I thought someone might be interested in the several pieces the Washington Post ran today related to Martin Luther's revolution. I recall that Robert Tulip is a big admirer of the German monk. I found them all interesting. The first four are the most relevant to Luther.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/ ... 9a4b53f111

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/ ... b112788ac4

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/ ... 8a32a604db

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/ ... cf6c8d3fcc

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/ ... 4ebf427bf2

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/ ... b3fe011e9a

500 years today since Martin Luther nailed/mailed his stand of faith that started the Protestant Reformation, the world should celebrate Luther’s message of a focus on the Bible to confront corruption with ethics, ignorance with knowledge and hatred with the love of Jesus Christ.

An anniversary worth celebrating indeed. And half a millenium to the day.

I was raised with the idea that one's relationship to God had to be personal, not cultural. That still makes sense to me. So I gladly celebrate Martin Luther's posting of 95 theses for debate.

Yet that is far from the last word for me. For one thing, I have learned to honor "cultural Christianity" because instead of less than personal, it can be more than personal. (The Hauerwas piece, fourth down on the list of links with "Protestants won" in the title, speaks obliquely to the point. More on that in a minute.) First, I have oriented myself toward maintaining the cultural practice of gathering and celebrating the power of Love because humans are not made for individualism. Second, I have come to regard the "horizontal" relationship to God, that is, our relationship to God in others, as far more important than our "vertical" relationship to the transcendent.

The relationship to the transcendent may be what kept the church as a vital and engaged force in the world for 1400 years before Luther, but it was far too easily coopted to be a source of authority. One of the first two W. Post pieces notes the general rebellion inspired by Luther's biblicism, and how Luther eventually came down hard against rebellious peasants. This business of freedom of conscience got out of hand, it seems.

Which brings a second reason to honor cultural Christianity, and the one Hauerwas has in mind if I read between the lines correctly. The church has managed to maintain a preference for the poor (as long as they remained peaceful and submissive) through the centuries. St. Francis, the vows of poverty by monks and nuns, liberation theology, all are emblems of a real devotion to easing the plight of the poor and other marginalized. I don't think one can read the New Testament without coming away with a sense that God prefers ordinary people to rulers and scholars. Yet the rulers of the church, despite being just an arm of the nobility (and I mean that completely) still led the flock in hospitality to the poor and desperate. One of the big reasons why central European burghers preferred Calvin and Luther to the church was the ever-increasing calendar of Saints days which they were to give to workers as holidays. These festivals were seen by the church as an elevation of communal ideals and faith over mere commerce.

All of this turmoil over people vs. hierarchy makes the last piece distressing. The independence of Trumpistas was not about being anti-elite, in the view of the author, or about religious issues by and large, but about being economically afraid. I, too, love democracy. It is hard for me to imagine living in a repressive authoritarian society without pushing against it. But if the people get to be afraid, they look around for scapegoats, and religion doesn't stop them, as a herd, from choosing what they perceive to be self-interest.

The material about the new medium of printing was also a lively topic, but for me it will have to be a topic for another day.