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The Lutheran wing of the Reformation was democratic, but only in terms of the church itself, teaching that a plowman did God's work as much as a priest, encouraging lay leadership and seeking to educate one and all.
But it was Calvin, not Luther, who created a theology for Luther's politics, controversial then and now, was his opposition to the bloody Peasants' War of 1525. The insurgents thought they were applying Luther's ideas but he urged rulers to crush the revolt: "Let whoever can, stab, strike, kill." Support of the rulers was vital for the Reformation, but Luther loathed violent rebellion and anarchy in any case.
Today Luther's law-and-order approach is at odds with the revolutionary romanticism and liberation theology schools. In contrast with modern European Protestantism's social gospel. Munich Historian Thomas Nipperdey says, "Luther "would not accept modern attempts to build a utopia and would argue, on the contrary,
that we as mortal sinners are incapable of developing a paradise on earth."
Meanwhile, the internal state of the Lutheran Church raises other questions about the lasting power of Luther's vision.
Lutheranism in the U.S. with 8.5 million adherents, is stable and healthy. The church also growing in the Third World strongholds like racially torn Nambia, where black Lutherans predominate. But in Lutheran's historic heartland, the two Germanys and Scandinavia, there are deep problems. In East Germany, Lutherans are under pressure from the Communist regime. In West Germany, the Evangelical Church in Germany (E.K.D.), a church federation that includes some non-Lutherans, is wealthy (annual income: $3 billion), but membership is shrinking and attendance at Sunday services is feeble indeed. Only 6% of West Germans—or for that matter, Scandinavians— worship regularly.
What seems to be lacking in the old European churches is the passion for God and his truth that so characterizes Luther.
He retains the potential to shake people out of religious complacency. Given Christinaity's need, on all sides, for a good jolt, eminent Historian Heiko Oberman muses. "I wonder if the time of Luther isn't ahead of us."
The boldest assertion about Luther for modern believers is made by Protestants who claim that the reformer did nothing less than enable Christianity to survive. In the Middle Ages, too many Popes and bishops were little more than corrupt, luxury-loving politicians, neglecting the teaching of the love of God and using the fear of God to enhance their power and wealth. George Lindbeck, the Lutheran co-chairman of the international Lutheran-Catholic commission, believes that without Luther "religion would have been much less important during the next 400 to 500 years. And since medieval religion was falling apart, secularization would have marched on, unimpeded."
A provocative thesis and a debatable one. But with secularization still marching on, almost unimpeded, Protestants and Catholics have much to reflect upon as they scan the five centuries and Luther and the shared future of their still divided churches.
—By Richard N. Ostling. Reported by Roland Flamini and Wanda Menke-Glückert/Bonn, with other bureaus