Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
But why does LSM discussion of the Reformation always seem to assume that meaningful church history only began with the Reformation? Statements like, "The Reformation was lipstick on a pig" implies tacitly that there are 3 choices emerging from history: the RCC, Protestants, and the Recovered/Degraded Recovered spinoff of the Protestants. The pig, the lipstick, and us. But church history didn't start in 1500. And there have always been other churches besides the RCC.
Again, in 1525 Germany the point was moot, for Luther. Not for us, today. Our horizons are not his, and our narrative shouldn't presuppose only his as its basis.
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I still don't see the relevance or that it changes much. Why would we not be concerned mostly with European/Western church history?
I think that viewing history in such a way - "Catholic to Reformation" is characteristic of evangelicalism as a whole. Catholicism also pretends that these other groups did not exist and that absolutely everyone was Catholic.
This way of viewing the world is common. Take American history for example. It is now known that maybe the Chinese or Phonecians discovered America first. I don't see those historical facts changing the narrative, nor is it so relevant.
The way I see it, the contributions of these obscure and often unheard of groups, are exaggerated beyond proportion.