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Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000343A
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00:27 Welcome to The Liberty Insider. This is the program based on 00:31 religious liberty news developments, late-breaking 00:35 issues that you need to know. This discussion here is 00:40 something that I think will give some power to this topic. 00:43 My guest, Dr. Stephen Mansfield, best-selling author, lecturer, 00:48 and the manly man idea, maybe we can mention that a little 00:57 later in the program. I didn't say that lightly because the 01:00 the topic I want to discuss is the reformation. 2017 is a the 01:06 500th anniversary. You know when I think of the reformation, I 01:10 think of Martin Luther, the manly man. 01:12 Yeah, that's right. 01:14 It took a lot of moxie for him although he started somewhat 01:18 inadvertently. But to stand before the Holy Roman Emperor 01:23 with all the German princes around and, more dangerous for 01:26 him, the papal legate, determined to send him 01:29 to the stake. So, you know, this is what I believe. Here I stand, 01:32 I can do nothing else. That's right. And that isn't the 01:35 reformation in toto but he's become the lightening rod, or 01:40 quickly became the lightening rod and pretty much the 01:43 towering figure of the reformation. How do you see the 01:49 the reformation playing into our present reality? Is it worth 01:51 celebrating or is it just things of bygone ages? 01:54 No, it's absolutely worth celebrating. I'm going to be 01:57 actually in Germany for that 500th anniversary. Oh great! 01:59 It's also the 500th anniversary of Berlin where I grew up as a 02:03 boy. So I think it's important that we celebrate it because it 02:07 really gave birth to the western world, I mean, in a very serious 02:11 sense. The reformation, Protestantism that came out of 02:14 the reformation, the issues of the reformation, feeds into our 02:17 politics. It was Lord Leopold von Ranke who said that John 02:20 Calvin was the virtual founder of America and he was making a 02:25 connection between the reformation thinking and the 02:26 founding of this country and really the birth of the west in 02:29 it's modern sense. So it's essential that we remember that 02:32 time. Tell me more. How did he 02:34 connect Calvin? I wouldn't have chose him. I mean, I'm not 02:38 saying it couldn't be him. 02:39 Sure. Well many of the ways that people thought politically came 02:44 out of Calvin's governorship of Geneva, his thinking about 02:49 church and state. You know Calvin taught that church and 02:52 state are alike in faith, separate in function. 02:56 This could... This could join governance to 02:59 theology. Right, not so much the T.U.L.I.P. acrostic or the 03:02 salvation doctrine, soteriology, but certainly politically 03:07 basically one other historian said that America at it's 03:10 founding was political Calvinism. 03:12 Yeah, I tend in my mind to link America more to John Wycliffe 03:17 and the Lollards and the English reformation which through 03:22 Puritanism lead directly to a religious governance after the 03:27 Civil War with Oliver Cromwell. Then all of the disaffected or 03:35 the disillusioned, revolutionaries 03:45 flooding into the U.S. I truly believe that that's set, you 03:47 know the city set on a hill, even though that terminology 03:48 was early. But the city set on a hill and the American 03:51 exceptionalism, I trace it straight back to Cromwell and 03:55 his era. Well and even more broadly than 03:58 what we're discussing right now, the fact is that the protestant 04:02 break from the Roman Catholic church, the protestant embracing 04:06 of the nation state in a sense. Again, this is how Protestantism 04:11 worked. It gave birth to Scotland, it gave birth to 04:14 modern Germany. It gave birth... So, so many political ideas came 04:18 out of the reformation even apart from its more theological 04:21 and ecclesiastical reforms. 04:23 But can it be removed from its theology? 04:25 Yeah, I think it can. I mean, not legitimately, but I mean I 04:29 think there can be a secularizing of almost any 04:32 theology and still for that theology in some form to have 04:35 impact. In fact, that's probably what's happened. 