The new year will mark some important anniversaries. The biggest will be the 500th anniversary of Luther’s posting of the 95 theses and thus the beginning of the Reformation. The significance of that event–not just for theology but for culture, education, socio-economic change, and the overall history of Western civilization–will be intensely debated, especially as October 31 approaches.
Was the Reformation a good thing or a bad thing? A high point of Christianity or the beginning of its decline? A recovery of ancient Biblical truth or the beginning of the modern era? We Lutherans have a special stake in all of this, of course, and we should use this attention as an opportunity to make our message–namely, the Gospel–clear.
After the jump, consider some other important anniversaries in 2017.
2017 is the 100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution, beginning the experiment in totalitarian communism that ended in 1989, though it hangs on in places like North Korea and in a new–shall we say, reformed?–version in China. Though discredited in the West because of the Cold War and information about the scale of Communist oppression and atrocities, there are those who are interested in giving Marxism another chance. Watch for revisionist treatments of Soviet history and proposals for new socialist schemes for running a country.
2017 is the 100th Anniversary of the U.S. entry into World War I. The conflict began in Europe in 1914 and ended in 1918. But the United States declared war in April, 2017. The ocean liner Lusitania was sunk two years earlier, but Germany’s declaration that its U-boats would sink all shipping led to President Wilson’s proposal to go to war, which Congress approved. What Wilson heralded as “the war to end all wars,” of course, was only the beginning. Modern technology made it especially grisly, and it the stage for both World War II and the Cold War. There were no real ideological issues, just alliances that pulled country after country into the butchery, all precipitated by a Serbian assassin of the Austrian Grand Duke. The anniversary should be accompanied with debates about war, America’s penchant for getting involved in foreign wars away from its shores, and the illusion of progress.
Painting by Ferdinand Pauwels [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
