This is Keith, and this is Ben, and this is Main Street Lutherans. Now, our main topic today is about Martin Luther and the less savory parts of his writings. We're going to get into that with Professor Mark Tranvik from Luther Seminary, and we've got quite a conversation about that. Definitely take a listen to this today. It's really, really good. But we're going to start out by talking about judgment. Not talking about the ultimate judgment, because that is up to God, but more of how do we judge people, particularly historic figures. And we'll get into obviously historic people in our churches, particularly Lutheran Church. As I think about the Lutheran view of judgment, I start with Luther's statement that he is not a theologian who. And I paraphrase guesses. Right. That. That what we know about God comes from Scripture, comes from Jesus. And if we don't know that from. If we don't know that from. If we don't know something from that directly, we are guessing. And Luther preferred people who didn't guess.

Right, Right.

And so I would say that our assessment of judgment is mostly a guess as far as ultimate judgment, but we still have to judge people as far as how we rely on people or depend on them or find the truth from them. Right. So we still have to make judgments on people, and there are lots of reasons for doing that.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, we see this. You know, here we are recording this episode in the. The kind of mid to late winter of 2026, and without going into a lot of detail, you know, we could be talking about government activity in the United States of America, you know, with, with positions towards immigration and immigrants and, and, you know, we, we see this play out even in our daily news, you know, people making judgments on the actions of this individual or that one, you know, and maybe this person has committed a crime or maybe they've. Some people assume that they have committed a crime and there's all of this discussion about it, except that none of these people are lawyers. They're not doing this in a court setting. They're doing this on news media.

Right.

And.

We get outraged, we get excited. And it just occurred to me the.

Day about, you know, we don't even.

Know what's actually, you know, what this person has actually done. We're all just kind of drawing our own conclusions. It's strange.

Yeah, yeah. When we talk about, like, people like Martin Luther, though, we've got like a fixed thing, you know, it's not in motion.

Right.

He's been dead for a long Time we have his writings. That's mostly how we know about him and writings other people had of him. And so when we talk about that here with Dr. Tranvik, it will be in that case. Now I do something like that in my day job at the Henry Ford at Greenfield Village in Dearborn. We talk about Henry Ford, we talk about Luther Burbank, we talk about some other people that people think are villains in some form. Henry Ford, well known for his anti Semitic writings in the newspaper. He bought the Dearborn Independent and that some of that was. Was picked up in Germany and used as, as fodder for their. Their anti Jewish scheme.

Their.

Their anti Semitic scheme. Luther Burbank may be a little less known. He is the developer of the Burbank, the russet potato, which made the potato more drought resistant, more disease resistant and made it more productive. He did that for lots and lots of plants. He was so successful with that he thought that he could do that for people too, or at least that his methods could be used for people. And so he looked at that as a way of. Of improving the human race, which, as you can see, would have a tie to the Nazis as well, but also to eugenics, which gets used in racism in the United States tremendously. And the idea of, you know, checking someone's head and their. Their skull for things. And so, so we have this whole, this whole thing. How do we evaluate these people? Henry Ford, as we say, put the world on wheels, made it possible for a middle class to develop both by employing people at a higher. Giving them transportation at a. At a fairly inexpensive cost. Luther Burbank saved a lot of lives by, by making more resistant plants that could grow and were more nutritionally available to people. And they went to the global south and saved a lot of lives that way. However, these people had things that were very, very bad that were part of that. And yet we have the things, both the good and the bad. As we were looking into this, one of the things that came up. Keith, you said there was a hymn writer that was talked about here recently.

Yeah, yeah. Without going into a lot of details, I was kind of sharing an anecdote that a few years ago, it was around the time that the MeToo movement was still really kind of, kind of new and really, really happening in force, in real time in the news. And there was a hymn writer who is still living, who has works in a lot of kind of progressive Catholic or mainland Protestant hymnals. And so this person had been accused by, I think at first one and then multiple Women of sexual abuse. And so there was sort of a growing consensus amongst worship planners and worship resource publishers, including Oxford Fortress, who were saying things like, you know, that we should refrain from using this individual's work. And I was, I was having a conversation about this with the organist at St. Matthew at the time who's no longer with us. And he said, well, you know, if we did that, if we applied that towards every musician has ever written anything, we'd probably lose most of the great music in the church's history because people are people and none of us are flawless or perfect or blameless in any way. And I get that perspective. But Ben, you then shared the idea that, well, okay, that's valid, but there's also the financial reality of this, that now the church is supporting this person or their family is benefiting from, you know, the actual.

