Reformation Celebration a Week Late

This week has been very busy. There are, of course, the usual culprits like work and family. This week was a bit different because of an event we had tonight at church.

Our church is unusually conscious of modern Protestantism’s historical roots in the Reformation. We had a fellowship this weekend, one weekend after Reformation day, so it was pretty natural to theme it around the subject of the Reformation. And we wanted it to be educational.

So what we did is enacted a public dialog of sorts. Everyone was encouraged to come dressed in 16th century garb (many did). We had an indulgence seller who quoted little indulgence seller diddies from back in the day. We had one representative of the Catholic church (Cardinal Sadoleto) followed by Calvin, Zwingli and Luther. The material for each was pulled from their writings. Nothing other than basic introductory matter and connecting material was contrived so that everyone could be sure that they were learning something authentic.

The material for Sadoleto and Calvin was drawn from the book A Reformation Debate . Luther’s material was pulled from the introduction to his 95 these that he wrote later in life and his 95 theses themselves. Zwingli’s discussion was around the sacraments and was pulled from his letter to the princes of Germany, which can be found in the volume On Providence and Other Essays

Overall, it was fun. Tiring, but fun.