How the Reformation Permanently Changed Modern Worship

Writer

Published October 23, 2024

The Protestant Reformation began when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the doors of the Castle Church in Wittenberg Germany in 1517. While he may not have intended to fundamentally transform the Christian world, this one act set off a change that affected the way people saw themselves and their place in the world. It even led to military conflict and the toppling of regimes across Europe.

While the changes shook culture and politics, the way it completely re-contextualized Sunday worship was perhaps the biggest change. The relationship between the individual and God fundamentally changed the way people, especially those who had previously practiced Roman Catholicism, understood their eternal salvation.

This analysis looks at the changes that took place in countries where Roman Catholicism was dominant, as the tensions between Catholicism and Protestantism were most felt in these places.

What Was the Reformation?

The Protestant Reformation began on October 31, 1517, when a priest named Martin Luther displayed 95 theses about the faith. These were disagreements with the contemporaneous practices and doctrines of the Roman Catholic church. Nailing documents like this up in public was not uncommon, as it would give people an opportunity to discuss these ideas in academic discourse. It seems his students and others who saw the theses did not just engage in academic discourse, they began to radically reassess their world view.

Some historians believe it was never Luther’s intention for these to get outside of scholarly discourse, and the students were inspired and energized by what they saw as a challenge to the Pope and the Catholic church’s authority.

Luther’s these can be roughly grouped in the following ways:

1-4 emphasizes Jesus and the idea of internal struggle with sin rather than external sacraments for salvation.

5-7 denounce certain powers of the pope, mostly regarding forgiveness of sins.

14-29 are about purgatory.

30-47 address indulgences, the practice of paying money to release people from purgatory.

48-52 defended the pope, arguing he would not approve of indulgences as they were being taught in local churches.

54-55 were about restrictions on preaching.

67-80 continued to list issues with indulgences.

81-91 were concerns levied by laypeople to whom he ministered about indulgences.

92-95 encouraged Christians to imitate Christ.

The crucial differences between these Reformers and the Catholic faith have been summarized by contemporary Reform theologians as Five Solas:

Sola Scriptura: The Bible is the sole authority for Christians in faith, doctrine, and practice.

Sola Fide: Salvation is found in faith in Jesus Christ alone.

Solus Christus: Salvation is found in Christ alone.

Sola Gratia: Salvation is a gift of grace from God, not a result of human merit.

Soli Deo Gloria: Salvation is a work of God for His glory.

How Did People Worship before the Reformation?

Worship has always had an element of the culture to it, even during a time many people believe the Catholic Church had a claim of exclusivity. In other countries and on other continents, Christianity had distinct worship.

However, in the 11^th century, an event called The Great Schism permanently separated the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches over the issue of ecclesiastical and theological differences. Through history, there had been proto-evangelical groups and off-shoots that worshipped differently than the dominant Roman Catholic Church across Europe. The Armenian Church historically distinguished itself from other denominations, as it was the first nation to adopt Christianity as its official religion, and developed its own customs. The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century was also not the first time people pushed for reforms in the church, but it was the one that most radically changed the face of Christianity.

Generally, before the Reformation in nations where Roman Catholicism was the dominant religion, the relationship between man and God was mediated through the Catholic Church. The priests at local churches were connected to forgiveness through confession, to salvation through the Eucharist, and to charity through the monasteries, which served as a place of refuge for the poor. Sermons followed a liturgy, and there was a calendar that honored certain saints, feasts, and events in Christian history. There were relics of Christ, the saints, and the apostles scattered from the Middle East to the corners of Europe that believers would go on pilgrimage to, if they could afford it.

These were all elements of worship. People were expected to attend Mass for religious holidays and Sundays. The singing and the liturgy were conducted in Latin.

When a community embraced Protestantism, they rejected the power of the Church to serve as the mediator between God and man, and took on the belief that every man was his own priest. Anyone could go directly to God, and Christ was sufficient for salvation. The reformation brought a major decentralization of authority in the church. The priesthood was no longer regarded as necessary for salvation and the pope was no longer revered as the sole authority of God’s will. The pope is not a special person chosen by God to lead the church, because Protestants argued God was the head of the church.

One’s eternity hung precariously in the balance for people as they were asked to choose between the Catholicism of their fathers and this new religion, which promised a more personal relationship with their Savior. While today, many people concede that Catholics, Protestants, and Evangelical denominations are all part of the Church and are Christians, at that time, they were seen as different religions, and the embrace of the wrong one sent someone to hell for all eternity.

How Did Worship Change after the Reformation?

One of the most radical ways that worship changed was in the language. In the Roman Catholic Church, up until Vatican II between 1962-1965, worship was done in Latin. Mass, music, and the liturgy were all conducted in Latin.

One of the key points Luther made was the importance of all people being able to hear the Gospel and worship in their own language. Germans began reading the Bible in German; French Huguenots began singing in French, and this change began to spread across Europe. People had access to the Bible and God’s Word in their own language. Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1440 led to increased literacy, and now the Bible was commonly available across Europe. People began to write more worship music in their native languages as well and were able to share these songs with others.

