Lutheranism

See Lutheran.

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Protestant movement founded on the principles of Martin Luther.

Lutheranism arose at the start of the Reformation, after Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses in Wittenberg. It spread through much of Germany and into Scandinavia, where it was established by law. It was brought to the New World by the colonists of New Netherland and New Sweden and spread through the U.S. Middle Atlantic states in the 18th century and the Midwest in the 19th century. Its doctrines are contained in the catechisms of Luther and in the Augsburg Confession. Lutheran doctrine emphasizes salvation by faith alone and the primacy of the Bible as the church's authority. The Lutheran ministry is one of service

not special status

and is described as the priesthood of all believers. Lutherans accept two sacraments (baptism and the Eucharist) and believe in predestination to salvation. The Lutheran World Federation is based in Geneva. See also Pietism.

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▪ Christianity

Introduction

 the branch of Christianity that traces its interpretation of the Christian religion to the teachings of Martin Luther (Luther, Martin) and the 16th-century movements that issued from his reforms. Along with Anglicanism, the Reformed and Presbyterian (Reformed and Presbyterian churches) (Calvinist) churches, Methodism, and the Baptist churches, Lutheranism is one of the five major branches of Protestantism. Unlike the Roman Catholic (Roman Catholicism) Church, however, Lutheranism is not a single entity. It is organized in autonomous regional or national churches, such as the Church of Sweden (Sweden, Church of) or the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg, Ger. Globally, there are some 140 such Lutheran church bodies; 138 of these are loosely joined in the Lutheran World Federation, which was established in 1947. At the beginning of the 21st century, there were more than 65 million Lutherans worldwide, making Lutheranism the second largest Protestant denomination, after the Baptist churches.

      The term Lutheran, which appeared as early as 1519, was coined by Luther's opponents. The self-designation of Luther's followers was “evangelical”—that is, centred on the Gospel. After the Diet of Speyer in 1529, when German rulers sympathetic to Luther's cause voiced a protest against the diet's Catholic majority, which had overturned a decree of 1526, Luther's followers came to be known as Protestants. However, because both evangelical and Protestant proved to be overly broad designations (before long they also included the Reformed churches), eventually the name Evangelical Lutheran became standard. Another name occasionally used is Churches of the Augsburg Confession, which recalls the Lutheran statement of faith presented to the German emperor at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530. In the United States several nomenclatures have been used, all of which, with the exception of the Evangelical Catholic Church, include the term Lutheran in their titles (e.g., the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod).

      In the 16th century, Lutheranism became formally established in various principalities by being declared the official religion of the region by the relevant governmental authority. As early as the 1520s German principalities and cities adopted Lutheranism, and they were later followed by Sweden and the other Scandinavian (Scandinavia) countries. Later, Lutheran notions found their way to Hungary and Transylvania. Lutheranism arrived in North America in the middle of the 17th century in the areas of present-day Delaware and southern Pennsylvania. In the 18th century and increasingly in the 19th, European and North American Lutherans undertook missions throughout the globe, leading to the establishment of indigenous Lutheran churches in many countries. Beginning in the 20th century, ecumenical initiatives affected both Lutheranism and its relation to other Christian faiths.

      Theologically, Lutheranism embraces the standard affirmations of classic Protestantism—the repudiation of papal and ecclesiastical authority in favour of the Bible (sola Scriptura), the rejection of five of the traditional seven sacraments affirmed by the Catholic Church, and the insistence that human reconciliation with God is effected solely by divine grace (sola gratia), which is appropriated solely by faith (sola fide), in contrast to the notion of a convergence of human effort and divine grace in the process of salvation.

History

German beginnings

 In 1517, when Martin Luther probed the church practices surrounding indulgences (indulgence) (the full or partial grant of the remission of the penalties of sin) with his Ninety-five Theses (the various propositions that Luther wished to debate—posted, according to tradition, on the church doors in Wittenberg), he had no intention of breaking from the Catholic Church, assuming that his call for theological and ecclesiastical reform would be heard. Instead, a fierce controversy ensued. Luther and his followers were subsequently excommunicated, which confronted them with the alternative of yielding to the ecclesiastical dictum or finding new ways to live their faith. Since the advocates of reform received the protection of governmental authorities in many places, new forms of church life began to emerge in the late 1520s.

      Because they were excommunicated and their churches outlawed, Luther, his followers, and their princely supporters were under threat of military action by Catholic forces, and in 1546 Emperor Charles V felt powerful enough to wage war against the major Lutheran territories and cities. While victorious in the ensuing War of Schmalkald, Charles overreached himself by adding political goals to his objective of dismantling Lutheran reforms. At the Diet of Augsburg in 1555, he was forced to concede formal recognition to the Lutheran churches in the Holy Roman Empire.

      The Peace of Augsburg (Augsburg, Peace of) marked an important turning point in the history of Lutheranism. After a generation of struggle against Roman Catholic and imperial authorities, Lutherans gained legal recognition through the establishment of the principle cuius regio, eius religio, which meant that the ruler of a principality determined its religion. From then on, the Lutheran churches in these principalities were free to develop unhindered by political and military threats.

