2017: The Year of the Reformation
by Jefrey Breshears
The Protestant Reformation was one of the most significant events in Christian history as well as one of the great transitional eras in Western civilization. As the historian Rudolph Heinze has written, “The changes that occurred were so radical that a medieval Rip van Winkle who went to sleep in 1350 and woke up in 1650 would not recognize the world as the same one in which he was born.” Running concurrent with the Reformation was the emergence in Europe of powerful new nation-states along with radical new political ideas that emphasized civil liberties, religious tolerance, the separation of church and state, and the end to royal absolutism. This was also the “Age of Discovery” in which a whole new part of the world was opened up for exploration and colonization as well as the beginning of the “Scientific Revolution” that would forever alter the mindset of Western societies.