SECOND REFORMATION (In America)

A Second Reformation is at the cusp of happening now, and with it, reconciliation and reconstruction. This moment of grace should be embraced by all churches, not shunned. http://www.luthersem.edu/word&world/EditorialWin2009.asp

One might wish that the Second Vatican Council had happened in the place of the Council of Trent, nevertheless, at this late date, a "second" Reformation can happen, and with it, the reconciliation of faith and reason, the reparation of the breach between the People-Church and the hierarchical, and the healing of the soul of humanity by dedication to intentional symbiosis and the common purposes of global wellbeing.

The reformation happening today, in a real sense continues the one initiated by the Augustinian Monk Martin Luther. The deep intuitions driving the First Reformation, and the present energy enabling fruition of the Second Reformation, are one and the same motivation, namely, a revolt of conscience against the religious/ political injustices of joined theological dominion and political imperialism. In the First Reformation, popular reason strained for equal standing with faith, and the indentured people demanded release from the intolerable burdens of the collusive, joined church/ state overreach.

First Enlightenment brought about the deconstruction of fideism in the aftermath of the counter-reformation launched by the Council of Trent. Happening now after the Second Vatican Council is Second Enlightenment, faith/ reason reconciliation and reconstruction.

Second Enlightenment and Second Reformation have real chances of coming to some moral consensus and of reconciling Church and State, people and institutions with intuitional faith-consciousness. There is a global need for common moral grounding in new-found understandings of eco-necessity in Natural Order, and of the grave sacrilege perpetrated on nature by colonial expansion (in its modern morphed corporate versions) and exploitation. Nature is the universal basis of eco-spiritual grounding: "faith supposes reason as grace supposes nature" (John Courtney Murray, SJ, Second Vatican Council)

The grounding for Second Reformation is precisely the Naturalis Sacramentum Ordinis, in which are the economic realities of human subsistence and the spiritual resources of faith and reason, religion and civility.

There is nothing as motivating as a crisis to wake people up and to get action for change in the better interests of wellbeing. Never before has such a global crisis existed that exists today, and never before has the potential existed for real change from the status-quo of social malaise and ecological wasting. If a response commensurate to the crisis doesn't happen, eco-social degradation will descend deeper into irretrievable wasting of nature, humankind and Earth's ecozoic order. The opportunity for change at this moment must not be squandered by fixation in ideological paralysis, whether political or religious.

The work of Second Reformation can now begin, and faith-fixations can find escape in openness to evolution and insights of the Second Vatican Council. The reconciliation sought by first reformers can now happen. The possibility of this was advanced by the voting referendum for change that happened in the November elections. The global stage is set for people to pursue religious/ political reconciliation and for the people to come to reconciliation with each other and nature. The time has come for the Church of Reconciliation. http://www.lcorwilmington.org/

It is my sense that the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) sees the need of the times and is rising to the task of bringing about an eco-aware "second reformation". http://www.wordandworld.org/2006Internships.shtmlhttp://www.wordandworld.org/2006Internships.shtml

What has been lacking in Christian churches in the past is openness to the people in terms of their theological competence. In ecclesial theology, grace-function has been seen as top-down (ministered by "professionals"), especially in the Roman Catholic Church, perhaps less pronounced in the denominational churches.

What is needed is openness on the part of institutional churches to the voice of the people. Churches need to put in place a forum by which they dialog with, seek and accept the wisdom of the people, if they together would be authentic in their work of serving the people, of serving religion. Such dialog would better ground churches in openness to needed change.

Service to religion cannot omit service to eco-morality; service needs to be universal and local; universal, in the awareness of moral commonalities that bind all naturally, in origin and necessities; and local, respecting the diverse uniqueness of life in bioregions that call for local sensitivity to eco-potentials that are region-specific.

http://www.secondenlightenment.org/SERVICE%20TO%20RELIGION.pdf

To facilitate two-way communication, i.e., grace trickling-up and grace trickling down, a Joined Faith/Evolution Syllabus is now accessible to the public online. [Google: "faith evolution syllabus"] This Syllabus seeks to discern moral and practical commonalities of symbiotic nature that oblige all. An awareness of this Covenantal bond, of Earth/ People/ God, enables this generation and future generations to come to authentic relationships, with each other, with nature and with God - an outcome to be pursued, of necessity, by the people and their institutions, Church and State. Dialog with the People of God would acknowledge ownership of people in church and would work for betterment of church, people and moral awareness.

Let the Second Enlightenment continue in earnest the reformation, the reconciliation and the reconstruction of human::divine correlations. Right relationship with God, with self, with people and nature depend on awareness of symbiotic purposes and fidelity to them. In these understandings and in common purposes, People, Church and State can and should be of one mind.