Confessionalization (confession) and Orthodoxy

      Although their legal existence was assured, the Lutheran churches in Germany nonetheless found themselves in turmoil. A series of theological controversies over the authentic understanding of Luther's thought—some had already erupted during Luther's own lifetime—began to divide Lutheran theologians and churches with increasing intensity. Most of them pertained to topics on which Luther and his Wittenberg colleague Philipp Melanchthon (Melanchthon, Philipp) had disagreed or on which Luther's theological views were not altogether clear. Dominating the Lutheran agenda between 1548 and 1577, the disputes concerned how to resolve matters that were neither approved nor strictly forbidden by Scripture, whether the doctrine of faith absolved Christians from following the moral law set out in the Hebrew Scriptures, and matters connected with justification and human participation in salvation.

      The two factions involved in these debates were the Philippists, followers of Melanchthon, and the Gnesio-Lutherans (Genuine Lutherans), led by Matthias Flacius Illyricus (Flacius Illyricus, Matthias), a forceful and uncompromising theologian who accused the Philippists of “synergism,” the notion that humans cooperated in their salvation. Flacius and the other Gnesio-Lutherans also saw in the Philippists' understanding of the Lord's Supper the influence of Calvinism, which stressed the real but spiritual presence of Christ in the sacrament.

      With the aid of theologians Jakob Andreae and Martin Chemnitz (Chemnitz, Martin), Lutheran political authorities, notably the elector of Saxony, forced compromises on the disputed points of theology. Andreae and Chemnitz prompted a group of Lutheran theologians to draft a document entitled Formula of Concord in 1576 and 1577. Approved by German Lutheran political and religious leaders, it was incorporated, together with several other confessions—the three ancient ecumenical creeds (the Apostles Creed (Apostles' Creed), the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed), the Augsburg Confession, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Luther's tract on papal power, his Schmalkaldic Articles, and his Small and Large Catechisms (catechism)—into the Book of Concord in 1580.

      The Book of Concord embodied the confessional identity (confession of faith) of German Lutheranism. It reflected a development that was paralleled in other Christian traditions of the time, each of which jealously guarded its own identity in opposition to other traditions. The particular “Lutheran” identity encompassed not only theology but also liturgy, music, law, and piety. This process of identity formation in the late 16th century is known as confessionalization.

      Theological Orthodoxy, which shaped Lutheranism from the late 16th to the late 17th century, has been much maligned as an overly intellectualized Christianity that showed little concern for practical piety. This one-sided perspective (there was much concern for personal piety in orthodoxy) nonetheless demonstrates the importance of the practice among 17th-century Lutheran theologians of defining Christianity in terms of doctrine. Lutheran thinkers utilized categories from Aristotelian philosophy and logic to articulate Christian theology, leading to ever-subtler analyses of argument and counterargument. The tension between reason and revelation, prominent in Luther, was replaced by the insistence on the harmony of the two, with revelation representing the ultimate truth. Dogmatic claims were safeguarded through an emphasis on the divine inspiration of Scripture, a concern that eventually led Lutheran theologians (even as their Reformed counterparts) to formulate the notion of the verbally inerrant Bible, a pivotal point of orthodox theology.

Pietism

      During the period of orthodox dominance, some Lutheran theologians argued that Christianity was not so much a system of doctrine as a guide for practical Christian living. Foremost among them was Johann Arndt (Arndt, Johann) (1555–1621), whose devotional writings were extremely popular in the 17th century. Arndt's major work, The Four Books of True Christianity (1605–09), was a guide to the meditative and devotional life. Arndt has been called the father of Pietism because of his influence on those who later developed the movement. The Pietist movement was also shaped by English theologians William Perkins, William Ames (Ames, William), and Richard Baxter (Baxter, Richard).

      Pietism had its beginnings in 1675, when the Frankfurt pastor Philipp Jakob Spener (Spener, Philipp Jakob) published his book Pious Desires, in which he called for greater commitment to Christian living and a fundamental reform of theological education. Stressing the religion of the heart and the piety of the individual, the movement cultivated “small churches within the larger church” for prayer, Bible reading, moral scrutiny, and works of charity. Although Spener gave no thought to leaving the Lutheran Church, he was deeply aggrieved by what he considered the ignorance of the clergy and the church's lack of spiritual vitality.

      Spener's notions were institutionalized in the town of Halle, Ger., by August Hermann Francke (Francke, August Hermann), who established the Frankesche Stiftungen (“Francke Foundations”) schools as well as an orphanage, a printing press, and similar establishments. These Halle Foundations, still in existence today, put into practice Pietist beliefs regarding sanctified living, practical education, and concern for the neighbour in need. The Pietists' emphasis on education in particular influenced the development of the Enlightenment in Germany.

Modernity

      In the 18th century, the European Enlightenment, embracing the insights of the modern scientific revolution, challenged traditional Christian assumptions concerning miracles, the fulfillment of prophecy, and divine revelation. Lutheran philosophers and theologians, such as Christian Wolff (Wolff, Christian, Freiherr (Baron) von) (1679–1754) and Johann Salomo Semler (Semler, Johann Salomo) (1725–91), defended the notion of the harmony of reason and revelation. In contrast to medieval scholasticism, which advocated the use of reason but emphasized the primacy of revelation, Lutheran theology subordinated revelation and declared reason to be the key to understanding the will of God. This sentiment, known as Neology, dominated Lutheranism in the second half of the 18th century. As a result, liberal and conservative wings began to form in the 19th century, a division that has continued into the 21st century. In this way Lutheranism mirrored developments in other Christian churches, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. Regardless of denominational differences, the real division increasingly was between those who embraced the new notions of the Enlightenment—that Christianity was in effect natural religion—and those who rejected those notions. For those influenced by the Enlightenment, traditional theological disputes, such as those between Lutherans and the Reformed churches (Reformed church), ceased to be fundamentally important.

