Fatal Discord

by Michael Massing

  gave a memorial lecture: Holl, What Did Luther Understand by Religion?, 1.

  The new Weimar Republic: Holborn, History of Modern Germany, vol. 3, 532ff, 661–662; Rausch, Protestantism, 119; “Germany,” in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, vol. 20, 116–118; “Luther Renaissance,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation.

  “great awakener of the conscience of his day”: Holl, What Did Luther Understand by Religion?, 109; “personal freedom,” 50; “more than merely,” 110; stood out “so sharply,” 110; “the principal advocate,” 97; had courageously protected the gospel, 102; “profound genius,” 110; “belongs not only to us Germans,” 110. See also “Luther Renaissance,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation; Stayer, Martin Luther, 39–47.

  the Luther Renaissance: Karl Kupisch, “The ‘Luther Renaissance,’” Journal of Contemporary History, 2(4): 39–49, October 1967; Holl, What Did Luther Understand by Religion?, 2. “Luther Renaissance,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation.

  Conservatives in particular rallied: “Luther Renaissance,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation.

  militant Christian nationalism: Ibid.

  Protestants voted overwhelmingly: Rausch, Protestantism, 119–120; Holborn, History of Modern Germany, vol. 3, 739–741.

  In the election of July 1932: Friedrich Weber and Charlotte Methuen, “The Architecture of Faith under National Socialism: Lutheran Church Building(s) in Braunschweig, 1933–1945,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 66(2): 343 (April 2015).

  The German Christians: Holborn, History of Modern Germany, vol. 3, 740–741; Stayer, Martin Luther, 126–127; “German Christians,” in The Encyclopedia of Protestantism.

  The Confessing Church: “Confessing Church,” in The Encyclopedia of Protestantism.

  “lies like a cloud”: Quoted in Ryrie, Protestants, 270.

  Declaration of Guilt: “Confessing Church,” in The Encyclopedia of Protestantism. The text is available at http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/niem/Stutt gartDeclaration.htm

  atone for their performance: “Holocaust,” in The Encyclopedia of Protestantism; “Germany,” in The Encyclopedia of Christianity, vol. 2, 402–403.

  an ambitious social-welfare program: “Germany,” in The Encyclopedia of Christianity, vol. 2, 402.

  closed 340 churches: “Germany’s Great Church Sell-Off,” Spiegel Online, available at http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/german-catholic-and-protestant-churches-sell-off-church-buildings-a-883054.html

  A 2012 global survey: See http://www.norc.org/PDFs/Beliefs_about_God_Report.pdf

  “the most godless place on earth”: See https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article106205333/Warum-so-wenige-Ostdeutsche-an-einen-Gott-glauben.html; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/sep/22/atheism-east-germany-godless-place

  “Where have all the Protestants gone?”: See Elisabeth Braw, “In Martin Luther’s Church the Pastor Asks: Where Have All the Protestants Gone?” Newsweek, February 24, 2014,available at http://www.newsweek.com/2014/02/28/martin-luthers-church-pastor-asks-where-have-all-protestants-gone-245572.html

  Lutherstadt-Wittenberg: “Lutherstadt Wittenberg,” a pamphlet published by Wittenberg-Information.

  For a full decade beforehand: See https://www.luther2017.de/en/2017/luther-decade/

  ongoing de-Christianization of Germany:See “Germany,” in The Encyclopedia of Christianity; Noll, Protestantism: A Very Short Introduction, 120–121; “Secularization,” in The Encyclopedia of Protestantism; T. R. Reid, “Hollow Halls in Europe’s Churches,” The Washington Post, May 6, 2001.

  an indelible stain: See Christopher J. Probst, Demonizing the Jews: Luther and the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany, 2–15, 172–175.

  a worldwide empire: “Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population,” Pew Research Center, December 19, 2011.

  single largest Protestant congregation: Mark A. Noll, Protestantism: A Very Short Introduction, 2.

  just under half of the population: See “America’s Changing Religious Landscape,” Pew Research Center, May 12, 2015, available at http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/

  America has been the capital of world Protestantism: MacCulloch, Reformation, 527. “The American varieties of English Protestantism,” MacCulloch writes, are “the most characteristic forms of Protestant Christianity today, and indeed they are probably the most dynamic forms of Christianity worldwide.” See also Noll, Protestantism: A Very Short Introduction, 122–123.