There's monetary benefits.

Yeah, right, yeah. The royalties from the use of this resource that, you know, not only are we using this person's music, but they're also financially benefiting from it. And that may not be a choice that a church or a church affiliated organization like a publishing house would feel comfortable doing. You know, the, the point about the. The hymn Amazing Grace might be one of the best known hymns across Christian traditions in the last hundred and fifty years was, was written by John Newton, who was an Anglican minister, but prior to that he had been involved in the slave trade as a ship captain for a number of years. He even was a slave himself for a little while. And after he was released, he went right back into the same business he had been in. But then, you know, once he did get out of the enslavement culture and became, became a minister, it was like 30 years that he never spoke about his time in that. Not because he was trying to necessarily hide or deny it, but just because he was so ashamed of it that he couldn't bring himself to speak about it. And he was so conflicted about the state of his own soul. And I think that's what brought him to write Amazing Grace, Amazing grace, How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. You know, he was speaking about his own situation in that, in that music. And, you know, we use Amazing Grace all over the place, but yeah, it's in public domain, so there's no, there's no financial benefit to anyone any longer by the use of that hymn.

So, yeah, and in this case, the center for Congregational Singing, which is a division of the Hymn Society, they've got a blog that talks or a blog Entry that talks about this a little bit. It's linked to. In. We'll have a link to the ELCA statement on this, and then there's a link to this from there. So I'll let you guys follow that through. But they state that the difference between Amazing Grace and Hymns of Somebody who's more. More recent is that the abuse victims are living and are asking for action. Right. That's an important fe. An important part of this. And the second is that the artist or their estate still benefit financially and. And socially, I would say, or socially from the use of the music. Right. It elevates them in some form. So. So there's a direct benefit to. To people who are connected to the abuser. And so we can look at maybe that way. I don't know how we do that with figures that are not writers or media figures. If they're people that have created these ideas that have been out there. How do we stop using somebody's theology, say.

Right. Yeah. What would we do if it turns out that Einstein was accused of, you know, horrible, horrible things by people? We can't not use his science. Yeah, right.

And one of the things that we'll get into in our talk with Dr. Tranvik is a thing called presentism, and that is applying our current moral standards, our ethics to people in history. And one of the things we'll talk about is that certain things are in the air. Certain things are things, say when we talk about Henry Ford at the museum. Henry Ford is not alone in his antisemitism. Some of his most influential people are much, much more anti Semitic. It does not excuse him, however. But when we look at it, he's not alone. And it's part of the culture of that time. And we'll see that with Luther as well. But. But in the case of anti Semitism and what. What Henry Ford does, it's not an excuse, but it is part of the context that we have to understand as we process a person like that. Right, but that's presentism.

If.

If they are currently in the present, that is not something that we have to worry about because they are here at this time. But so. So some of the questions that we ask with historic. Historic people are things like, did the contemporaries of. Did their contemporaries voice alternative opinions? And would that person have been exposed to those things? When we talk about Luther, Burbank and eugenics, eugenics was considered valid science. And so it's really hard to figure that out. There's still not an excuse for thinking that you can exterminate people to improve the human race. But they thought it was valid science. And so it makes it really hard for us in our current place where we have peer reviewed studies, or at least we're supposed to, that isn't something that they had then in the same way, or at least all their peer reviewed studies agreed because they thought that this was true.

Yeah, yeah. So that historical context matters.

Right?

Yeah, but, but some issues are so big that they, they don't get. You can't excuse them entirely away. And that's probably true of everything. It's just you can excuse more or less of things. But in the case of eugenics, in the case of anti Semitism and in the case of anti Judaism, which we'll, we'll hear a distinction between those, those are, are inexcusable. But there are good things from these people that we have to keep because we have built faith and theology and economies around them.

