The unity of the Christian church in the world has been broken many times, with major schisms between East and West in the Great Schism of 1054 and the Western schism between Catholics and Lutherans which resulted in 1530. The Western schism at the Reformation occurred at the Augsburg Diet in 1530, when Catholics theologians and leaders of the German Reformation movement failed to agree on the wording of the articles of the Augsburg Confession. This document, regarded by many Catholic and Lutheran theologians today as not being "church-dividing" or heretical, is being reconsidered by theologians of both churches to see if substantial agreement can be made on its articles before its five hundredth anniversary in 2030. This book charts the course of the confession from its creation in 1530 until the present day and lays out a hope for a substantial healing of the Western schism by its five hundredth anniversary.