      It was against this background that King Frederick William III of Prussia in 1817 directed that the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Prussia use an identical order of worship. The Prussian ruling house had been Calvinist since the early 17th century; its subjects were Lutheran, even though the territorial enlargement of Prussia after the Napoleonic Wars had added a substantial Reformed populace. Frederick William, a devout individual, was convinced that no substantive theological differences separated the two churches. Moreover, Prussia had undergone a comprehensive administrative realignment that greatly centralized the government, and the king sought the same for the Lutheran and Reformed churches. While some accepted the king's dictum, others fiercely opposed the merger and found themselves suppressed and even persecuted. When the opponents were finally allowed to emigrate to the United States in the 1840s, they established the conservative Lutheran synods of Missouri and Buffalo. Continuing opposition eventually led Frederick William IV to declare in 1852 that the union of Lutherans and Reformed was not doctrinal but only administrative. Nevertheless, most Prussian regional churches had by then adopted a uniform church order, taking the name Churches of the Prussian Union.

      In the 19th century Lutheran theology in Germany was bitterly divided between three schools—a liberal school, represented by Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus (1761–1851); a traditional-confessional school, represented by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg (Hengstenberg, Ernst Wilhelm) (1802–69) and Claus Harms (1778–1855); and a mediating school, which included August Neander (1789–1850) but was chiefly influenced by Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (Schleiermacher, Friedrich) (1768–1834). Later in the century Albrecht Ritschl (Ritschl, Albrecht) (1822–89) sought to forge a synthesis between the Christian faith and modernity, one that did not fit into any particular theological school, but he was bitterly attacked by both liberals and conservatives, the supernaturalists (supernaturalism) and the rationalists.

      The surprising vigour of the Lutheran traditionalists, called Old Lutherans, was related to the religious awakening that swept through Germany in the middle of the century. Allied with the Old Lutherans were the New Lutherans, who sought to revive ancient liturgical traditions and to combine fidelity to the Lutheran confessions with an emphasis on the importance of the sacraments and the church. Old and New Lutherans dominated the Lutheran churches and theology from the 1840s to the 1870s.

Eastern Europe and Scandinavia

      In the 16th century, Lutheran ideas moved into Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary and Transylvania. Although they were well received by clergy and laity alike, the lack of support by governmental authorities prevented the formation of new churches. Eventually the Lutheran congregations in these lands succumbed to an increasingly dynamic and resurgent Catholicism.

      Traveling merchants and students introduced Lutheran notions to Scandinavia, which was precariously united under the Danish crown. A conflict between the Danish king Christian II and the Swedish nobility in the second decade of the 16th century led to the emergence of Gustav Eriksson Vasa (Gustav I Vasa), who secured Swedish independence and was eventually elected king of Sweden and Finland. From the outset, Gustav Vasa sought to diminish the political and financial power of the Catholic Church in Sweden, and he supported Lutheran preaching and publications. At his behest, the diet at Västerås in 1527 confiscated the property of the church, removed the immunity of the clergy from civil courts, and declared that only the pure Word of God should be preached. Subsequent legislative measures at first curtailed and then ended Catholicism in Sweden.

      In 1528 Gustav Vasa helped to secure the consecration of three Swedish bishops of Lutheran commitment, thus ensuring the formal apostolic succession of the Swedish episcopate (episcopacy). Among them was Laurentius Petri (Petri, Laurentius), who became the first Lutheran archbishop of Uppsala in 1531, and his brother Olaus Petri (Petri, Olaus), who had absorbed Luther's ideas while studying in Wittenberg. Both brought deep Protestant convictions—which Gustav Vasa lacked—to the task of popularizing Lutheranism in Sweden. Although Olaus Petri was often in conflict with the king, he and his reformer colleagues eventually carried the day. The Reformation in Finland was the work of Michael Agricola, another former Wittenberg student and later bishop of Abo, who translated the New Testament into Finnish.

 By the 17th century Lutheran Sweden had become a significant political power in Europe. Neutral in the Thirty Years' War when it broke out in 1618, King Gustav II Adolf, the “lion of the north,” entered the war on the side of the struggling German Protestant states in 1630. Gustav II Adolf's military victories, especially at Lützen, where he died on the battlefield, ensured that the Thirty Years' War would not bring ruin to Protestantism. The Peace of Westphalia (Westphalia, Peace of) (1648) gave Catholic, Reformed, and Lutheran Christians equal political and religious rights in the Empire. Subsequently, the course of Lutheranism in Scandinavia followed that of Lutheranism in German lands. Pietist sentiment, meanwhile, made an enormous impact on 19th-century Norway and Sweden.

North America

      When Lutheranism was established in small communities in present-day New York and Delaware in the 17th century, it was heir both to orthodox Lutheran confessionalism and to Pietism. The first large wave of Lutheran immigrants arrived in the 1740s, with settlements in New York, the Carolinas, and Pennsylvania. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, a German immigrant pastor, established Lutheran congregations and schools indefatigably, especially in Pennsylvania. In the 19th century, Scandinavian Lutherans settled on the prairies of the American Midwest, establishing synods that retained the forms of the church life of their native countries.