04:37 Let me just ask the question. Martin Luther is a great hero, 04:40 but I think even his greatest supporters now sort of wince 04:45 when they read some of his diatribes against Rome. 04:49 They might have been theologically correct but they 04:51 they were very immoderate. Even in the United States, even the 04:56 Klu Klux Klan, people just think of it as racists, but it was 05:00 white, protestant America which meant often killing Catholics. No 05:07 human being with any decency would endorse that today. But 05:11 all of that said there were very real, palpable differences that 05:18 led between the dominant church of Rome and the reformers, which 05:23 led to Protestantism. While the protestants may have forgotten 05:27 them those are still significant issues. So how do we recover 05:31 them? Well you know I think one of the 05:33 things we have to do is remember we have to see a 05:36 person in context with their times. There's not any figure 05:39 in history who doesn't look a little foolish judged by 05:43 modernism, judged by our modern standards. I mean, Lincoln who 05:48 we revere in this country was, had... 05:50 If we'd written a book on his religious journey... 05:53 He had racist attitudes, he tried to commit suicide twice. 05:56 I mean, if we're going to start going down that path we can 05:59 dismiss everybody in history. Yeah, Martin Luther used 06:02 language that was vile and he may have been slightly drunk 06:05 when he wrote some of his sermons. He wrote them in pubs 06:07 you know. His wife was a brew mistress and if you're anti 06:09 alcohol well then of course that becomes evidence. We can 06:12 just start adding to the list. But I think the important thing 06:15 for us to remember is that had there not been the protestant 06:19 break from the Roman Catholic church and had there not been... 06:21 We'd still be in the dark ages. Exactly, exactly. 06:26 Or maybe a slightly more enlightened version of them. 06:29 Or this would be a Christian version of the Keller faith. 06:32 There's no other way to say it. 06:35 And so many concepts of freedom, many concepts of federalism, the 06:40 very idea of the separation of church and state while still 06:43 being like a sort of a philosophical foundation, all of 06:47 these are protestant ideas. None of these came from the middle 06:50 ages or from early Christianity. 06:53 Yeah, so this is what I think is the challenge for protestants 06:57 and the protestant-based society of the U.S. in 2017. Have it 07:03 celebrated, reinvigorates without acting unchristian or 07:09 belligerently toward Roman Catholics. We're a more global 07:14 community and America wants to be a civil society. They're our 07:19 brothers on a human level but we've really got to just ideally 07:25 stand on our theological guns. 07:27 Absolutely. At the same time we have to realize that Roman 07:30 Catholicism has changed. Much of what Luther was contending for 07:33 the Roman Catholic church has absorbed, they have repented 07:37 for certain actions. They no longer teach certain things. 07:40 You know, I do a lot of pro- life work and therefore work 07:44 with Catholics and priests and what have you and we have long 07:46 discussions about theology in our spare time and the fact is 07:50 half to three-quarters of what Martin Luther was contending as 07:53 as a reform for the Roman Catholic church has actually 07:55 become Roman Catholic doctrine. So, again, I'm not Roman 07:59 Catholic myself but I'm just saying it shouldn't be too hard 08:02 for us to celebrate the reformation without necessarily 08:06 condemning the Catholic Church because this is almost the Roman 08:09 Catholic church the protestant reformation helped produce. 08:11 Well I notice that Pope Francis is going to be celebrating the 08:18 reformation at a church in Scandinavia, I'm trying to 08:23 remember. A very significant part of there, it's a protestant 08:27 church. Well, you know, that's find. I wouldn't say he couldn't 08:30 but it does trouble me a little bit when they're taking full 08:34 ownership because it's not done yet. It's not the same church. 08:38 None of us, the pope included, lived back them so we can't be 08:42 as their document Memory and Reconciliation said you can't 08:46 easily ascribe today's sins to people of another era or guilt 08:50 for people today for what was done yesterday. 08:53 We should also keep in mind that had we been living at the time 08:58 of let's say 50 years after Luther, you and I would have 09:01 been put to death. Absolutely. Well John Paul II called us his 09:07 departed brethren. That's a radical transformation, a 09:10 radical change. So there's far more unites us than divides us, 09:15 I believe, especially when it comes to facing society. 09:18 As long as we can accept that in the familial sense of creatures 09:22 of a Creator God but not drop our theology. 