirred by the spirit of progress and freedom. The snows of a long winter were fast, melting before the rays of the vernal sun. The world seemed to be renewing its youth; old things were passing away, all things were becoming new.”

As if called by divine appointment in an age of change brewing elsewhere around the globe in the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation came into scene when Christianity was at its lowest point and its darkest moment, not to mention its ugliest deformation. The need for the long awaited reformation had then reached its peak, and to wait a minute longer, so to speak, would be costly not only for so-called Christendom, but for the rest of the world.

An Age of Discovery, Exploration and Expansion

At the other side of this dark hour of Christian history was what secular historians called the Age of Discovery, Exploration and Expansion. Covering the period from 1450 to 1650, it was an era of phenomenal advances in geography and technology by means of trial and error.

With ships sent out first by Portugal, then Spain, followed later by Britain, France and the Netherlands to explore uncharted regions of the earth, Europeans discovered the new world. This in turn resulted into colonization of much of the Americas, the coastal regions of Africa, India, China and Japan as well as many islands in the Pacific. It also meant economic progress for Europe as they discovered the precious metals of the Far East and as it also opened new doors for trade. A new world order was emerging and a new chapter in human history was about to begin.

The Deformation of Medieval Christendom

Christianity, however, was not in good shape. With much of 16th century European society already secularized by the humanistic efforts of Renaissance thinkers like Petrarch and Machiavelli, the Medieval Church hierarchy became more preoccupied with the glories of the Renaissance than with the spiritual welfare of their parishioners.

Julius II, the pope before the Protestant Reformation, for instance, came to be known more as an art patron, a politician and a warrior than as a caretaker of the Church. Leo X, the reigning pope when the Reformation began, has been identified by not a few historians as the most extravagant of Renaissance popes, more concerned with the revival of pagan literature and art than religion.

Popes and bishops were behaving more like political celebrities than as spiritual guides, amassing wealth for themselves and strengthening the grips of their political control all the more at the expense of their people’s spiritual well-being. This consequently resulted into resentment among the poor and envy among the rich as well as a general public distrust and dislike of the lax, corrupt and immoral clergy.

The Threat of the Ottoman Turks

While Medieval Christendom was on the verge of an imminent decline due to the rampant corruption of the Medieval Church hierarchy, the rest of Europe was also facing a real threat at the eastern side of the continent. Having conquered Constantinople about 75 years before Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the main door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, the Ottoman Turks were then pushing their territories into the Balkans and even as far as Hungary. While the Moors (Spanish term for Moslems) were being pushed out of Spain into North Africa, the Ottoman Turks were turning churches into mosques. No doubt, Luther himself and the rest of the Europeans must have been deeply disturbed by this reality.

Having painted such an ugly portrait of what the Medieval Church had become in the context of global change and the threat of the Ottoman Turks as they pushed their empire into the European continent, a question then arises: Was there a future for Christianity, and for that matter, the rest of the world? The French humanist Jacques Lefevre comes to mind as he then spoke of the signs of the times announcing that a reformation of the Church was near at hand. “While God is opening new paths for the preaching of the Gospel by the discoveries of the Portuguese and the Spaniards,” he said, “We must hope that He will also visit His Church and raise her from the abasement into which she has now fallen.” For Protestant believers, such a divine visitation came with the most revolutionary event in history called the Reformation.

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