Right.

I think we've covered that.

Should we get to the interview?

Let's get to the interview.

Here's our conversation with Dr. Mark Tranvik of Luther Seminary today to talk with.

Us about Martin Luther and some of the more sticky topics around him. Is is Dr. Mark Tranvik from Luther Seminary, as I understand you are professor of Reformation history and theology at Luther Seminary in Minneapolis. Well, in St. Paul, I can't get that wrong, St. Paul, but the Twin Cities nonetheless. And that formerly you were at Augsburg University in Minneapolis then.

Right, right, right.

Yeah. And a pastor before that.

Pastor for 10 years in a, Yeah. A suburb of Minneapolis. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, welcome to the, to the show. We, we wanted to talk about Martin Luther and some of the less, less easy to talk about topics. Martin Luther is a target for folks who want to put, you know, maybe claim that Lutherans are anti Semitic or maybe have some, some, some devotion to government authority, that sort of thing. And we want to address that, figure out how we do this, especially in our time where we're talking in February of 2026 and there's a lot of stuff and a lot of Lutherans are mobilized against, against xenophobia and anti immigration folks. And you know, you can look in the news any, any day and I imagine it's not going away anytime soon to see Lutherans in action here in Minneapolis in particular. And so we wanted to talk about this and learn more. So thanks for joining us.

Thanks. Thanks both Ben and Keith, I appreciate you having me.

Yeah, we're glad to have you here. So you know what, maybe we should just start broader, more broadly than Luther Himself at the moment. How do we look back at historical figures and do them justice, both as inspirations and as examples of how not to faithfully live?

Yeah, no, it's a great, great question with regard to the issue of Luther and the Jews in particular. I mean, it's a topic. One way to do it is to not do it. And unfortunately that was the case, I think, for much of Lutheran history. Sometimes it wasn't known, often it was glossed over or ignored. Some of his more anti Jewish writings.

I suspect that's probably mostly the case in, in many of our churches, at least. You know, I can't recall ever, you know, my confirmation class didn't mention anything that Luther ever said against the Jews.

We didn't have a flannograph that dealt with that.

Oh yeah. What would that look like? Right? No, it's, it's very true. When I do adult forums, people on this topic, people are always astonished, lifelong Lutherans for whom it's never been talked about. So one of the things is doing what you're doing here, what we are all doing is talking about it. So keep just putting some light on it. I think that's really important. The other thing I think is really important to do is, is contextualize too, because sometimes I think people, we get locked up in what I call presentism, right. And we forget just how. The past is a foreign country in many, many ways it can be visited. But let's, let's be humble, let's be modest about what, what we can know, and let's try to place ourselves as much as we possibly can into the actual historical situation of those people so that we are fair, but we don't, you know, toss aside our critical faculties either because I think in this particular case, for example, with Luther and his writings on the Jews, we'll find there's much to criticize, some of it can be contextualized, but we'll also find that a lot of his, some of his contemporaries also vehemently disagreed with him as well. So they saw him wrong way back then, 500 years ago. So yeah, I would say first of all, let's, let's shed some light on the topic. Let's not ignore it or, or, or brush under the rug. And secondly, let's do our best, the best histories always done, when we try to provide a context as much as possible and not simply read our own biases into a particular historical situation.

Right. And just because we call ourselves Lutherans and we keep that, instead of going with evangelical or evangelical we sort of lift him up as a superhero just by title. And if not seriously within ourselves, we do it with the people outside. When we identify ourselves with a single person, we tell the world that that's who we're following. Right. And I think if we take ourselves seriously, that's not what we're doing. We're influenced by Luther.

Yeah, no, I think it's a really good point too. So Luther is to be valued and to be studied. Yes, historically he's important, but as Lutherans, he's also had some incredible insights into scripture. And what it's all about is bringing scripture to life. And I think Luther did, did that very, very well. So he becomes one of the lenses through which we look at Scripture, but, but a very human lens and one, one that we need to use carefully. Careful. I don't, Yeah, I don't mean to be put him under suspicion in that sense, but we also, we can't use him uncritically, obviously.

