While October 31 is celebrated in many United States communities as Halloween, it is also known in church-nerd circles as Reformation Day. On the last day of October, in 1517, Martin Luther, a professor of theology and a monk at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, nailed his “95 theses” – bold statements disputing a recent move in the Roman Catholic church – to the university church door. This act of public theological and academic challenge to the church has been understood as the launching of the Protestant Reformation – the splitting of the Western Christian church. The Reformation looked different in different places and in different strands of Christianity, but one spirit united them. The Church was “reformed and ever reforming.”

At UCG, the theological heritage of our members is fairly diverse. We have folks who grew up Catholic and Evangelical, Episcopalian and Lutheran, Presbyterian and Baptist, Christian Scientist and Seventh Day Adventist. Methodist and Jewish, Lutheran and Buddhist, Congregationalist and Unitarian. Growing up and ordained in the United Methodist Church, which is itself an offshoot of the British “reformation” inspired by King Henry VIII’s desire to divorce his wife around 1534, I grew accustomed to celebrating the reforming Spirit of God in the church on May 24. On that day in 1738, the eventual founder of Methodism, an Anglican priest named John Wesley, recorded in his diary that he had gone to a small group sort of Bible study and heard Luther’s commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans read aloud. During this reading, Wesley wrote that he felt his heart “strangely warmed” and felt assured for the first time – after a long life of service to the church – of God’s grace, presence and love. 

I love all these stories, even Henry’s, because despite being populated by variously and undeniably fallible dudes, they remind me that God (however known) is at work, inspiring change and shaping humanity toward ever more just institutions. I love that even variously fallible people (like you! like me!) can do important work in the world and contribute to the divine life unfolding all around us. I also love the theological and ecclesiastical nerdiness of it all. The Protestant Reformation, which wrought the biggest changes across Europe in the sixteenth century, started because one man gave voice to his challenge of an unjust and false church practice. 

John Wesley — the most uptight of Anglican priests, the biggest try-hard of the Oxford theology students, the anxious clergy offspring who constantly wondered if his devotion and service was sufficient to God — hears Luther’s work read aloud and is profoundly moved. Now, I have read the Epistle to the Romans and it is dense, friends. I have also read Luther’s commentary on Romans. Also super dense. But buried in all those complex sentences and theological framing of the Jesus story were words that an anxious guy needed to hear. And they changed his life. 

For me, that assurance came while reading another Paul–Tillich, in my case — as an anxious young person studying theology in a university setting. The theology itself was far from sufficient to heal my anxiety (the end-of-term paper ramped it up quite a bit, in fact), but it gave me a framework to understand change and hope, the ongoing story of God and my place in it. 

Reformation Day rounds out October and Mental Health Awareness Week begins it. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) designates October 1-7 for awareness, education, and advocacy. Both remind me of the myriad ways each of us is called to learn and grow, to serve the work of reformation and change, health and justice for all people: theology nerds and saints, kings and “commoners.” 

Yours on the journey,

Bromleigh