Church history is weird.

Picture the scene: It’s March 9, 1522, the first Sunday of Lent in Zurich, Switzerland. The local printing press folks are worn out and hungry from the intense labor of printing St. Paul’s letters.  The Lenten fast was not a choice, but a mandated law.  Printing press owner Christoph Frouschauer invites his laborers and several religious figures over for a quiet meal of smoked sausage.  This premeditated and illegal violation of the lenten fast would scandalize the otherwise neutral sentiments of the Swiss, and lead to Frouschauer’s arrest.

Present (though abstaining) was Huldrych (or Ulrich) Zwingli, the people’s priest of Grossmünster. Zwingli had grown fond of the sentiments of Martin Luther and was looking for an opportunity to challenge human authority that ran contrary to his understanding of the Bible. After Frouschauer’s arrest for what is now called “The Affair of the Sausages,” Zwingli preached sermons defending these actions and more importantly, the theological imperative of “Protecting Christian Liberty from Man-Made Obligations.”  Zwingli’s leadership brought the Protestant Reformation to Zurich.

“If you will fast, do so; if you do not wish to eat meat, eat it not; but leave Christians a free choice in the matter.”

I find it easy to draw comparisons between the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s and this mass deconstruction happening in America today. When you belong to a religious system that demands assimilation and discourages questions, chances are folks are going to actually read the Bible for themselves and notice the disconnect.  It is common for leaders in these religious systems to accuse deconstructing Christians of being “trendy,” and of never having true faith in the first place.

In James Fowler’s Stages of Faith, deconstruction is a natural and essential part of the faith journey, though he calls it “Individuative-Reflective Faith.”  It’s simply doing the work of actually thinking about your beliefs and finding ways to make faith your own.  And it turns out White Christian Nationalism, the protection of political power at all costs, and the growing list of rules and beliefs required to be a “real Christian”  has very little to do with the life of faith we find in the Bible.

Sadly, Zwingli proves to be a bit more of a cautionary tale.  Though his Sausage Party began a movement grounded in Christian Liberty, within a few years Zwingli insisted on the forced conversion of Swiss Catholic Churches to Protestantism. This led to the Kappel Wars, resulting in Zwingli’s own death.