So, so then what are some of the specific topics that, that Luther wrote about regarding Jews and Judaism or, or some of the statements that he made that, that you know, we're talking about here? What are the things that you think.

Yeah, so just, just in the sense of. Couple things I just said to start out with when I talk about this issue. First of all, again, context. Right. I mean it was. And I'll use, make this distinction and I hope it makes sense. You guys can challenge me if it doesn't. I use it. I use the distinction. Luther's writings were ant, but not necessarily anti Semitic. I mean, anti Semitism was something that came along about 400 years later. It was racially sort of derived. But, but Luther certainly had anti Jewish writings and sentiments and by the way, it didn't make him unusual. Shame on the Christian church. We, we have been awful to our Jewish brothers and sisters and all throughout Europe in the, in the late middle ages, from 1200 until 1500, 1600, Luther's times, Jews were persecuted, chased out of countries, they were chased out of England, they were chased out of Spain, they were chased out of Portugal, they were chased out of France. Obviously anti Jewish sentiment was in the air for a whole variety of reasons. The number one was unfortunately, they were seen to be Christ killers. Right, sure. And some of that comes from our own Bible. That kind of understanding, I would say it's, it's a, it's a, it's not the right under the Romans killed him, killed Jesus. But anyway, that was one of the, one of the tags that they Were that was applied to them. And then of course, if anything went wrong, you needed a scapegoat. And the Jews were a convenient scapegoat as well. And so that. That's a deep issue in of itself. So just that's the air Luther breathed. And so I think that's important. The second thing I would say is, like Luther said, anger is my special sin. I mean, he could be an angry guy. He didn't apologize for it. I mean, he had to apologize for some things he said, don't get me wrong. But anger, you know, he said it refreshed my blood, it charged me up, it brought make. Made me feel alive. And so there's a sense in which that's part of. Part and parcel of who Luther is. He's passionate, he's angry, he crosses the line. And as a result, we shouldn't be that surprised that he takes aim at a number of enemies. And of course, it's not just the Jews, it's also the Pope. The Pope becomes the antichrist. You know, three years after, after the 95 theses, the pope is seen as the be all and end all of the end of the times. And Luther, by the way, saw himself. It's another thing too. I'm my mouth Runeth over here. You guys, you guys, you jump in here if I'm going to. But I get excited about this. Luther also saw himself right, as living in the end of times. Not in a nutty sense where he's predicting dates and things like that, but he's also seeing the Pope as the Antichrist. He's seeing all these opponents, the Sacramentarians, the Anabaptists, the Turks and yes, the Jews. And those are signs that there's great opposition.

I think it's funny. I think it's in the primacy of the Pope. The article he writes where he talks about the Pope being the Antichrist, but then expects the Pope to be nice to him. The way that he writes it, he expects compromise when he's calling him the Antichrist.

Yeah. The famous letter is the letter to the. The preface to the Freedom of a Christian 15.

Yeah.

He writes this. Yeah. Crazy letter where he flatters the Pope, but he says, you're surrounded by all these rotten people and, you know, we feel sorry for you. And I don't think he really does, but I mean.

Right.

Yeah, it's a fascinating piece. So. Yeah. And then after that, though, it gets pretty dark.

Oh, sure.

Well, he loses all hope of any kind of reconciliation with the Catholic Church that has a. Has A pope divinely established at its head.

Yeah.

So anyway, there's this context. Right. All right, so Luther, early on, the early Luther, he's always exegeting scripture, especially the Old Testament. Right. And in 1523. So just to keep us on the timeline here, right. He's born in 1483. In 1517, he nails the 95 Theses. In 1521, he has the famous stand at the diet of Worms. And so after that, he's back in Wittenberg eventually, his sort of home base, and he's nurturing and shepherding along with a lot of other people. It's not just him. They're nurturing and shepherding this Lutheran Reformation, and nobody's sure where it's going. And then so he takes up the issue of. Of the Jewish interpretation of Scripture. And also, I don't want to get into too much detail as to the text itself, but the base, the name of the text is that Jesus Christ was born a Jew. And in that text, Luther has a fairly favorable attitude toward the Jews. Now, he didn't have many Jews in his midst. He had met many Jews. Like I say, the Jews were chased out of Wittenberg 100 years prior. But he has a fairly favorable attitude. And one of the reasons is he says, you know, if I were a Jew and the only alternative was the Catholic Church, I'd be a Jew, too. I mean, he's, you know, typical, you know, Luther humor. Right. And. And. And then. And then, of course, he disagrees with the Jewish interpretation of Scripture and obviously, especially the Old Testament and the Messianic texts. For Luther, every time there's a promise in the Old Testament, that's. That's Jesus right?