09:27 Not our theological distinctives, no. I don't think they're asking 09:29 that and we're certainly not. 09:30 It's a very interesting _ And of course I need to 09:32 reiterate for our viewers the principle of religious liberty 09:36 as I see it is very close to the constitution. In fact, it's 09:41 essentially the same though because we're all created by 09:43 God, we have dignity and rights, we should be free to choose or 09:49 reject anything on this nature, worship any God or profane any 09:54 God even if there might be a consequence later. And I have to 09:57 respect your right to hold whatever you have. In fact, 10:00 more than that, defend your right to believe what I hate 10:05 with my life if it comes to it. Exactly. If we carry that 10:09 forward we couldn't have anything like the inquisitions 10:13 and all the rest of the past. 10:16 Right, well in sort of a secular way that comes from the 10:19 reformation document, the priesthood of all believers 10:21 In other words, you're a priest unto God. We have a certain 10:27 amount of autonomy in these matters and you don't rule over 10:28 my conscience and I don't rule over yours. That comes from 10:31 the reformation, that leads us to this condition where I'm 10:34 fighting to defend in a civil sense what I don't agree within 10:39 I can throw a very strange wrench into this discussion 10:43 philosophically. I didn't see the full movie but there's a 10:46 movie, Inception. It seems to me as a society with the 10:50 technological tools, we're moving closer to thought control 10:54 to even the genesis of a thought that's unacceptable. 10:59 If the state has some control of that it's very unlikely that the 11:04 divergent religious views will escape oversight. So this high 11:08 ideal that you and I share, we talked about, really in our 11:11 technological society is becoming more religiously 11:15 charged, really under some threat. There's a plan on the 11:20 horizon. Yeah. I till you too, it was 11:22 very interesting, I wrote a book called The Faith of the American 11:25 Soldier and I was embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq during the 11:27 time. I was interviewing the soldiers asking them about what 11:29 they believed and so on. One of the issues at the time was that 11:32 there was precisely this issue of technology you raised and 11:35 that is chaplains aren't really allowed to speak about the 11:38 justification for the war and framing the war in religious 11:41 terms, so the soldiers were getting that, those who wanted 11:44 that kind of framing. They were getting that from pastors back 11:46 home. They were getting that from various prominent speakers. 11:49 So you'd have views of Islam believed by soldiers who are 11:53 fighting a Muslim army and they're getting their views of 11:57 Islam from pastors back home on pod cast. This was contrary to 12:01 military doctrine, contrary to the U.S. position, but this was 12:04 how they were feeling because it's become so individualized. 12:07 I think that's the direction our society is going. 12:09 Yes. The genie's out of the bottle. I'm giving the danger. 12:15 I don't really know the answer of course but I see the 12:18 tool is being supplied that's very liberal and threatening to 12:27 this exalted nature of the individual prerogative and the 12:31 sanctity of your own inner thoughts. As you know even in 12:35 the Soviet Union in its hay day allowed religious freedom, they 12:41 said. They didn't allow religious practice but you were 12:44 allowed to believe what you want. But we're approaching the 12:47 point with some justification because we know with the 12:50 terrorists you don't see it until they blow themselves and 12:53 you up. So you get to ask what is their thinking that might 12:56 give rise to that. So we're very close to thought _ in my 13:00 view. Right. Well and our Catholic 13:01 friends would say, speaking of Catholicism, they've got this 13:05 magisterium, they've got this body of teaching and they are 13:08 trying to preserve it. Protestantism, not having that, 13:11 has allowed hyper individualization 13:15 that has just allowed the fundamentals of the faith, I 13:18 don't mean in the fundamentalism sense, but the foundations of 13:20 the faith coming out of the reformation to be discarded. 13:22 The majority of protestants in America don't believe anything 13:25 like reformation faith. And that's part of the contention 13:29 we're having in our society for how do you have any standards 13:32 about belief. Very good summation. 13:35 Good point to take a break. Stay with us viewers. We'll be back 13:39 after a short break to continue this discussion of the 13:42 reformation and it's ramifications for today. |
Revised 2017-01-18