      As immigrants of different national and ethnic backgrounds encountered American society and each other, conflicts inevitably developed. Samuel S. Schmucker (Schmucker, S.S.), professor at the Lutheran seminary at Gettysburg, advocated adjusting to American ways, by such means as adopting English hymns and cooperating with the Reformed churches. In contrast, Charles Porterfield Krauth, a graduate of the seminary at Gettysburg, emphasized Lutheran distinctiveness. When a new wave of German immigrants arrived in the middle of the 19th century, they brought with them the conservative confessional Lutheran orientation dominant in Germany at the time. Establishing the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States in 1847, these immigrants clung not only to German language and culture but also to a conservative theology.

Global expansion

      As did all Protestant churches, Lutheran church bodies in Europe and North America joined the great 19th-century effort to evangelize the peoples of Africa and Asia. Missions had been undertaken in the 18th century but lacked the organization and enthusiasm that characterized the 19th-century endeavour. The new missionary commitment found expression in the establishment of numerous missionary societies, such as those of Berlin (1824), Denmark (1821), and Leipzig (1836). Lutheran missionaries concentrated on the East Indies, New Guinea, and South West Africa (now Namibia). Eventually, new Lutheran churches were formed in all parts of the world. By the middle of the 20th century, many of these churches showed a vitality and growth that seemed to be missing from the traditional Lutheran churches of Europe.

      As Lutheran evangelization proceeded in Africa and Asia, the Lutheran churches in Europe in the 19th century also engaged in what they called “inner mission,” the effort to tend to the physical and spiritual needs of the poor and downtrodden, especially those who had been marginalized by the Industrial Revolution. Johann Hinrich Wichern (1808–81) was the great organizer of this work in Germany. Under his aegis, the inner mission movement established local branches throughout Germany. Although the Lutheran churches thus ameliorated some of the excesses of the Industrial Revolution, they did not adequately address the vast demographic and social changes it had caused. The common people, therefore, became increasingly alienated from the church, which they perceived as being allied with the state and with the socially conservative establishment.

World War I to the present

European Lutheranism

 At the beginning of the 20th century, European Lutheranism remained divided between liberal and conservative wings. It was also marked by varying degrees of loyalty toward the 16th-century Lutheran confessions. The experience of World War I, which was widely understood by theologians as demonstrating the bankruptcy of optimistic theological liberalism, triggered both a conservative reaction and an interest in interconfessional cooperation. Most Lutheran theologians followed the general reorientation of Protestant theology away from liberalism and toward a synthesis between religion and culture, theology and philosophy, and faith and science. Known as “dialectic theology” in Europe and “ neoorthodoxy” in North America, this movement emphasized the “otherness” of God and the pivotal importance of the Word of God. The key theologian of neoorthodoxy was the Reformed theologian Karl Barth (Barth, Karl) of Germany and Switzerland. As Barth's theological premises, which related all divine revelation to Jesus Christ, became increasingly clear, however, Lutheran theologians such as Werner Elert and Paul Althaus developed an analogous conservative Lutheran perspective based on a traditional understanding of Martin Luther's thought.

      The end of World War I also brought the disestablishment of the Lutheran churches as state churches in Germany. The constitution of the Weimar Republic provided for the separation of church and state, though it granted Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches continued modest privileges. Unhappiness with the Weimar Republic, along with the political conservativeness of most Lutheran leaders and Luther's concept of the orders of creation (see below Church and state (Lutheranism)), contributed to the acceptance of Nazi notions (National Socialism) by many Lutherans when Adolf Hitler (Hitler, Adolf) became German chancellor in January 1933.

      The ensuing crisis in the Lutheran churches in Germany arose as a result of the efforts of one pro-Nazi church, the German Christians (Deutsche Christen), to obtain control of the Lutheran regional synods in Germany. The German Christians propounded a Christianity devoid of any Jewish influence (they rejected the Old Testament and declared Jesus to have been Aryan); they also advocated a single, centralized Protestant church in Germany, an objective that contradicted the long-standing tradition of autonomous regional synods but was subtly supported by the Nazi government.

      In 1934 Lutheran church leaders and theologians joined Reformed leaders to form the Pastors' Emergency League, out of which came the Barmen Declaration (see Barmen, Synod of). This statement affirmed traditional Protestant doctrine and led to the formation of the Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche), which comprised pastors and congregations loyal to traditional confessional standards. The remainder of the decade was marked by continued theological and political confrontation between the confessionally minded camp and the German Christians. This controversy, known as the German Church Struggle, led a minority of Lutheran church leaders, such as Martin Niemöller (Niemöller, Martin), a decorated World War I submarine captain, to question the legitimacy of the Nazi regime; some, including the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Bonhoeffer, Dietrich), even became active in the anti-Nazi opposition.

      By the middle of the 20th century, European Lutheranism continued to enjoy privileged status in several traditionally Lutheran countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Germany). Regular church attendance, however, was declining, and more and more people formally left the church. The number of church members declined slowly during the first three decades of the century, dwindled dramatically in Germany during Nazi rule, and continued to decline through the rest of the century.