Now, what's his. What's his source? He doesn't have. He doesn't have Jewish people to talk with.

He does not.

So how does he. How does he. Is he. Is he making a straw man to. To argue against?

Well, I mean, there were. There were Jewish texts that he could.

Read, of course, and stuff.

Yeah. And of course, he's in conversation at the University of Wittenberg with a whole variety of scholars as well.

Okay.

And so. So he wouldn't have been at all ignorant. And there were some scurrilous things being published, too, about Jews that unfortunately he tapped into. But. But for the most part, early on, he's not, you know, unfavorably disposed to the Jews. He. It's kind of. The text is kind of a. Of a mission text. He's sort of saying, you know, you know, if you understand the Truth. And now that I'm revealing the gospel to the world. Yeah. Then now there's no excuse really, you ought to come around. And of course it's kind of a naive sort of thing, but, but, but, but he really believes that once the light of the gospel shines on God's good earth, that people are going to be convinced by it, the Jews included.

But, and that's no different than what we see today, you know, you know, every, every. The Great Awakenings.

Right.

These religious, you know, awakenings that we've had in the United States have always been, I've, it's been revealed to me and because of that, everyone, you know, I'm going to go out to the river and I'm going to put up a tent and everybody that's come is going to get baptized in the truth because they lied to this whole time.

Yeah, that's good. And then, you know, and we have.

Movements now that are doing the same thing.

Yeah. Even on the liberal side. Think of the magazine, the periodical, the Christian Century.

Sure.

So named because they thought the 20th century was going to be the Christian century. Whoa. Yeah. A little bloody. But anyway. No, but it's a, it's, I think it's so, so Luther early on, that's his view. And then kind of, you know, skipping along here because we don't have that much time. So obviously the Jews do not convert en masse. That was that, that was, that was, that was a silly sort of sentiment on Luther's part. But as time goes on and as Luther now estab himself in Wittenberg, he's clearly the leader of the Lutheran Reformation and in many ways the authority, the oracle. And he kind of believes that some of it too, he gets a little, gets a little pompous, I think it's fair to say as well. Anyway, in the mid 1530s. So Luther dies in 1546. So this first text is in 1523, mid 1530s. Now things are really rolling with regard to the Lutheran Reformation. It's spreading far beyond what anybody ever thought with the support of some of the princes in northern Germany especially. Anyway, he meets some Jewish Rabbis in the mid-1530s and he has a discussion with them and it doesn't go well because he thinks that they're messianic. He thinks that the, the messianic understanding or interpretation, the Old Testament is so clear. And of course they obviously disagree. And you start to see a shift now maybe in the sense that maybe these rumors about the Jews are true, maybe they are stiff necked and stubborn. And maybe they are part of this rabble that is opposed to the Reformation. And, and of course he also has plenty of cultural sources to plug into here because the anti Jewish sentiment is widely shared, as I said, in Europe for a whole variety of reasons, nothing, as I said earlier, for us Christians to be very proud of. And then unfortunately, as Luther gets older, as he gets into the 1540s now he dies in 1546, there's really no excuse for it, but he publishes a tract called on the Jews and their Lies. And there are some sources here and again we can't get into all the details, but he read a book published by a Jew that converted to Christian Christianity who was very, very, very scornful of Jewish faith and really started just spread some of the things that, the horrible things that Christians believed about Jews anyway, anyway. And the book itself is largely again an exegetical text. It's an argument about the Old Testament, the Old Testament being bearing the promises of Christ from a Christian perspective. And. But then in the third section of that text on the Jews and their lives, he makes recommendations and this is probably where a lot of people have tagged Luther, rightfully so, with some horrible statements. He talks about things then about burning down their schools and their synagogues, chasing them out of the territory, never actually killing them. But it's a whole list of recommendations that can only be called harmful, hurtful, horrible. And this is then the where, where Luther gets the reputation that he has as being a, as being an enemy of the Jewish people. And you know what, the text is really hard to read. It's just not Luther at his best. Obviously. Interestingly enough, some of Luther's compatriots thought he went way over the line and they criticized him for it. Melanchthon in particular, Martin Bootser as well. But others didn't say much. There were Roman Catholic voices, John Eck for example, who was Luther's big opponent early on in his career, wrote something almost as hateful. So it's kind of in the air. It did create some publicity, some waves, make some waves, but not as much as you would have thought. And it really wasn't published much or re edited or republished in Luther's time. It wasn't that important of a text. People weren't, you know, Luther's closer followers weren't, you know, this is kind of the ravings of an older guy who's on this issue gone off the deep end and. But of course, guess where the text was picked up. Yeah, actually a little bit in the 19th century. But who's really going to publish it? Yeah, so Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich, the propaganda machine saying, well, yeah, Martin Luther, of course, for Germans, Martin Luther is the great German hero. He's the German George Washington. He really is. His statutes are all over. He was the symbol of unity, as you know, as the Germans attempted to create their country in the late 19th century. He was the one, you know, one of the key figures in bringing us all together. And, you know, Goebbels and others can say, well, look, look what he said about the Jews. Right. No different from what we're saying. So they could tap into this horrible text. Unfortunately, Luther's name then gets closely connected with the Nazis, which I don't think is fair, but I'm talking too much, you guys. We can go into that in a second. What do you guys got?