  America’s Lutherans: Williams, America’s Religions, 358–362. Mark Noll, a prominent chronicler of the American Protestant experience, has lamented the marginal presence of American Lutherans in American life: “The surprising thing for those who are acquainted with the penetrating vision of Luther, the scholarly aplomb of Melanchthon, the irenic efficiency of the Concord formulators,the surging brilliance of Bach, the passionate wisdom of Kierkegaard,or the heroic integrity of Bonhoeffer is how inconspicuous the Lutherans have been in America. Beyond their instructive experience as immigrants, it is hard to isolate identifiably Lutheran contributions to the larger history of Christianity in America.” (“The Lutheran Difference,” First Things, February 1992,available at https://www.firstthings.com/article/1992/02/004-the-lutheran-difference.) For more on the current state of American Lutheranism, see Richard Cimino, ed., Lutherans Today: American Lutheran Identity in the Twenty-First Century.

  the Southern Baptist Convention: See Mark A. Noll, American Evangelical Christianity: An Introduction, 58; Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation, 191–199.

  The Baptists’ various statements of belief: See http://www.sbc.net/aboutus/basicbeliefs.asp and http://www.sbc.net/aboutus/positionstatements.asp

  explicitly embrace “the priesthood of all believers”: In The American Religion (202), Bloom observes that “like so many American denominations (the Mormons included), the Southern Baptists affirm the priesthood of all believers, leaving to the preachers only the prime function of exhortation.”

  Billy Graham offers another example: Mark A. Noll, American Evangelical Christianity, 44–55; Frances Fitzgerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle To Shape America, 169–207.

  “No matter who we are”: Billy Graham, Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham, 728.

  a visit he made to Wittenberg: Ibid., 513–514.

  the place of the Bible in it: Noll, American Evangelical Christianity, 59–60; Randall Balmer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, 155–170. “American evangelicals,” Ballmer writes (156–157), have “an almost mystical attachment to the Bible.” Detractors “have accused evangelicals of bibliolatry: elevating the Bible to the status of an idol that is itself worshipped.”

  According to surveys: See the data gathered by the Pew Research Center, available at http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/frequency-of-reading-scripture/

  Nearly half of all adult Americans: According to a May 2017 Gallup poll, available at http://www.gallup.com/poll/210704/record-few-americans-believe-bible-literal-word-god.aspx

  Museum of the Bible: See Candida Moss and Joel S. Baden, “Just What is the Museum of the Bible Trying to Do?”, Politico, October 15, 2017. The authors, professors at the University of Birmingham and the Yale Divinity School respectively, write that though the museum presents itself as nonsectarian, “the idea that a museum can be devoted just to the Bible’s words, without presenting the history of its interpretation and the cultural contexts in which that interpretation has taken place, is a distinctly Protestant one.” Available at http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/15/just-what-is-the-museum-of-the-bible-trying-to-do-215711.

  Most historians are wed: See Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. He writes (1–5) that the tendency of historical accounts to concentra
te on the familiar themes of New England Calvinism, evangelicalism, voluntarism, and declining religious adherence “slights America’s rich religious complexity and is ultimately unable to explain Christianity’s extraordinary power and its highly variable expressions in nineteenth-and twentieth-century America.” He proposes that “we attach less importance to Puritanism as the major force in shaping religion in America and more importance to the religious eclecticism” that took root in the eighteenth century. It is also important, he notes, to restore a sense of the European roots of early American religion. The “close connections between early modern Europe and America, the conscious resort to European models by American colonists, and the overwhelmingly derivative nature of early American society make it impossible to understand America’s religious origins apart from Europe.” See also Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776–2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, second edition (1–24, 57–60), on the need for a new approach to American religious history.

