Martin Luther and Me: Reckoning with Germany’s Dangerous Legacy. By GEORG DIEZ
I am a son of Martin
Luther. As was my father. As was his father. But as a German man living
through today’s German and European politics, what does it mean to be a son of
Martin Luther?
It took me a while,
more or less the first forty years of my life, to at least partially comprehend
this heritage and to understand who I am: a member of a long line of Lutheran
pastors. I had not seen myself like that. I had seen myself, in the narcissism
so particular to my generation, as independent, a creation of my own.
And so when I
eventually opened the Bible that my father gave me a few months before he died,
I was shocked to see and read the year it was printed: 1546, the year Luther
died. Opening this book, very heavy and clad in old brown leather with two iron
bars at the side, was a like staring into a well. It was deep, it was dark, and
I plunged right into it: the texture of the paper, the old German letters that
I can read only with effort, the way the pages are adorned with drawings of
biblical scenes, and most of all the small notations, some in German and some
in Latin, that covered each page. The comments on specific lines or
words—thoughts of my forefathers—were mostly illegible and hard to decipher,
like a very loud chorus that I was unable to hear. It was my family history in
a palimpsest.
As a German
man living through today’s German and European politics, what does it mean
to be a son of Martin Luther?
I was hopeful that
this year, 2017, could help clarify some of the assumptions that I—and
others–might have about Luther, a man who was at the beginning of one of the
most massive and lasting changes in the history of the West. This year, after
all, marked the five-hundredth anniversary of his most memorable and famous
act: on October 31, 1517, he supposedly nailed his Ninety-five Theses to a
church door in Wittenberg, a small university town in Germany along the Elbe
river. He was protesting against the papal practice of selling indulgences for
higher and higher fees, thus turning sin and absolution into a sort of
proto-capitalistic Ponzi scheme for the church in Rome. But in the process, he
unleashed an energy that would turn the worldly and the heavenly order in
Europe upside down. The Reformation, in many ways, shaped the continent and the
globe beyond for the five hundred years to come.
But the problem, as I
see it, is that there is a cliché version of Luther and real reluctance to look
beyond the historic facts as to what the passion and the energy that drove
Luther might mean today. Luther’s legacy is one of a revolutionary who sought
to change the way the world works. He is often described as someone who broke
with the order of the medieval or pre-modern order that he was part of. Some
have even said that Islam needs a Luther-figure to reform itself, implying that
the reform process that Luther started was rational or directed towards a more
just, equal, and democratic society. They seem to think that the Luther who is
being celebrated, or at least commemorated, this year was a figure that could
serve as a model for today.
But the truth is much
more complicated. Scratch the surface and you’ll find not a prophet of
modernity, but a fear-driven fanatic. In reality, Luther was a deeply
conservative person with strong authoritarian tendencies. He wanted, in the
end, to reinstate the power of God over the freedom of Man. This kind of anti-democratic
thinking resonates in today's world, and yet we are often still driven by the
need to create a positive hero. It is the need of the present to form a
coherent narrative, a trajectory for modernity, individualism, and even in some
ways democracy that includes faith, religion, and the church. And in this case,
it is the presentation of the Protestant church as a quintessential European
gift to the world.
I would argue that
this view of Luther and his legacy is not only wrong, but it does little to help
us navigate today’s religious tensions and political challenges. Indeed, a more
political and honest understanding of Luther could even offer a blueprint for
how the reactionary mindset evolves. And shouldn't that be of profound
interest? In the context of a world that is imploding or exploding, depending
on the way you look at it, reading Luther offers new political insights,
especially when you identify which strands of his ideology are still present,
which have changed over time, and which are more, or less, beneficial… read
more:
http://bostonreview.net/philosophy-religion/georg-diez-martin-luther-and-me
