Is the Reformation Mostly Over?
Today, nearly 500 years after the Protestant reformation, orthodox Protestants and Catholics are closer to each other than they perhaps have ever been. And this is as it should be. While they still have important differences about the primacy of Rome, the place of Mary, justification by faith, and the structure of the church, it is not uncommon on practical ethics issues for conservative Protestants and Catholics to be working alongside each other in the political trenches – and to view each other as allies in every possible sense of the term.
What has driven them closer together is the need for survival in the face of an aggressive and advancing secularism. Today faithful Christians of all kinds – Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox – are being urged by their secular counterparts to cast aside their antiquated beliefs about God and families, and instead to embrace new ideas about gender, marriage, human personhood, and God (i.e. God’s non-existence) that are more compatible with ‘conte..