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| To achieve unity, Charles required a resolution of the religious controversies in his realm. Luther, despised by emperor and empire, was left behind at the Coburg fortress while his elector and colleagues from Wittenberg attended the diet. The Augsburg Confession, a summary of the Lutheran faith authored by Philipp Melanchthon but influenced by Luther,<ref name = "Herzog74" /> was read aloud to the emperor. It was the first specifically Lutheran confession included in the ''Book of Concord'' of 1580, and is regarded as the principal confession of the Lutheran Church. | | To achieve unity, Charles required a resolution of the religious controversies in his realm. Luther, despised by emperor and empire, was left behind at the Coburg fortress while his elector and colleagues from Wittenberg attended the diet. The Augsburg Confession, a summary of the Lutheran faith authored by Philipp Melanchthon but influenced by Luther,<ref name = "Herzog74" /> was read aloud to the emperor. It was the first specifically Lutheran confession included in the ''Book of Concord'' of 1580, and is regarded as the principal confession of the Lutheran Church. |
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| =='''Luther and Antisemitism'''==
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| In his 60,000-word pamphlet<ref name = "Noble">Graham Noble, "Martin Luther and German anti-Semitism," <cite>History Review</cite> (2002) No. 42:1–2.</ref> <cite>On the Jews and Their Lies </cite>, published in 1543 as ''Von den Juden und ihren Lügen'', Luther spoke of the need to set synagogues on fire, destroy Jewish prayerbooks, forbid rabbis from preaching, seize Jews' property and money, smash and destroy their homes, and ensure that these "poisonous envenomed worms" be forced into labor or expelled "for all time."<ref>Luther, "On the Jews and Their Lies," <cite>LW</cite> 47:268–271.</ref> Four centuries later, a first edition of the pamphlet was given to Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi newspaper ''Der Stürmer'', by the city of Nuremberg in honor of his birthday in 1937. The newspaper later described the pamphlet as the most radically anti-Semitic tract ever published, a view that is shared by contemporary scholars.<ref>Richard Steigmann-Gall, <cite>The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945</cite> (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 33. "On the Jews and Their Lies is one of the most notorious antisemitic tracts ever written, especially for someone of Luther's esteem."; James Carroll, <cite>Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews — A History</cite> (N.P.: Mariner Books, 2002, 367; Also see Leon Poliakov, <cite>History of Anti-Semitism: From the Time of Christ to the Court Jews</cite> (N.P.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 216.</ref> The German philosopher Karl Jaspers said of it: "There you already have the whole Nazi program."<ref>cited in Franklin Sherman, <cite>Faith Transformed: Christian Encounters with Jews and Judaism</cite>, ed. John C Merkle (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003), pp 63–64.</ref>
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| British historian Paul Johnson writes that, even before <cite>On the Jews and their Lies</cite>, Luther "got the Jews expelled from Saxony in 1537, and in the 1540s he drove them from many German towns; he tried unsuccessfully to get the elector to expel them from Brandenburg in 1543. His followers continued to agitate against the Jews there: they sacked the Berlin synagogue in 1572 and the following year finally got their way, the Jews being banned from the entire country."<ref>Paul Johnson, <cite>A History of the Jews</cite> (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1987), 242.</ref>
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| There is little doubt among historians that Luther's rhetoric may have contributed to,<ref name=Berger>Ronald Berger, <cite>Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach</cite>(New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 2002), 28; Paul Lawrence Rose, <cite>Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany from Kant to Wagner</cite> (Princeton University Press, 1990), quoted in Berger, 28).</ref><ref>William Shirer, <cite>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich</cite>, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960).</ref> or at the very least foreshadowed,<ref name=Berenbaum>Berenbaum, Michael. <cite>"The World Must Know": A History of the Holocaust as told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum</cite> (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993, 2000), 8–9.</ref> the actions of the Nazis when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, although the extent to which it played a direct role in the events leading to the Holocaust is debated. At the heart of the debate is whether it is anachronistic to view Luther's sentiments as an example, or early precursor, of racial anti-Semitism — hatred toward the Jews as a people — rather than anti-Judaism — contempt for Judaism as a religion.