North American Lutheranism

      Several important mergers of various American Lutheran churches took place in the 20th century. The first two occurred in 1917, when three Norwegian synods formed the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America (NLCA), and in 1918, when three German-language synods (synod) formed the United Lutheran Church in America (ULCA). In 1930 the Joint Synod of Ohio, the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Iowa, and the Buffalo Synod formed the American Lutheran Church (German). In 1960 the American Lutheran Church (German) merged with the United Evangelical Lutheran Church (Danish) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Norwegian) to form the American Lutheran Church (ALC). The Lutheran Free Church (Norwegian), which had initially dropped out of merger negotiations, joined the ALC in 1963. Two years after the formation of the ALC, in a parallel development, the ULCA joined with the Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church (Swedish), the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the American Evangelical Lutheran Church (Danish) to establish the Lutheran Church in America (LCA). The Missouri and Wisconsin synods chose not to engage in merger negotiations because of the more liberal stance of the other Lutheran bodies.

      In 1988 the ALC and the LCA—the former prominent in the Midwest, the latter on the east coast—together with the smaller Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, merged to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). This made the ELCA, with more than 5 million members, the largest Lutheran church body in North America. The 2.5-million-member Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod remained the second largest Lutheran church. The third major church of North American Lutheranism was the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, with more than 400,000 baptized members. The ELCA's constituency is chiefly found in the Northeast and the upper Midwest; other concentrations of Lutherans are found in states where Lutherans first settled: Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Canadian Lutheranism, about 300,000 strong, is divided into two bodies paralleling the ELCA and the Missouri Synod in the United States. The larger of the two, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC), had about 180,000 members in some 600 congregations by the early 21st century. In 1997 the ELCIC adopted an “evangelical declaration” as “a guide for its future mission.” Canadian Lutheranism is strongest in Ontario and the Western provinces.

Teachings

      The question “What is Lutheran theology?” is not easily answered. Martin Luther himself was not a systematic thinker, and his colleague Philip Melanchthon (Melanchthon, Philipp) became for many his authentic interpreter, raising at once the charge that Melanchthon had distorted Luther's thought. The doctrinal controversies in 16th-century Lutheranism are indicative of the difficulty of defining precisely what it means to be “Lutheran.” Nonetheless, Luther's own thought has always been the guiding force in the delineation of Lutheran theology. The two major Lutheran confessional statements of the 16th century, the Augsburg Confession of 1530 and the Formula of Concord of 1576, have traditionally been thought to explicate Luther's teachings.

      Since the introduction of Lutheranism in European countries was not centrally directed, the emergence of Lutheran theology took place variously. Thus, not all Lutheran churches formally accepted the Formula of Concord. Authority in Lutheranism is understood as fidelity to the confessional documents that constitute authentic exposition of biblical teaching. Lutheranism has no formal teaching office comparable to that of the Roman Catholic Church.

Scripture and tradition

 Foremost among Lutheran teachings is the insistence, shared with all Protestant traditions, that the Bible is the sole source of religious authority. Lutherans subscribe to the three ancient ecumenical Christian creeds together with the 16th-century Lutheran confessional statements. All Lutheran churches affirm the Augsburg Confession; some, notably those in Germany and the United States, additionally affirm the confessional writings found in the Book of Concord. The Formula of Concord designated the Bible as the “sole and most certain rule” for judging Christian teachings. This position was in marked contrast to the Catholic affirmation of both Scripture and tradition. Luther never accepted the Catholic insistence that church tradition was merely making explicit what was already found implicitly in Scripture.

      The new centrality of the Bible had dramatic consequences. Luther understood the need for a Bible in the German vernacular, for only if the Bible was accessible could its teachings be appreciated. Luther's example of making available a vernacular Bible was followed by reformers throughout Europe, such as William Tyndale (Tyndale, William) in England. Catholic theologians promptly recognized the powerful weapon Luther had created and undertook to provide vernacular translations of their own. None of them, however, possessed the literary cogency of Luther's translation or of the translation produced early in the 17th century under the direction of King James I of England.

justification

      Following St. Augustine, Western Christian theologians until the 16th century conceived the redemptive act of divine grace as taking place within the context of willful human collaboration. This centuries-old consensus of divine and human cooperation was sharply rejected by Martin Luther, who maintained that the apostle Paul (Paul, the Apostle, Saint) denied human participation in the process of salvation. Accordingly, the Augsburg Confession notes, people “are justified freely (free will) on account of Christ through faith when they believe that they are received into grace and their sins forgiven on account of Christ, who by his death made satisfaction for our sins”; God “imputes [this faith] as righteousness in his sight.” This affirmation, on which “the church stands and falls,” has received a variety of interpretations since the 16th century. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Lutheran theologians sought to express the teaching in new ways, always insisting that it represented an authentic interpretation of the apostle Paul. Thus, Paul Tillich (Tillich, Paul) interpreted justification through faith as the condition of being accepted despite one's unacceptability.