  John Wesley: Walker, History of the Christian Church, 596–606; MacCulloch, Reformation, 675–676; Williams, America’s Religions, 135–139; For a full biographical treatment, see Roy Hattersley, John Wesley: A Brand from the Burning.

  a despondent Wesley reluctantly accepted: Walker, History of the Christian Church, 601.

  become the foundation for Wesley’s own theology: See Philip S. Watson, Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther, 3.

  that Wesley could not accept: Mark A. Noll, The Work We Have to Do: A History of Protestants in America, 53–54; Balmer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, 202–203.

  a state of “sanctification”: George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925, 72–74.

  stripping it of the fatalism: Wesley, in short, was a Pelagian. It is surprising how few accounts of American religious history take full note of the important part Wesley played in it. Among the exceptions are Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism; Bloom, American Religion (49); and Balmer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory (x). “Wesley’s evangelical experience,” Balmer writes, “has served as a model for many American evangelicals. They, like him, point to some sudden, instantaneous, datable experience of grace, and they aspire to the kind of warm-hearted piety so characteristic of Wesley’s spiritual life.”

  Wesley began traveling around England: Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, 116–118; Alister E. McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution—A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First, 147–148; E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 37ff, 350ff. The excitement that Methodist preachers stirred among English workers is captured by George Eliot in Adam Bede.

  The Church of England disapproved: Finke, Churching of America, 67–68.

  the first Methodist preachers commissioned by him: Noll, Work We Have to Do, 41.

  “no creed but the Bible”: Quoted in Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, 166.

  suited to people on the frontier: Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, 429–436; P. Williams, America’s Religions, 184–186.

  in Cane Ridge, Kentucky: Ahlstrom, Religious History, 432–436; Williams, America’s Religions, 185–186; Finke, Churching of America, 92–96, 108; Harold Bloom, American Religion, 59–64. “The American Jesus,” Bloom writes (64), “was born at Cane Ridge, and is with us still.”

  became a fixture of the frontier: Hatch, Democratization, 49–56; Ahlstrom, Religious History, 435–436; Noll, Work We Have to Do, 55–56.

  the Second Great Awakening: Williams, America’s Religions, 182–189; Finke, Churching of America, 76, 85–86; Fitzgerald, Evangelicals, 25–32; Garry Wills, Head and Heart: American Christianities, 287–299; Grant S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, 331–335.

  a continuation of it: Jonathan Edwards called the United States “the principal nation of the Reformation” (quoted in Martin Marty, Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America, 49). On American Protestantism’s building on the Reformation, see MacCulloch, Reformation, 676.

  took root and spread: As Gordon Wood puts it in The Radicalism of the American Revolution (331), “as the Republic became democratized, it became evangelized.”

  would leave a permanent mark: Hatch, Democratization, 3–16, 40–46, 58; Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution, 329–334. “By the second quarter of the nineteenth century,” Wood writes (333), “the evangelical Protestantism of ordinary people had come to dominate American culture to an extent the founding fathers had never anticipated.”

  the message from the pulpits: Arlie Russell Hochschild, in Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, writes (124) of her time attending church services in Lake Charles, Louisiana, that the word from the pulpits “seemed to focus more on a person’s moral strength to endure than on the will to change the circumstances that called on that strength.” At the same time, she adds, “the service offered a collective, supportive arena” that gave strength to the individual “to endure what had to be endured.”

  Index

  The pagination of this digital edition does not match the print edition from which the index was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your ebook reader’s search tools.

  A mortuo tributum exigere (“To exact tribute from the dead”) (adage, Erasmus), 215

  Aachen (Germany), 412

  Abbé du Parc, 114

  “The Abbot and the Learned Lady” (Erasmus), 512

  Abelard, Peter, 58, 60, 462

  Act of Supremacy (England), 750

  Acta Augustana (Luther), 340, 341

  Acts of the Apostles, 221

  Acts of the University of Louvain Against Luther (Erasmus), 411

  Ad Leonem X (anthology of Luther’s works), 323, 344, 349, 350

  Adagiorum Collectanea (“Collected Adages”) (Erasmus), xi, 89, 90, 145, 148–150, 213, 214, 241, 243, 261, 266, 556, 687, 755–756

  An Admonition Against the Jews (Luther), 780

  Admonition to Peace: A Reply to the Twelve Articles of the Peasants in Swabia (Luther), 639, 651

