In important ways the American churches have never had a Reformation. We have certain had a de-formation or two but we are still waiting for a Reformation. There have been important and useful Reformation movements but none of them has had a fundamental and widespread affect on the theology, piety, and practice of the American churches.

One of the questions submitted to the Reformation conference last fall at the Lynden URC asks “in regards to the current state of the church, what is needed in terms of a Reformation?” That’s a great question. If we are talking about the American churches, the answer is simple: we need a Reformation. In important ways the American churches have never had a Reformation. We have certain had a de-formation or two but we are still waiting for a Reformation. There have been important and useful Reformation movements but none of them has had a fundamental and widespread affect on the theology, piety, and practice of the American churches. Those churches and traditions that are most closely associated with and most deeply rooted in the Protestant Reformation are probably the least influential.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45) famously said of the American church:

God has granted American Christianity no Reformation. He has given it strong revivalist preachers, churchmen and theologians, but no Reformation of the church of Jesus Christ by the Word of God. Anything of the churches of the Reformation which has come to America either stands in conscious seclusion and detachments from the general life of the church or has fallen victim to Protestantism without Reformation…American theology and the American church as a whole have never been able to understand the meaning of ‘criticism’ by the Word of God and all that signifies. Right to the last they do not understand that God’s ‘criticism’ touches even religion, the Christianity of the churches and the sanctification of Christians, and that God has founded his church beyond religion and beyond ethics. A symptom of this is the general adherence to natural theology. In American theology, Christianity is still essentially religion and ethics. But because of this, the person and work of Jesus Christ must, for theology, sink into the background and in the long run remain misunderstood, because it is not recognized as the sole ground of radical judgment and radical forgiveness. The decisive task for today is the dialogue between Protestantism without Reformation and the churches of the Reformation (No Rusty Swords: Letters, Lectures, and Notes 1928–1936).

I do not entirely agree with his vocabulary. Truly Protestant churches are Reformation churches but we understand what he intended. American evangelical Christianity is not deeply rooted in the Reformation. It is rooted in revival, in Pietism (i.e., the Quest for Illegitimate Religious Experience), in fundamentalism (i.e., the Quest for Illegitimate Religious Certainty) both of which link 21st-century evangelical theology, piety, and practice to the 18th and 19th century revival movements but they do not link them to the theology, piety, and practice of the Reformation churches.

How would we know were a Reformation to happen in American evangelical congregations? There are three indicators:

1. The embrace of Sola Scriptura.

The formal cause of the Reformation was the Romanist and Anabaptist rejection of the Scriptures and the sole final, ruling (magisterial) authority of the Christian faith and the Christian life. Rome appealed to ecclesiastical authority above God’s Word. She rejected the Scriptures as the ruling and final authority for the Christian faith and the Christian life. Although the Anabaptists claimed to follow Scripture, those movements consistently marginalized Scripture in favor of private revelations. Some of her leaders openly mocked the Protestants as ministers of the “dead letter” (Scripture) and boasted that because of their continuing, direct revelations from God they did not need to rely upon Scripture as the final, ruling magisterial authority for Christian faith and practice.

In the 18th and 19th centuries the American evangelical churches were deeply indebted to another movement, Pietism, which also effectively marginalized the objective authority of Scripture in favor of subjective religious experience. Further, with the outbreak of Pentecostalism in Kentucky at the turn of the 19th century, American evangelicals through the 19th and 20th centuries gradually abandoned Scripture in favor of the theology, piety, and practice of Thomas Müntzer and his ilk. Today, as the neo-evangelicals have coalesced with the Charismatics and Third Wave Pentecostals, the Scriptures are no closer to being the norm for Christian faith and practice today than they were for most of the 19th century.

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