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This October, here and around the world, Evangelical and mainstream Protestant churches (and even the Catholic Church) will be celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation on the 31st of October 2017.

This momentous event that happened five hundred years ago at that church door in Wittenberg, Germany, radically transformed how people perceived spirituality, church life, culture, politics and scientific innovation. Propelled by social upheavals and with birth pains of radical social transformation, all historians agree that the Reformation was a necessary catalyst for the Modern World to be born.

For the followers and regular readers of this blog, I have written extensively on this part of world history. See the following posts:

Events before the Reformation
1. Crusades and Famine
2. “Holy Office” of the Inquisition: You get killed by not being Catholic.
3. Corruption of the clergy
4. An Englishman translated the Bible into his own language. (John Wycliffe). The first one since the Bible was translated from original Hebrew and Greek, into Latin.
5. A Bohemian, inspired by the Englishman, taught the Bible, and was burned at the stake for it. (Jan Huss)
6. A generation after, another Englishman translated the Bible in his own vernacular and was killed for it. (William Tyndale)
Events of the Reformation/s
1. A German Augustinian monk rediscovered the Scriptures, read the Book of Romans and eureka! (Martin Luther)
2. Martin Luther, the Augustinian monk who ignited the Reformation (A BBC Documentary)
3. Martin Luther’s showdown with the leaders of the Catholic Church
4. The Catholic Church’s attempt to erase Luther from human memory.
5. A Frenchman followed the footsteps of the German Reformer (John Calvin)
6. Geneva, Switzerland: The Protestant Rome
7. Catholic Church reacted by initiating the Counter-Reformation
8. Persecution of Protestants and massacres
The Battlecry of the Reformation
1. Justification by faith alone, priesthood of all believers, authority of the Bible over the church, the right of every Christian to read the Bible for himself.
2. The 5 Solas: The Reformation Declarations of Freedom
Repercussions
Why the Reformation is still relevant
Evangelical History

In a predominantly Catholic country, I have written these to present a Filipino perspective from the fringes, strange as it might seem to the majority of the readers here. I am a Filipino Protestant, and I’m proud of this heritage of faith that I have. This worldview of mine has, if you have noticed, undoubtedly influenced me in my perspective of Philippine history, culture and society.

This month of the 500th year of the Reformation, I will do something special.

I am launching a blog series of events when Protestantism and Philippine history met. You’d be surprised at how unusual these circumstances were. From an unknown renegade friar in the Philippines turned Protestant pastor, to a national hero’s search for an alternative to an oppressive dogmatic religion he grew up with, to a Filipino priest who decided to break away from the Catholic Church and establish his own, I invite you, dear reader, to look back into Philippine history and see it as never before, in Reformation eyes.

Post tenebras lux!

*Banner above from Ligonier.Org.