  Adrian VI (Adrian of Utrecht) (pope), 114, 378, 402, 403, 560, 563–564, 570, 572, 604

  Adrianus, Matthaeus, 294, 327, 386, 428

  adultery, Luther on, 424–425

  Aelius Donatus, 98

  Africa, Protestants in, 814

  Against Henry, King of the English (Luther), 552

  Against the Antinomians (Luther), 761

  Against the Bull of the Antichrist (Luther), 432

  Against the Execrable Bull (Luther), 432

  Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments (Luther), 627, 628

  Against the Idol at Halle (Luther), 506

  Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants (Luther), 651, 652, 660

  Against the Roman Papacy, an Institution of the Devil (Luther), 777–778

  Against the Title of the English King’s Slanderous Writing (Luther), 685–686

  Agricola, Georgius, 23

  Agricola, Johann, 639, 724, 760–761

  Agricola, Rodolphus, 18–19

  Alaric, 134

  Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach, 710

  Albrecht of Mainz (archbishop), 277–278, 280, 284, 376, 416, 465, 484, 497, 505, 525, 637, 639, 643, 668

  Alcuin, 109–110

  Aldine Press, 145, 146

  Aleander, Jerome, 356, 400, 409–416, 437–439, 441, 448, 454, 463, 465, 480, 564

  Alexander (archbishop of St. Andrews), 212

  Alexander VI (pope), 157–158

  Alfonso I of Aragon (king of Naples), 44

  All Saints’ Church (Schlosskirche) (Wittenberg), 166, 167

  Allstedt (Germany), 595, 596, 610, 611, 638, 652

  Alsace, German Peasants’ War, 634–635, 645, 657

  Altenburg (Germany), 549

  Alypius, 131–132

/>   Ambrose (bishop of Milan), 131

  Amerbach, Bonifacius, 382, 397, 756

  Amerbach, Johannes, 128, 242

  American Bible Association, 816

  Amish people, 741

  Ammonio, Andrea, 205, 209, 212, 257

  Amsdorf, Nikolaus von, 451, 454, 467, 489, 522, 547, 660, 665, 753

  Anabaptists, 663, 737–741, 738–739

  Ananias, 223

  Anderlecht (Low Countries), 477

  Andreas of Caesarea, 253

  Anfechtungen (Luther), 48, 55, 82, 126, 169–170, 217–218, 267, 490, 705, 728

  Angelic Sisters of Saint Paul, 786

  angels, Aquinas on, 64–65

  Anglican Communion, 801

  Anheuser-Busch InBev, 289

  annates, 158, 277, 747

  Anne (Czech princess), 364

  Anne (saint), 25, 83

  annulment, Luther on, 424

  Answer to the Book of Our Esteemed Master Ambrosius (Luther), 450

  Answer to the Hyperchristian, Hyperspiritual, and Hyperlearned Book by Goat Emser in Leipzig (Luther), 446

  Answer unto Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue (Tyndale), 745

  Anthony (Egyptian monk), 131

  anti-intellectualism, 597

  Anti-Pelagian Writings (Augustine), 135, 266

  anti-Judaism. See also Jews

  of Erasmus, 184, 185

  of Luther, 176, 186–189, 492, 577–578, 774–777, 813–814

  Pfefferkorn pamphlets, 179

  Antibarbari (Erasmus), 46, 47

  antinomianism, 761

  Antoine (duke of Lorraine), 649, 657

  Antwerp (Belgium), 443–444

  Apologeticus Archeteles (Zwingli), 558

  Apologia ad Fabrum (Erasmus), 296, 301

  Apostles’ Creed, 44

  Appeal to the English (Bugenhagen), 692

  Aquila (early Christian convert), 227

  Aquinas, Thomas, 58, 63–66

  Erasmus and, 252–253, 590

  on God, 64, 65

  on man, 65

  on salvation, 80

  Summa Theologica, 58, 64, 65, 80, 111, 166, 213, 333

  Archias (Roman poet), 37

  Arian heresy, 298

  Aristarch, 266

  Aristotelian logic, 60–61