Every Sunday as a child, I would stand between my mother and grandmother in our pew as my Lutheran parish—the early church service, probably fewer than 20 people most weeks—recited the Apostles Creed. And every week, with increasing volume as her hearing declined, my grandmother would replace the word “catholic” in the Creed with the word “Christian.”
At first, I was confused. When I asked her about it, my grandmother, a teen convert from Catholicism, simply explained that she couldn’t say it. She knew that the small c catholic meant universal, but it was beyond her capacity. The fact was that, despite her daughter’s marriage to a rather lapsed Catholic, there was a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment afloat in my childhood – but that was a conversation with centuries long roots.
Of course, as Episcopalians, certainly, and perhaps even more so in my Lutheran childhood during which there was such deep regard for Luther, we find our roots in such tensions. But when I was learning about Luther, nobody told me that Jan Hus did this work first.
Reformation’s Forerunner
Jan Hus, whom we commemorate on July 6, was a Czech priest, martyr, and reformer, and, as reformation work goes, he was a man ahead of his time. He was excommunicated for his insubordination in the midst of contested papal elections (his preferred candidate ultimately was declared Pope), though they probably could have taken him down for heresy as well. He preached against the selling of indulgences, the leadership of priests in earthly domains, and the withholding of the cup from the congregation during the Eucharist.
Hus’s impact on the Protestant Reformation wasn’t just that he planted key seeds for what was to come. When Luther encountered Johannes Eck, entering into debate with him, a representative of a previous Pope Leo (Leo X), he was actually asked whether it had been right for the Church to condemn Hus’s teachings. It was something of an awkward moment; Luther had been attempting to confront Eck about the sale of indulgences and questions of justification until Eck turned the situation around on him. Of course, Luther declared Hus unjustly condemned, only furthering the depth of this confrontation.
A Broken System
What are the consequences of Jan Hus’s early critiques and attention to the vital but constrained role of clergy? They stretch beyond the Protestant Reformation that would follow not so long after his death. Rather, in many ways, his work grounds some of the vital critiques of Christian nationalism today, though through a different lens.
Seen from this lens, we might be pushed to consider Hus’s critiques of the land taxes church leadership levied against many Bohemian peasants. The Catholic Church owned about half of the land in the region, and he decried the institution’s leadership as greedy and lazy, with many noblemen purchasing roles in the Church for their sons. All authority in the Church, Hus said, needed to come from the Bible, thus undermining the papacy and all of those purchased priesthoods.
Contemporary nepotism demonstrates similar characteristics – an intermixing of religion and government, all rooted in money that ultimately has the most serious consequences for the most marginal in society. But we are fortunate to see a resistance that’s much broader than the political context that led to Hus’s martyrdom.
When we reflect on Hus’s work as a forerunner of the Reformation, we must consider that such reforming isn’t over. The critiques, not just of the church, but of the intersection between the church and the state, must continue. As Jesus said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Mark 12:17 ESV). What we must not do is let Caesar claim what is rightly God’s: our deepest allegiance, our everlasting souls.
Discover more from Grow Christians
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.