Church, sacraments, and ministry

      In a famous definition, the Augsburg Confession speaks of the church as the “congregation of saints [believers] in which the gospel is purely taught and the sacraments rightly administered.” Luther regarded the true church as essentially invisible, which means that its authority is found not in a formal structure but in fidelity to Scripture. It is in no way identical to the visible (empirical) church organization. Although the visible church is prone to be as weak and sinful as any other human institution, God works in it insofar as it is faithful to his word. During the periods of orthodoxy and Pietism, the notion of the invisibility of the church was understood to mean that God alone knows who among the assembled Christians are true believers. In the 19th century the relationship of the visible and invisible church received much attention in Lutheran theology, partly under the influence of a dynamic Catholicism, with some Lutheran theologians bestowing great importance on the visible church and the sacraments and ritual. These tendencies were exemplified in the thought of Wilhelm Löhe. A more democratic understanding of the church was promulgated in North America by the Missouri Synod theologian C.F.W. Walther (Walther, Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm). The most influential conception of the visible church was the historical-evolutionary doctrine of the German theologian Albrecht Ritschl (Ritschl, Albrecht), who saw the institutional church as the actualization of the Kingdom of God progressively realized in history.

      The Lutheran confessions recognize two sacraments (sacrament), Baptism and the Lord's Supper (Eucharist). According to Lutheran teaching, the sacraments are acts instituted by Christ and connected with a divine promise. Faith is necessary for a salvatory reception of the sacrament. Thus, Lutherans reject the notion that the sacraments are effective ex opere operato (operative apart from faith) or that they are only symbolic actions.

      The Lutheran affirmation that in the Lord's Supper Christ is bodily present “in, with, and under bread and wine” proved to be the great divisive issue of the 16th century. The Lutheran teaching of the “real” presence left open the question of whether Christ is present in the bread and wine because he is present everywhere, ubiquitously, as some Lutherans contend, or because he promises to be specifically present in the elements. In either case, Lutherans reject the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, which asserts that the bread and wine are transformed into the literal body and blood of Christ, as an inappropriate use of philosophical categories to express biblical truth. Most Lutheran churches allow participation in the Lord's Supper to all baptized Christians who affirm the real presence of Christ in the elements of the bread and wine. Late 20th-century Lutheran theology, notably that of Wolfhart Pannenberg, sought to steer away from the elements of the bread and wine and to emphasize the notion of the Lord's Supper as a meal with the resurrected Jesus.

      The ministry is understood as preaching and the administration of the sacraments. Unlike the ministry (clergy) of the Roman Catholic Church, however, it does not entail a special status for the minister. Lutherans affirm the priesthood of all believers, according to which every baptized Christian may carry out, when properly called, the functions of ministry. While preaching and administration of the sacraments ordinarily is done by “rightly called” (ordained) ministers, Lutherans allow laypersons to carry out these functions when properly authorized.

      Lutheran churches have not insisted on uniformity of the liturgy or even on uniformity of church structure. There have been Lutheran bishops (episcopacy) in Scandinavia ever since the 16th century, whereas in Germany and North America other designations for such supervisory positions have been used. The title of bishop is accepted in the ELCA but not in the Missouri or the Wisconsin synod.

      In 1970 both the LCA and the ALC approved the ordination of women, a practice carried over into the ELCA. The ordination of women is accepted by all Lutheran churches in Europe and North America except the Missouri and Wisconsin synods (synod). Women were first ordained in Denmark in 1948. In Norway the parliament decreed the ordination of women in 1938, an act fiercely resisted by the overwhelming majority of bishops (the first woman was not ordained, however, until 1961). Most German Lutheran churches endorsed the change soon after the Norwegian decree.

church and state

      Lutheran theology has understood the relationship between church and state in terms of God's two ways of ruling in the world (two “realms” or “kingdoms”). The distinction is similar to that made by St. Augustine between the City of God and the City of the World. Luther argued that God governs the world in two ways: through orders of creation, such as government and marriage, which stem from God's desire that all people everywhere live in peace and harmony, and through his Word and Gospel, though these apply only to Christians. These two domains of power and grace are interdependent because the Gospel itself cannot preserve societal peace and justice, and civil government cannot effect salvation. Although this conception allowed North American Lutherans to accept the separation of church and state in the United States and elsewhere, it also meant that Lutheranism, unlike Calvinism, made little effort to “Christianize” the social and political order. Historically, this entailed the autonomy of the secular realm, even a certain subservience of the religious to the secular. Quite consistently, when the German peasants staged an uprising in 1524–25, Luther forcefully argued that social and political demands cannot be justified by the Gospel.

      Lutheran theology stressed obedience (civil disobedience) to government as a Christian duty and did not, as did Reformed theology, produce a fully developed doctrine of resistance against tyrannical governments. Luther advocated resistance only if the preaching of the Gospel was in jeopardy. This principle was first put to the test in the middle of the 16th century, when the Lutheran city of Magdeburg successfully resisted Emperor Charles V's reintroduction of Catholicism.

      Nazi (National Socialism) totalitarianism caught German Lutheranism unprepared to offer a clear rationale for opposing tyranny. The weakness of Lutheran theology on this point became evident during the period of Nazi rule. Thus, when the government decreed racially exclusionary laws, which had implications for the churches, most Lutheran theologians conceded that it had the authority to do so under the divine order. The impact of Nazi Germany and other totalitarian regimes led some Lutheran church leaders, such as the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Bonhoeffer, Dietrich) and the Norwegian bishop Eivind Berggrav, to reconsider the traditional Lutheran view.

ethics

      Lutheran ethical teaching has been described as centring on faith active in love, which means that the believer makes moral choices in freedom (free will), without preset rules and laws. Lutheranism has thus eschewed the notion of a specifically Christian ethos but has insisted that the place of ethical endeavour is the common ordinary life, in which Christian believers are called upon to serve their neighbours. This ethical teaching, therefore, emphasized the sacredness of all human activities and maintained that an ethical life should be pursued apart from legalistic rules in what Martin Luther called “Christian freedom.”

