It was a gradual process. To be honest, even during my time in the “Reformed Camp”, even while a member of the OPC (often satirically dubbed the One Perfect Church) and even when some online referred to me as Truly Reformed, I had uneasy feelings about celebrating Martin Luther. I’d read some of his writings in the original German, rather than their sanitized English translations, and — well, let’s say that I would have embarrassed myself and scandalized the conservative families at our church Reformation Day parties if I had quoted some of the more offensive literal translations.

So I kept my opinions of Martin Luther mostly to myself. My poor husband had to listen to my annual spiel of, “They wouldn’t think Martin Luther was so wonderful if they knew what he really wrote!” Probably to his great relief, we weren’t in the Reformed Camp that many years. Once we returned to my Baptist roots, Reformation Day celebrations were a thing of the past.

More years went by, and all sorts of things happened. Long story short, I found myself, most weekdays, praying by myself in a small historic church building in our town. During that time, John 17 began to break my heart. As hard as I tried not to cry on my Bible, there are still tears stains where I would fervently pray Jesus’ prayer for us:

²⁰ “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, ²¹ that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²² I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— ²³ I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

That prayer didn’t just break my heart. It changed so much of what and how I thought about the Church. It became a guiding principle and a strong motivating factor in the years that followed. And it opened up questions for me… lots and lots of questions…

But, more than anything else — schism became a source of grief, rather than a source of pride. Disunity, I was forced to admit, was contrary to the very will of God.

I was still Protestant at the time, and yet the very idea of the greeting each other with “Happy Reformation Day!” struck me more and more as incomprehensible. If I truly love my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and want Him to be glorified, shouldn’t I view schism and disunity as a cause of mourning rather than celebration?

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Edited to clean up typos, misspellings, and poor wording — and to add this explanation:

OPC = Orthodox Prespbyterian Church. For more info, see here.