Protestantism approaches again an important anniversary. Tomorrow, October 31, 1960, is the four hundred and forty-third anniversary of Martin Luther’s audacious act in nailing his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenburg, Germany. This year of 1960 is especially significant for Presbyterians, as it marks the 400th anniversary of the Scots Confession drawn by John Knox and his associates to found the Reformed Church in Scotland.

Now on this birthday of Protestantism, in the 400th year of Presbyterianism, what is the state of the Reformed Church in the world? In the light of the principles enunciated by the Reformation, how stands the church today?

The whole Reformation can be described as a movement to deliver the church to the people. To take the holy things, the Kingdom of God, the rule and authority of the church, and deliver all to the laity, the people of the church. This lay movement which was Protestantism, can be clearly discerned in three phases.

First, the Reformation delivered the Holy Scriptures to the laity. For hundreds of years, the church had believed and taught that the Bible belonged to the clergy. Only the trained ecclesiastical functionaries should be trusted to read and to interpret the scriptures to the lay people. But Martin Luther, soon after breaking with the established church, translated the Bible into the German language with the avowed intention of making Moses sound more German than Jewish. Printing had been invented less than a hundred years before. Learning was already becoming democratized all over Europe. Soon the Lutheran Bible became widely distributed and avidly read.

Thus it came about that for hundreds of years the congregations of Reformed churches were characterized by their thirst for Biblical knowledge. John Calvin established in Geneva his famous academy where the Bible was the principal textbook. To his school there came students from all over Europe.

In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin wrote of the famous stool in his great, great grandfather’s house with a Bible fixed by straps to its underside. When the stool was held upside down, on his great, great grandfather’s knees, the Bible was easily read to the reverently listening family, but when a knock came at the door, the stool could be hurriedly turned upright, the Bible hidden, lest some chance caller see and report to the authorities that a forbidden Bible was being read in that house.

But, with the passing of the years, the possession of the scriptures by the laity has become commonplace. There are no longer bans on Bibles. The once prized book has become despised. The churches founded by Luther and Calvin four hundred years ago are now filled with people who have plenty of Bibles and suffer no constraint on reading them, but who confess their scriptural illiteracy and yet care little about correcting it.

Calvin insisted that all the people should be entrusted with the word of God because God would always give His Holy Spirit to the man or woman of faith to interpret that word, but when modern Protestants will not bother to learn that Word, the Holy Spirit is left with no sound basis for instructing and guiding them.

A second phase of the Reformation was delivering church government and authority to the laity. For centuries the church had been run by the clergy, the ordained officials of the church, who determined the doctrine, celebrated the sacraments, instructed and governed the people.

But John Calvin in Geneva, and John Knox in Scotland, organized the Reformed Church according to New Testament standards. Elders were elected from the laymen of the congregation to govern the affairs of the church and deacons were elected to administer church finance, charity, and benevolence. This Reformed principle of delivering the government of the church to the people gave laymen the right to speak in church affairs for the first time since the days of primitive Christianity and prevented any possibility of ecclesiastical tyranny.

From the establishment of representative democracy within the Reformed and Presbyterian churches spread the avid desire for the same freedom in the political world. So the democracies of Europe, the Western Hemisphere, and now of Asia and Africa, trace their origins to the liberating spirit of the Reformation.

But how stands the Reformed principle of Representative Government within the modern Presbyterian Church? There is a marked trend toward congregationalism and away from Presbyterianism — a disposition among the rank and file of church members to prefer the deciding of important matters within the life of the church by congregational action, rather than leaving to the elders the ordering of those things specifically delegated to them by the church’s Constitution.

Modern Americans can see the wisdom of delegating, in the administration of their national government such intricately involved foreign affairs as what to do about Quemoy and Matsu and the Cuban problem, to responsible officials who after study and research and consultation will make decisions and act; but the same Americans who are Presbyterians often-times cannot follow in the tradition of their church and leave, with confidence in their elected elders, important decisions affecting the life and worship of their church, even when such decisions by their very nature must be arrived at after study of God’s word, and careful survey of current conditions, and calm consultation with other elders.