worship and organization

Liturgy and music

 Although Luther retained the basic structure of the mass and liturgy, he introduced significant changes in the worship service, primarily of a theological nature, in writings such as the German Mass of 1526. The emphasis in the traditional mass on the reiteration of the sacrifice of Jesus was replaced by an emphasis on thanksgiving. Luther saw the sacrament of the altar (the Lord's Supper) not as an autonomous form of the Gospel but as a proclamation of it. Therefore, he retained only the recitation of the words of institution (“In the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus…”) from the prayer of thanksgiving. Because of the importance placed on the Bible, the sermon occupied the pivotal place in worship.

      In the early 21st century, most Lutheran churches followed essentially the same order of worship. It consisted of two main parts, Word (Liturgy of the Word) and the Lord's Supper, both understood as the proclamation of the Gospel. The Liturgical Movement in the 20th century, which sought to restore the active role of the laity in church services, affected Lutheranism by deemphasizing the didactic sermon and increasing the frequency of the celebration of the Lord's Supper. Other liturgical revisions (in Sweden in 1942, in Germany in 1954, and in North America in 1941, 1958, and 1978) increased the uniformity of Lutheran worship beyond national boundaries. Although traditionally only confirmed members received the Communion elements, in 1970 both the Lutheran Church in America and the American Lutheran Church endorsed participation in the Lord's Supper for baptized younger children, even for those who have not been confirmed. In the decades following the reform, a tendency emerged in the ELCA to allow even young children to receive the bread and wine.

      Other rites (ritual) of the Lutheran churches are baptism, confirmation, ordination, marriage, and burial. Lutherans practice infant baptism. In confirmation (which usually occurs between the ages of 10 and 15), the individual publicly professes the faith received in baptism.

      Lutheranism made an important contribution to Protestant hymnody (hymn), which not only conveyed the evangelical teaching but also allowed for increased popular participation in worship. Many of the well-known Lutheran hymns come from the 16th and 17th centuries, notably "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," by Martin Luther, "O Sacred Head Now Wounded," by Paul Gerhardt, and "Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying," by Philipp Nicolai. American Lutherans have been heir to this heritage, but since the 19th century they have also embraced the hymnody of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. Hymns from the 20th century, such as those by the German composer Hugo Distler, have been adopted somewhat more sparingly, though in the early 21st century, as evidenced by the new ELCA hymnal and worship book, Evangelical Worship, a persistent effort was under way to make Lutheran hymnody contemporary and multicultural.

Organization

      The polity of the Lutheran churches differs between Scandinavia and Germany, with North American Lutheranism and Lutheran churches on other continents reflecting both traditions. The Church of Sweden, which ended its status as a state church in 2000, has maintained the episcopal office (and with it episcopal succession), and its local congregations have considerable freedom to appoint their own pastors. The Danish Church first rejected then reintroduced the episcopal office. In Norway the ties between church and state had traditionally been closer than in the other Scandinavian countries, with the parliament exercising a major voice in church affairs, but in 2006 the General Synod of the Church of Norway agreed that church and state should separate in Norway. Since 1869 the Finnish Church has been independent of state control but is supported by public funds.

      Until the end of World War I, the administrative affairs of the Lutheran churches in Germany were handled by government offices, with the ruler exercising important power as summepiskopus, or presiding bishop, a system of church governance that emerged from the Reformation. With the establishment of the Weimar Republic, the regional Lutheran churches (Landeskirchen) adopted new constitutions that in some provinces placed the congregations under a superintendent and a general synod while in others they were placed under a bishop. These Landeskirchen consisted of 15 Lutheran and 12 Prussian Union synods along with one Reformed synod. These churches were united in 1922 in the German Evangelical Church Federation (Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchenbund). For Lutherans the concurrent existence of both Lutheran churches and churches of the Prussian Union in the federation was highly problematic, since it posed the question of the federation's theological viability. Confessional Lutherans insisted on the creation of an Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (ELKD; Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands).

      After the end of World War II, the Lutheran, Prussian Union, and Reformed Landeskirchen organized the Evangelical Church in Germany (Evangelical Church in Germany, The) (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, EKD), under the leadership of bishops Theophil Wurm and Hans Meiser and Pastor Martin Niemöller. The member churches of the EKD adopted the Declaration of Barmen, with its expression of the communalities of the Lutheran and Reformed traditions, as a foundational statement. To safeguard Lutheran confessional concerns, the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany (Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands, VELKD) was established in 1948 as the federation of Lutheran regional churches. By the late 20th and early 21st century, efforts had begun to integrate the VELKD more fully into the EKD.

      Despite the division of Germany into four Allied zones of occupation at the end of World War II, the EKD encompassed both East and West Germany. The creation of the East German and West German states in 1949 initially did not mean the end of the EKD. In 1968 pressure from the East German government forced the East German churches to leave the EKD and establish their own East German Evangelical federation (United Evangelical Lutheran Church in the German Democratic Republic).