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| In <cite>The World Must Know</cite>, the official publication of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the museum's project director Michael Berenbaum writes that Luther's reliance on the Bible as the sole source of Christian authority fed his fury toward Jews over their rejection of Jesus as the messiah.<ref name=Berenbaum /> For Luther, salvation depended on the belief that Jesus was the son of God, a belief that Jews do not share. Earlier in his life, Luther had argued that the Jews had been prevented from converting to Christianity by the proclamation of what he believed to be an impure gospel by Christians, and he believed they would respond favorably to the evangelical message if it were presented to them gently. He expressed concern for the poor conditions in which they were forced to live, and insisted that anyone denying that Jesus was born a Jew was committing heresy. Graham Noble writes that he wanted to save Jews, in his own terms, not exterminate them, but beneath his apparent reasonableness toward them, there was a "biting intolerance," which produced "ever more furious demands for their conversion to his own brand of Christianity."<ref name = "Noble" /> When they failed to convert, he turned on them. Berenbaum quotes Luther’s apparent support for the idea that Christians may be justified in killing Jews: “We are at fault in not slaying them. Rather we allow them to live freely in our midst despite their murder, cursing, blaspheming, lying and defaming.”<ref>“Jerusalem was destroyed over 1400 years ago, and at that time we Christians were harassed and persecuted by the Jews throughout the world… So we are even at fault for not avenging all this innocent blood of our Lord and of the Christians which they shed for 300 years after the destruction of Jerusalem… We are at fault in not slaying them.” Martin Luther. <cite>On the Jews and Their Lies</cite>, cited in Robert Michael, “Luther, Luther Scholars, and the Jews,” <cite>Encounter</cite> 46 (Autumn 1985) No. 4:343–344.</ref>
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| Scholars argue that the violence of Luther's views lent a new element to the standard Christian suspicion of Judaism. Sociologist Ronald Berger has written that Luther is credited with “Germanizing the Christian critique of Judaism and establishing anti-Semitism as a key element of German culture and national identity.”<ref>Berger, 28.</cite></ref> Historian Paul Rose concurs, arguing that Luther caused a “hysterical and demonizing mentality” about Jews to enter German thought and discourse, a mentality that might otherwise have been absent.<ref>Rose as quoted in Berger, 28.</ref> The coarseness of the language made his material particularly attractive to Nazism.<ref>Shirer, 236.</ref> In <cite>Mein Kampf</cite>, Hitler named Luther as one of the great historical “protagonists” he most admired.<ref name = "Noble" /> <cite>On the Jews and Their Lies</cite> was publicly exhibited in a glass case at the Nuremberg rallies and was quoted in a 54-page explanation of the Aryan Law by Dr. E.H. Schulz and Dr. R. Frercks.<ref name = "Noble" /> The Nazi Bishop Martin Sasse of Thuringia hailed Luther as “the greatest anti-Semite of his time,” and said that it was a happy coincidence that Kristallnacht fell on Luther’s birthday.<ref>In <cite>The 12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi German 1933–1945</cite>, historian Richard Grunberger observed: “The thoughts of such cultural heroes as [Martin] Luther and [Richard] Wagner provided ideal underpinning for the official anti-Semitic ideology [of the Nazis].” Richard Grunberger, <cite>The 12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi German 1933–1945</cite> (NP: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 465, and William Shirer, in <cite>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich</cite>, wrote: “In his utterances about the Jews, Luther employed a coarseness and brutality of language unequaled in German history until the Nazi time.” William Shirer, <cite>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich</cite> (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), 236.</ref>
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| A minority viewpoint disagrees with the attempt to link Luther's work causally to the rise of Nazi anti-Semitism, arguing that it is too simplistic an analysis.<ref>Roland Bainton, 297.</ref><ref>Russell Briese, “Martin Luther and the Jews,” <cite>Lutheran Forum</cite> (Summer 2000):32.</ref><ref name = "Brecht351">Brecht, <cite>Martin Luther</cite>, 3:351.</ref><ref>Mark U. Edwards, Jr. <cite>Luther’s Last Battles: Politics and Polemics 1531–46</cite> (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 139.</ref><ref>Eric Gritsch, “Was Luther Anti-Semitic?” 12 <cite>Christian History</cite> No. 3:39.</ref><ref>James M. Kittelson, <cite>Luther the Reformer</cite>, 274.</ref><ref>Richard Marius, <cite>Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death</cite> (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 377.</ref><ref>Heiko Oberman, <cite>The Roots of Anti-Semitism: In the Age of Renaissance and Reformation</cite> (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 102.</ref><ref>Gordon Rupp, <cite>Martin Luther</cite>, 75.</ref><ref name=”SiemonNetto2”>Siemon-Netto, "Luther and the Jews," <cite>Lutheran Witness</cite> 123 (2004) No. 4:19, 21.</ref> Writing in <cite>Lutheran Quarterly</cite>, Johannes Wallmann, professor of church history at the Humboldt University of Berlin, writes that Luther's writings against the Jews were largely ignored in the 18th and 19th centuries,<ref>Johannes Wallmann, "The Reception of Luther's Writings on the Jews from the Reformation to the End of the 19th Century", <cite>Lutheran Quarterly</cite>, n.s. 1 (Spring 1987) 1:72–97.</ref> and journalist and lay Lutheran theologian Uwe Siemon-Netto argues that it was because the Nazis were already anti-Semites that they revived Luther's work on the Jews. For Siemon-Netto, Nazism had its origins, not in Luther, but in 19th century Romanticism and 20th century Darwinism:<ref>Siemon-Netto, <cite>The Fabricated Luther</cite>, 17–20.</ref> "To suggest that Lutheran theology turned Germans into Nazis is a false charge that simply cannot be substantiated by the facts."<ref>Siemon-Netto, <cite>Lutheran Witness</cite>, 19.</ref> Luther and Reformation historian Martin Brecht concurs that there is a "world of difference" between Luther's belief in salvation, which depended on a faith in Jesus being the messiah, and a racial ideology of anti-Semitism,"<ref name = "Brecht351" /> and Graham Noble agrees that, although Luther offered a "historical and intellectual justification for the Holocaust," he had "no notion of the pseudo-scientific eugenics which underpinned Nazi anti-Semitism."<ref name ="Noble" /> Reformation historian Richard Marius writes that, far from hating the Jewish people, and despite the ferocity of his attacks, Luther "never truly renounced the notion of coexistence between Jews and Christians."<ref>Richard Marius, <cite>Martin Luther</cite>, 380.</ref>
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| Lutheran church bodies have distanced themselves from this aspect of Luther's work. In 1983, the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, denounced Luther's "hostile attitude" toward the Jews.<ref name= declaration1>[http://www.lcms.org/pages/internal.asp?NavID=2166 Q&A: Luther's Anti-Semitism] at Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod. Retrieved December 15, 2005.</ref> In 1994, the Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America announced: "As did many of Luther's own companions in the sixteenth century, we reject this violent invective, and yet more do we express our deep and abiding sorrow over its tragic effects on subsequent generations."<ref name= declaration2>''[http://www.elca.org/ecumenical/interfaithrelations/jewish/declaration.html Declaration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to the Jewish Community]'', April 18, 1994, retrieved December 15, 2005.</ref>
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