On Reformation Sunday, 1960, the fiercely fought for and hardly won Reformed principle, of church government by elected representatives from the laity, stands in danger of collapse and failure through lack of confidence in, and understanding of, the true nature of our spiritual representative democracy.

Finally, the third phase of the Reformation delivered to the laity the privilege and the responsibility of making religious, moral, social, and ultimately political decisions for themselves. You see, for centuries the clergy had kept the people in leaden strings. Common men and women were not allowed freedom of thought and action. The people were told what they must believe about God, what they must do to and for their fellow men, how they must order their family life, what was permitted, and what was forbidden, to read and think and say. To depart from the explicit order of the church in areas of thought, word, or deed was to sin, and sin could be forgiven only after confession to a church functionary and expiated for by carrying out penance as imposed by church order.

But the Reformation fathers declared that God alone is the Lord of man’s conscience. That in matters of faith and practice, the church can admonish, advise, instruct, and plead but it has not authority to bind.

It is interesting to note at this point the true meaning and origin of the word “Protestant.” During the Reformation in Germany, at the first Diet of Speyer in 1526, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was forced to make concessions to the Lutherans and granted permission to each German state to choose its own form of religion — either Roman or Lutheran. Then three years later, 1529 — a second Diet of Speyer reversed the decision of the First Diet — removing this freedom of choice, and the evangelicals, the people who wanted religious freedom, protested this act of intolerance, and so were given for the first time the name of “Protestant.” (Stevenson — The Story of the Reformation — p. 42)

The same sort of tyrannical and ecclesiastical rule is exhibited even in our time in some places and in some instances. The papers of late have been full of news about the pastoral letter from three Puerto Rican Bishops forbidding their Catholic constituency to vote for Governor Luis Munoz Marien and his party’s other candidates and branding their disobedience of this order as sin.

Since the beginning of the Reformation, the Protestant gospel has laid heavy responsibility upon the individual to weigh all evidence, seek trusted and competent counsel, then make his or her own decision in the court of his or her own will, and act thereon.

What then is the role of the pulpit in the Reformed Presbyterian Church? Has the pulpit been stripped of all authority? Does this Presbyterian doctrine that God alone is the Lord of the conscience prevent every Presbyterian clergyman from discussing controversial, political, social and moral questions?

The Presbyterian minister never climbs into a pulpit and says: “Thus saith the church. The church speaks for God. Obey. To refuse is sin.” Rather, from the pulpit of every Presbyterian church, the minister speaks to his congregation in this wise and the congregation so understands him to speak: “My study of God’s word, and my understanding of the Holy Spirit’s direction in the midst of our times, points to this. Consider these things which I believe God’s truth. If in your conscience God’s spirit vindicates this counsel, then act upon it. But the decision must be yours.  You are your own free moral agent. God does not want slaves, but sons and daughters.”

As we assess today the Protestant Reformation, its gains and losses, and view its strength and weakness, can we not see that all this Reformation freedom — of every person to read and interpret the scriptures for himself or herself; of everyone to take part in their governing the church; of everybody to make their own moral, religious, social and political decisions — that such freedom can be safely entrusted only to the man or woman who has committed himself or herself unconditionally to God?

Not without reason did A. C. McGiffert write that it was “not liberty, but bondage that was dear to John Calvin.” And in the Scotts Confession, John Knox and his men wrote: “We confess and acknowledge one only God, to whom only we must cleave, whom only we must serve, whom only we must worship, and in whom only we must put our trust.”

Yes, in the 15th century, in the 20th century, and, if by God’s mercy there comes a 25th century, still only men and women reformed and remade by God’s grace in Jesus Christ can be entrusted with all this stupendous Reformation Freedom — for only they can find in the binding bondage of God’s holy will the perfect freedom of His love.