Martin Luther and the justification of political muscle to enforce religious compliance

A tainted inheritance

Herr Dr. Luther,

One of your Protestant theological descendants here. I’m thinking about you on this anniversary date—October 31, 1517–of your courageous challenge to the Pope, with your Wittenberg posting of the 95 theses for debate with the Church hierarchy.

Let me be quick to say that I hope the next world resolves problems in the way those of us still living on planet Earth believe that it will. If so, I trust that your severe constipation is entirely a thing of the past, and even forgotten by you, though, with the help of archaeologists who uncovered your toilet those of us today can hardly forget where the Protestant Reformation was actually born.

You would perhaps be disappointed to learn that the Roman Catholic Church is still in existence worldwide, and despite its many failures across the years at the moment has a magnificent Pope. You might well disagree with my assessment, but I hold firmly to it. Another Leo he is, the fourteenth one of those, and a far better Leo than the one you knew.

I need to put my assessment in context for you and say that both the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant movement as well as all other institutional expressions of Christianity have, by this point in history, failed to be anything appropriately representative of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, or even close. They’re all failed enterprises, and the effort to continue trying to make them work is doing untold damage to the potential of the teachings of Jesus to make the world better, to make the world right.

I’m sorry to have to tell you that, despite your good intentions, your efforts largely became in vain. This has been the case not because the teachings of Jesus properly interpreted have lost power or even because the Apostle Paul’s institutional follow up to those teachings lacked reasonable merit, but because the relationship of government to any spirituality movement is inherently flawed. Spirituality and civil governance simply cannot mix. They cannot become intertwined.

Your declaration in an appearance before Pope Leo X that your conscience was captive to the word of God has caused admiration and courage to well up in the hearts of many of your spiritual descendants, myself included. The problem with that is not with your motivation or your articulation or your brilliance. It was and is with the fact that scripture must be interpreted correctly, and it has been and remains difficult for scholars and preachers to give much credence to the notion that their own interpretations, however well-informed, could be wrong, can be wrong.

Your belief, and if I may say so respectfully, Sir, that Romans chapter 13 could ever have been intended by the Apostle Paul to be applied in all situations and all circumstance was untenable and remains so. Even between the time Paul wrote that to the church in Rome and the time that Nero ordered him executed, he realized in the most painful way possible that God does not put evil people in leadership positions. For that matter, God doesn’t get involved in politics at all. Given your own suffering at the hands of self-serving political power people it is difficult to understand how you arrived at that conclusion, and especially that it would apply in all circumstances, including in your own.

Professor, when you, a theological leader in the literal world of your time, called on political power people to harm your enemies—namely peasants and Jews—and their causes, you went to a place Jesus would never have gone or approved of. Protestants after you, and many more of them than anyone could have imagined, took your cue and believed they too had the right to ask politicians to enforce theological belief and behavior. That was a fatal flaw.

When Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s,” he was not merely talking about paying Roman-assessed taxes by people it held in subjugation. He was talking about understanding the difference between two realms of human experience. One of those realms is the earthly realm that has political leaders, and to the extent that we want or have to live within those spheres we must follow the rules. But the other realm, the spiritual realm, is God‘s realm, and the politicians have absolutely nothing to do with what is believed or talked about or acted upon in that realm.

The country in which I live today was not known to you, and would not be known to many except the indigenous people who lived here until the discoveries of your European near-contemporaries became widely known. But its original inhabitants were eventually savagely abused, even slaughtered, by Protestants and Roman Catholics alike stealing what was theirs. A shameful heritage.

In my own time, Protestants more than Roman Catholics have commandeered the government and are attempting to force people to live by their rules; that force, based primarily on racial and cultural prejudice, includes violence and unconscionable abuse, including murder, of our citizens and guests of all ages. Dr. Luther, your progeny believe that the use of governmental muscle to enforce what they believe to be religious principles is acceptable, and they learned of it in part because of the precedent you set. I’m not sure how you can rest easy in paradise knowing this.

If God is indeed our mighty fortress—a bulwark never falling, then beyond appreciation to government for ensuring freedom of religious expression, the government is unrelated and must remain unrelated to our spiritual lives. You sang it powerfully.

And though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us We will not fear for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us.

The truth makes us and keeps us free, yes? Not religio-governmental violence.

—David Albert Farmer, Ph.D.