      East German Lutherans, living in a society that was hostile to Christianity and intermittently persecuted Christians, sought to avoid confrontations with the state, even when it decreed an all but mandatory “youth consecration,” which was to replace confirmation. In contrast to communist Poland, where the Catholic Church did not shy from outright confrontation with the regime, East German Lutherans were determined to cooperate with the state whenever possible while at the same time affirming the need for the church to be the church. This strategy was expressed in the slogan “church within socialism.” By the late 1970s a rapprochement with the communist regime had begun to take place. Nonetheless, membership in the Lutheran churches declined significantly in the roughly half-century of communist rule in East Germany. When the German Democratic Republic began to experience a series of human rights demonstrations in 1988 and 1989, Lutheran pastors and churches were in the forefront of the demand for greater civil liberties, thus playing an important role in the eventual disintegration of the East German state. The unification of Germany in 1990, however, had little impact on church membership, as the downward trend begun during communist rule continued. In the early 21st century less than 20 percent of the population of the former German Democratic Republic belonged to a Christian church.

      In the United States the polity of the Lutheran churches is congregational, but in a complex form in which congregations yield some authority to synods on regional and national levels. Elected heads are called presidents in some Lutheran bodies, such as the Lutheran Church– Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Synod Lutheran Church, while the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America uses the term bishop for its 65 synodical leaders. It also has a “presiding bishop,” elected to a six-year term, who guides churchwide activities and initiatives. An assembly of all member churches meets every two years and is the legislative body of the ELCA. Besides these larger Lutheran church bodies, there are a number of smaller Lutheran churches both in Europe (e.g., the Evangelical Lutheran [Old Lutheran] Church in Germany) and in the United States (e.g., the Church of the Lutheran Confession or the Apostolic Lutheran Church), which have greater congregational autonomy.

      A global association of Lutheran churches was first established in the Lutheran World Conventions, which met at Eisenach in 1923 and in Copenhagen in 1929. In 1947 it assumed permanent form as the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), an umbrella organization of the various national Lutheran churches. The LWF has no authority to speak for worldwide Lutheranism and mainly serves as a forum for intra-Lutheran discussion and ecumenical consultation with other churches. The LWF took the lead in ecumenical conversations with the Roman Catholic Church, which led to a Joint Declaration on justification, signed by representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and the LWF in 1999. The document declared that no substantive theological differences exist between the positions of the two churches on the topic. However, among Lutheran theologians, especially in Germany, the “Joint Declaration” evoked intense criticism for being unfaithful to the Lutheran tradition, even as the Roman curia also recorded reservations about the document, which nonetheless is understood as a milestone in Lutheran-Catholic relations.

      The most exciting development of the 20th century was the dramatic expansion of Lutheranism beyond its European (and North American) homelands. Of the 65 million Lutherans who belonged to the LWF at the beginning of the 21st century, there were roughly 39 million in Europe, 5 million in North America, and 20 million in Asia and Africa. This new geographical diversity has created the same challenge for Lutheranism as it has for other global but originally European churches: that of maintaining traditional European and North American leadership in thought and practice as more and more adherents are found in other parts of the world. In the early 21st century there were about 30 Lutheran church bodies, with some 15 million members altogether, in Africa and more than 40 churches, with some 8 million members, in Asia.

Hans J. Hillerbrand

Additional Reading

General surveys and bibliographic tools include Günther Gassmann, Historical Dictionary of Lutheranism (2001); Donald L. Huber, World Lutheranism: A Select Bibliography for English Readers (2000); and Julius Bodensieck (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the Lutheran Church, 3 vol. (1965), a useful reference work that does not always hide its confessional bias. The older work by Conrad Bergendoff, The Church of the Lutheran Reformation: A Historical Survey of Lutheranism (1967), a broad survey of Lutheranism, is useful for information on Lutheranism in the Scandinavian countries. L. DeAne Lagerquist, The Lutherans (1999), is a thorough study of Lutheranism from the Reformation to the present day.Good treatments of Lutheran history are Eric W. Gritsch, A History of Lutheranism (2002); and Eric Lund (ed.), Documents from the History of Lutheranism, 1517–1750 (2002). Lutheranism in the United States is covered in E. Clifford Nelson, The Rise of World Lutheranism: An American Perspective (1982), a helpful discussion of the cooperation between 20th-century Lutheran churches. The same author also edited a survey of North American Lutheranism, The Lutherans in North America, rev. ed. (1980).Works on Lutheran theology include Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (eds.), The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, trans. from the German by Charles Arand (2000). Edmund Schlink, Theology of the Lutheran Confessions, trans. from the German by Paul F. Koehneke and Herbert J.A. Bouman (1961, reissued 1975; originally published in German, 1940), is a still-useful neoorthodox approach to Lutheran theology. Wilhelm Maurer, Historical Commentary on the Augsburg Confession, trans. by H. George Anderson (1986; originally published in German, 2 vol., 1976–78), offers a thorough study of the basic Lutheran confessional document; while Karl Ferdinand Müller and Walter Blankenburg, (eds.), Leiturgia: Handbuch des evangelischen Gottesdienstes, 5 vol. (1954–70), discusses the Lutheran service both historically and theologically. Concise but useful is Friedrich Mildenberger, Theology of the Lutheran Confessions, ed. by Robert C. Schultz, trans. from the German by Erwin L. Lueker (1986). Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (1966, reissued 1996); and Werner Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism (1962, reprinted 2003; originally published in German, 1931), are still valuable.Hans J. Hillerbrand

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