By now, I suspect, everyone has recovered from the excitement of celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. On Oct. 31, 1517, an Augustinian friar named Martin Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses to the cathedral door in Wittenberg, Germany — that’s the story, at least, though there is some question about whether or not it transpired exactly that way.
What is beyond dispute, however, is that Luther’s assault on the authority of the Roman Catholic Church changed the Western world. Some argue that his willingness to challenge authority structures ushered in the modern age.
Others have weighed in on these matters, but I’m more interested in the plight of Protestantism as we embark on the next half-millennium. Specifically, I believe that the Protestant rejection of a robust sacramental theology robbed Protestantism of a sense of mystery and set it on a path toward rationalism, which in turn helps explain why Protestantism is in decline.
The pivotal moment occurred in Regensburg in April 1641. Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, was concerned about the advance of Muslims to the East and a divided Christianity in the West. He convened a colloquy at Regensburg in hopes of reuniting Protestants and Catholics. The Catholic delegation was led by a seasoned Vatican diplomat, Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, and Protestants were represented by Johannes Gropper, Philipp Melancthon and Martin Bucer.
Somewhat to everyone’s surprise, the central doctrine of the Protestant Reformation, justification by faith, not good works, met with agreement. The negotiators then moved on to the sacraments. Protestants raised some concerns about the Catholic doctrine of penance, but the real issue of contention centered on the Eucharist, or Holy Communion. Catholics held to the doctrine of Christ’s “real presence” in the Eucharist. This belief had been explained in various ways over the centuries, but the medieval understanding was the doctrine of transubstantiation, that the bread and wine of Holy Communion actually became the body and blood of Christ in the course of the Mass, even though they maintained the outward appearance of bread and wine.
Although he rejected the particulars of transubstantiation, Luther’s understanding was not that far removed. He too believed in real presence, although he talked about a “sacramental union” between the elements and Christ’s body and held that Christ was “in, with and under” the bread and wine.
But other, more radical Protestants thought even this was too Catholic. They asserted that the purpose of Holy Communion was merely to remind the believer of the life and death of Jesus. At some point in the Regensburg deliberations, the Protestant negotiators caucused with John Calvin, the reformer in Geneva. Calvin declared that “transubstantiation was a fictitious thing.”
For Calvin, trained as a lawyer and the pre-eminent rationalist of the Protestant Reformation, nothing was more pernicious than fiction. The colloquy of Regensburg ended in failure. Christianity would remain divided.
Now, five centuries later, I’m prepared to argue that the Protestant rejection of the doctrine of real presence has deprived believers of mystery and has devalued the faith. No, the notion that Christ is really present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist cannot be reduced to rational explanation. And that’s the point. It’s a mystery, and one that must be taken on faith.
In rejecting real presence, Protestants set themselves on a course toward unbridled rationalism. Among liberal, or mainline, Protestants, the cult of rationalism manifests itself in the impulse to Christianity to rational explanation: the annunciation, the miracles of Jesus, the resurrection. Among conservative, or evangelical, Protestants, the rationalistic response takes a different form. Evangelical theologians in recent years have been stampeding toward Reformed, or Calvinist, theology. The beauty of Calvinism lies in the fact that once you accept Calvinist presuppositions — human depravity, predestination, common grace — you enter a vortex where everything — everything! – can be explained. Evangelical logic-choppers love Calvinism for precisely that reason; it’s rationally unassailable.
So where does that leave Protestants and the Eucharist? Once you reduce Holy Communion to a mnemonic exercise rather than participation in the grace of Christ — the bread and wine merely remind us of Jesus — it becomes less and less important. Aside from Episcopalians and some Lutherans, Protestants in North America typically observe Holy Communion no more than once a month, sometimes not even that often.
Having so devalued the sacrament, why bother?
Some Protestants talk about the “mystery” of Holy Communion, but memorialism is no mystery at all; the partaker receives no spiritual benefit and is asked merely to recall Jesus’ death. In North America, this devaluation of the sacraments was exacerbated by Thomas Bramwell Welch, a communion steward in his Vineland, N.J., Methodist church, who figured out a way to pasteurize grapes so they would not ferment. Beginning in the 19th century, many Protestant churches abandoned wine for Welch’s grape juice, which they serve in individualized, thimble-sized containers, a trivialization of Holy Communion.
Let me provide a couple of examples. For a time at least, worshipers at Willow Creek Community Church, the megachurch in South Barrington, Ill., were offered the option of taking communion as they left the auditorium. “There were attendants who gave each person a piece of bread and a small cup,” my informant tells me, “and then the person would ingest both at that point and put the cup in a basket.” Holy Communion, the body and blood of Christ, enroute to the parking lot.
Several years ago, while under the misguided illusion that I wanted to write a book about Sarah Palin’s faith, I attended her church in Wasilla, Alaska. I happened upon communion Sunday. Following the sermon, the pastor instructed the congregation to queue up at tables scattered around the gymnasium. There, deacons distributed tiny containers of grape juice, and the deacons’ wives broke off pieces of bread. They were wearing the clear plastic, disposable gloves used in fast-food restaurants.
The body and blood of Christ.
The Protestant quest for rationality had widespread ramifications. Whereas Catholic and Episcopal liturgies reach their crescendo in the Holy Eucharist, and the sermon, or homily, is merely a way-station toward that crescendo, most Protestant worship culminates in the sermon. Church architecture reflects that shift as well. In Catholic and Episcopal churches, the altar holds pride of place, whereas in many Protestant venues, the pulpit holds center stage.
Stripped of sacramental mystery, Protestants have looked to other means to sustain their appeal. Pentecostals favor religious ecstasy, and something called “praise music” is ubiquitous in evangelical congregations. But emotionalism is evanescent. Liberal, or mainline, Protestants, gravitate toward social action — a worthy enterprise, without a doubt, but one just as easily (and sometimes more efficiently) performed by secular organizations.
How are these alternatives working out? The numbers don’t lie. Mainline Protestantism has been in steady decline since the mid-1960s, and evangelical affiliations have tapered off in recent years, while the percentage of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has risen.
We live at a moment when a growing number of Americans have turned their backs on religion, especially Protestantism, when more and more people describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. I’m never exactly sure what that means, and I suspect there is no single answer. But I wonder if part of that turn away from the faith is born of an impatience with the sterility of Protestantism, a sterility that can be traced, in turn, to a rejection of the real presence, an insistence on rationalistic doctrines that obviate the mystery of faith. Recovery of that mystery, a countercultural act of defiance, begins with the sacrament of Holy Communion, the alchemy of grace.
A robust sacramental theology would go a long way toward reinvesting Protestantism with a sense of enchantment. In small, discrete ways this is beginning to happen. Various Protestant congregations are observing Holy Communion every Sunday, rather than once a month or once a quarter. Most have yet to develop a theology befitting such a move — it’s still a matter of citation without attribution — but the theology may come in time. At the very least, this attempt to reclaim the sacrament represents a yearning for something that was lost in the uncritical embrace of rationalism.
If Protestantism is going to endure for another 500 years, Protestants should waste little time recovering what was lost half a millennium ago.
Randall Balmer, author of