Editor’s note: October 31 is celebrated in the Protestant world as Reformation Day, in addition to being marked as Halloween by the world at large. On Reformation Day, Protestant Christians remember the day Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses. We are pleased to publish this piece, written last year, on the Reformation this house church pastor believes the modern world needs.
The Reformation Spreads
Today is Reformation Day. Many [Christians] observe this day, even as the secular world celebrates Halloween. This juxtaposition of Halloween and Reformation Day highlights the tension of spiritual warfare.
On this day in 1517, at the doors of the Wittenberg church in Germany, theologian Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses. Based on the authority of Scripture, he challenged and refuted the practices of the Catholic Church. The Reformation then spread like wildfire, sweeping across Europe.
The primary shift in the last five hundred years has not been the disenchantment of the world, but the disenchantment of the church.
Though armed conflict was never the wish of either side, the Reformers’ fervor for truth and faith surpasses our own today. The conflict between Catholics and Protestants finally culminated in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, as a truce was established and both sides accepted and acknowledged the status quo of the political and religious landscape.
The State Demands to Be God
The era following the Protestant Reformation was dominated by rationalism and the Enlightenment. Inevitably, traditional religion became more and more secular during this time. Paradoxically, this also fostered the rise of secular ideologies – ideologies that function a lot like religions.
The persecution we [in China] face today comes from secular ideologies. Although these ideologies are philosophies and not traditional religions, they do persecute true faith. As Pastor Wang Yi aptly points out:
“The primary shift in the last five hundred years has not been the disenchantment of the world, but the disenchantment of the church. The disenchantment of the church has led to the ‘deification of the world,’ what Hobbes called ‘the mortal God’ of the state, or what Voegelin called ‘the immanentization of the eschaton.'”
(This is excerpted from Wang Yi’s “Reflections on the Religious Wars of 2018”).
This is our current predicament. Right now, the church is becoming more and more secular, while the secular is becoming sanctified. This process – of what is secular being seen as holy – plays itself out through the state itself becoming God, and forcing us to give it the worship due only to God.
Today, reformation is about abandoning the comforts of empty religion, repenting of hypocrisy, and embracing the transformative power of the gospel to live as Christ intended.
As a result, churches are attacked and persecuted again and again. Pastors, evangelists, fellow believers, and brothers and sisters are imprisoned, sentenced, and condemned.
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Renewed Understanding of Reformation
What does reformation mean in our time? We need a renewed understanding.
Tim Keller said that reformation today has three distinctives. Reformation is about the gospel, religion, and irreligion.
Today’s reformation must focus on returning to the gospel. Today, reformation is about abandoning the comforts of empty religion, repenting of hypocrisy, and embracing the transformative power of the gospel to live as Christ intended.
What is more, we must go further and reject this “religion of no religion.” We need to recognize how intertwined religion and irreligion have become, and to see the confusion this interlacing brings.
When the self is expressed in religion form, the result is hypocrisy. When the self is expressed in irreligious form, it begins by exposing that hypocrisy – but then it goes and and merely engages in another form of hypocrisy. The fundamental problem is self-centeredness, whether expressed in religious or irreligious form. Both religion and irreligion are hypocritical counterfeits that replace Christ and oppose the gospel.
This process of making religion into something secular often plays itself through the “religiousization” of the state. Because of that, the church of Christ is constantly at risk of becoming merely a tool of the state. This phenomenon is already clearly evident in the Three-Self [government] churches.
The fundamental problem is self-centeredness, whether expressed in religious or irreligious form. Both religion and irreligion are hypocritical counterfeits that replace Christ and oppose the gospel.
But we are house churches. Do we understand the catholicity [i.e. universal nature] our faith is connected to? Do we embrace the public responsibility we bear?
Why do we identify as “house churches”? Do we do this just so we can isolate ourselves and remain small? Of course not! The house church model is not about making faith into something private – it is about preserving the holy and catholic nature of the church.
The battles we face today are complex. We face persecution from those who are secular; erosion and distortion of our faith from the pseudo-religious; and pressure from the government, society, and even our families. Jesus warned us of this. He said, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
Yet Jesus also shows us the way forward: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
Tan Jian is a pseudonym for a house church pastor in northern China.
Pray for house church Christians to cling tightly to the holy, universal nature of the church.
