The Unleavened Legacy of the Protestant Reformation

 October 4, 2023 | Dr. Randy White

For nearly a thousand years, Western Christianity has observed the Lord’s Supper with unleavened bread. This stands in contrast to the leavened bread used in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Most Protestant communions emerging from the Reformation continued the Roman Catholic custom of unleavened bread. But was this tradition truly Biblical?

In the original Greek, the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper specifically use the word ἄρτος (artos) for the bread, which refers to leavened bread. If unleavened bread was intended, they would have used ἄζυμος (azymos). The early church understood this and celebrated communion with regular leavened bread.

It wasn’t until the 9th century that the Western church began adopting unleavened bread, having adopted at that time a replacement theology that viewed the Last Supper as Passover (read the Gospel of John to see that it was not Passover). In 1079 AD, Pope Gregory VII made unleavened bread mandatory in the Roman Catholic rite. From then on, the West officially diverged from the Eastern Orthodox practice.

Most Protestant reformers simply inherited this unleavened tradition from their Roman Catholic background. But was it right for Protestants to retain this medieval Catholic innovation rather than return to the leavened practice of the early church? Additionally, evangelicals have grown out of the Protestant tradition and have also inherited this Catholic-originated practice of unleavened communion bread.

In defending leavened Eucharistic bread, the Orthodox have maintained a stronger connection to the contexts of the Last Supper and early Christian worship. Protestants replaced the authority of the pope with the authority of scripture. Yet our continued use of unleavened bread is based on extra-Biblical traditions.

As Evangelicals and Fundamentalists strive to prioritize Biblical truth over human traditions, the reintroduction of leavened bread is overdue. Let us return to the same bread that our Lord broke with His disciples, and which the early churches consumed in remembrance of Him.