Contrary to popular Mormon narrative that sees the Reformation as paving the way for the LDS Restoration, Luther, Calvin, and others in fact shaped Reformation theology in a direction much further removed from the teachings of Smith would propound than Catholicism ever was. They did this by emphasising a God “without body, parts, or passions,” human depravity, the Bible as the only source of authority, and salvation by faith alone. (Terryl L. Givens, Wrestling the Angel, volume 1: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity [New York: Oxford University Press, 2014], 326 n. 90)
While many Latter-day Saints have a high view of the Protestant Reformers and even Protestantism itself, such is problematic, to put it nicely, in light of the abhorrent nature of Protestant theology, such as the doctrine of Sola Scriptura and the Reformation understanding of the nature of Justification, among other doctrines (e.g., many Protestant groups reject the biblical doctrine of baptismal regeneration).
Writing in 1913, Janne Sjödahl offered the following critique of the Reformers and their followers which is rather apropos and should serve as a caution to Latter-day Saints who wish to put the Reformers and their theological descendants on an artificial pedestal:
We have spoken of the failure of the Roman church to save the world. It is necessary to add that the same must be the verdict whenever the Protestant churches, with all their subdivisions, are on trial. The reformers proceeded from the supposition that the great mother church had deviated from the original church, but not so far that a return could not be effected by dropping a few doctrines and picking up others. They failed to realize that the revolution had been so complete as to necessitate a reconstruction under the guidance of divine inspiration. Luther and Melanchton had lived in the papal atmosphere. They were used to the Roman yoke, and they were unable to shake it off completely and go forth into the pure air of gospel freedom. Their reformation was a grand beginning of the work of liberation, but before long kinds and princes interfered, and the work of liberty was very much retarded. In some places the reformation was drowned in blood. In others the church was set free from Rome to become the serf of the state.
In England the reformation was not the result of a desire to purify the church. Henry VIII was the reformer. When he found that the Pope refused to sanction his plans for the gratification of his desires, he decided on a reformation by which he, himself, should become a pope. He declared himself the head of the church in his kingdom. He abolished the monasteries and gambled away the money their confiscation brought him. It is related that he lost the steeple bells in a parish near St. Paul, London, throwing dice with Sir Miles Partridge, who took the bells and sold them. He gave a monastery to a lady for a pudding she had made and which pleased him very much. Henry, who never spared a man in his wrath, or a woman in his desire, reformed the church by means of oppression and tyranny. The liturgy of his church was arranged by the prelates of Elizabeth, a ruler who was very much inclined toward Rome, and who has been called Henry VIII in the disguise of a woman.
The following paragraphs from the Freeman’s Journal, an English religious periodical, commenting on a sermon delivered in Liverpool, point unmistakably to the failure of the Reformation:
“The present day results and developments of the ‘Reformation were well shown and emphasized in a sermon in Liverpool by Rev. J. Ashton, S.J. How many churches are there (he asked) deriving their religion under their numerous types from the ‘Reformers’ of the sixteenth century, which are upholding with success the lofty supernatural ideals of Christianity before the people of the nation? Are the people of the nation as a whole attached to those supernatural ideals? Are they growing more spiritual? Or are many of them asking, some sincerely, others with tongues in their cheeks, ‘Do we really believe?’ Are they falling away into infidelity? Do they confess, as an Anglican bishop has said they do, that the words of the late Cecil Rhodes, the Anglican church does not interest them? What is the belief of the man in the street, the typical man of business? the woman of fashion? and more important still, the poor? and, most important of all, is the inability of the Church to influence the mass of the people on the increase?
“if so, what are we to say of that movement which began in the sixteenth century? Must we not conclude, that as Froude has said, it was merely a branch lopped off from the present stem? and that it must die from want of nourishment and vigor? that from the beginning it was destined merely to cumber the ground, and to wither? ‘The Church of England is confessedly losing her hold on the great majority of the English people,’ wrote an Anglican clergyman in the Times, and it is losing that hold, not because its members are leaving it to adopt another creed, but because they are falling away into secularism and unbelief.
“Knowing this, we understand how it is that the Protestant Bishop of Liverpool, though we sincerely sympathize with him, recently had occasion to deplore the fact that the Church of England only got 310 children of the 1,000 ought to have got for an increase of 10,000 of population, last year. ‘He had been much surprised,’ he said, ‘to find in certain schools that the Catechism was tabooed altogether, and he was even more surprised to find certain teachers who had honestly confessed their doubt whether they could subscribe heartily to the tents of the church Catechism.
They had toe fact the fact that at present tens of thousands of children were leaving the day schools who had no knowledge whatever of the church Catechism, and yet they were church children.’ And what is to become of these children when they grow up? How much Christian doctrine will they retain and profess? About as much as those who have been brought up in the Council (public) schools.
“And that, Father Ashton might have added, means very little, if any at all. In short, the ‘Reformation’ and its ways are reforming Christianity out of existence in England.” (Janne Mattson Sjödahl, The Reign of Antichrist or the Great “Falling Away.”: A Study in Ecclesiastical History [Salt Lake City: The Deseret News, 1913], 125-29)