Another key change, perhaps the biggest, was the de-emphasis of the mysticism of the Eucharist. During the Mass, the priest would give the words they believed would turn the bread and the wine into the literal body and blood of Christ, and he would make the sign of the cross. For people who embraced the Reformation, this mystical transformation called the transubstantiation, was turned into a symbol. The Latin words were replaced with Bible verses, and the sign of the cross removed from the liturgy. Crucially, the Eucharist became symbolic, no longer the literal body and blood, and became a simple ceremony of remembrance.

For Catholics, salvation is integrally tied with the Eucharist, but in the Protestant faith it is an important, but symbolic, act. Taking the Sacraments were the most important part of a worship service in a Catholic service, and that began to shift as people embraced Protestantism.

The saints were removed, relics destroyed, pilgrimages to the relics stopped, and the calendar of holy days that created the rhythm for the people for years was erased. Protestant churches that were being built were more austere, and Catholic churches being converted to new churches were stripped of much of their grandeur.

Henry VIII and Worship in America

In English speaking Protestantism, one cannot study the changes in worship, the direction of the English Church, and the subsequent evolution of Puritanism without understanding how Henry VIII used the Reformation.

When Henry first wanted to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, he first petitioned the Pope to grant it on the grounds that he believed Leviticus barred him from marrying his brother’s widow; Catherine had been briefly married to Henry’s older brother Arthur until he died in 1502. Due to political pressure, the pope delayed granting the divorce.

Earlier in his life, Henry had been called a defender of the faith because he wrote a pamphlet decrying Luther. When he decided he wanted to secure his divorce, he had himself declared the head of the Church of England, and began to cultivate it himself. For every ecclesiastical or theological decision, he had scholars from both sides make their case, and he would make the final call about what would become the standard for his church. England, in a sense, became a nation of three denominations: people who wanted to return to the Catholic Church, people who wanted more radical Protestant reforms, and people who agreed with or at least conformed to, Henry’s church.

The biggest concession to the Protestants was worship in English and translating the Bible into their native tongue, even though he had William Tyndale burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English in 1536. After Henry VIII’s death, the tension between these parties evolved. Catholicism would try to reassert itself for another 100 years, leading to the Puritans taking briefly control from 1649-1660.

Ultimately, Anglicanism became the dominant denomination in England. As the Puritans left for America, worship there permanently took on a more Puritan and evangelical style of worship. The English who settled there left a country shaped by 100 years of religious conflict because of the choices made by Henry VIII. While all denominations are practiced in America, Puritan culture strongly influenced both the colonies and the Founding Fathers. Had Henry VIII embraced the Reformation whole-heartedly or rejected it outright, worship in England – and subsequently in her colonies – may look very different today.

The Modern Worship Service

Today in Protestant and Evangelical worship services, we take for granted that we can sing in our own language, read the Bible in our own tongue, and listen to a sermon we can understand without an education. While some Protestant or Evangelical churches may follow a homiletic sermon series, this is at the discretion of the Reverend or Pastor. The clergy in modern worship does not hold the keys to Heaven, but is a teacher, perhaps a counselor, but not the person with unique access to God.

Music reflects its location, its point in time, the preference of the local body or the regional denomination and does not rely on ancient chants and hymns memorized for hundreds of years. While some people prefer older hymns, they are singing them in their language. Songs like O Stur Gud are translated into How Great Thou Art in English.

People in Protestant and Evangelical churches do not have such a strong emphasis on the holy calendar, if there is one at all, though some churches do still follow it. While all churches participate in communion, because it is no longer linked to eternal salvation, they do it as their church body sees fit, or at regular intervals based on their church calendar.

Above all, one’s relationship with God is up to the individual, becoming his own priest, responsible for going to the Lord directly for forgiveness and for salvation. It cannot be understated how earth-shaking these ideas – which seem so commonplace in worship today – were in the 16th century, and how unrecognizable a modern worship service would be to them. The history of how the Reformation shaped not just modern worship, but the very nature of how one could and should engage with God, is nothing short of complicated.

Sources

Gibson, Jonathan and Mark Earngey. Reformation Worship. Greensboro: New Growth Press, 2018.

Luther, Martin. 95 Theses. Gearhart: Watchmaker Publishing, 2015.

Miller, Glenn. The Modern Church From the Dawn of the Reformation to the Eve of the Third Millennium. Nashville: Abindgon Press, 1997.

Newcombe, D.G. Henry VIII and the English Reformation. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Pettegree, Andrew. The Reformation World. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.

Ryrie, Alec. Protestants The Faith that Made the Modern World. New York: Penguin Books, 2017.

Willis, Jonathan. Church Music and Protestantism in Post-Reformation England Discourse, Sites, and Identities. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2010.

Bethany Verrett is a freelance writer who uses her passion for God, reading, and writing to glorify God. She and her husband have lived all over the country serving their Lord and Savior in ministry. She has a blog on graceandgrowing.com.