I've got a question for you. Is it possible, and I, I'm not, I hope I'm not asking you to answer in pure conjecture, but, but have you heard of the possibility that, you know, Luther was, you know, by the night, by the 1540s. He's, he's not terribly old, but he dies at what, 62 or 63 years old?

62, yeah.

He's not young. Is it possible that, you know, he.

You know, you use the term sort.

Of ingest or in, in loosely about, you know, the ravings of a madman. You know, could he have been developing some sort of senility or, or dementia of some kind that, that may have complicated. You know, what you already said is his context at the time, that this is just in the air and in the water. This, this, this anti.

Jewish thought.

That's a really good point, Keith. I, I think we have to be careful because if we're going to say that about this writing, then we also have to say about the other, the writings that we like as well.

Yeah.

Historically, it gets complicated. However, however, however. I mean, think about his health. From head to toe, he had, he had, he had migraines, he had. What's the ringing? The ears. Tinnitus. Yeah.

Tinnitus.

Yeah.

Tonight. Yeah, he had tinnitus. Undoubtedly he, he had had at least one heart attack, probably more than one. Right. He had hardening of the arteries.

I think it's fair to say that he had, you know, lived with anxiety or depression.

Anxiety, depression, absolutely. Kidney stones, you know, stories about, you know, he's legendary. Stories about constipation. He had, he had problems, he had problems with circulation in his legs, problems sleeping. So there's there's no question he was in rough shape. And you know, he's, he's what, at this time, 59, 60. He's an old man. In 16th century terms. He's a very old man. Right. And so there's, there's certainly. I think you can, it's, it's not the explanation, but it is a factor. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's a good point.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't want to, I don't want to excuse or try to explain away the things that we don't like. But, but I do think that. Right. You know, back to your earlier point about context. I think that's, I think it's always worth noting.

Absolutely.

So now we. Yeah, and I, I interrupted you to ask you that question. But, but tell us more about what happens with Luther's writings and thought when it comes to, you know, the time leading up to World War II.

Yeah. And so this is maybe where I would make the distinction. It's maybe the appropriate time to make the distinction between Luther being anti Jewish and what the Nazis were up to was full blown antisemitism. And the difference, you could, you could. And I think it's a distinction worth the difference. In other words, for Luther, if a Jew were baptized, the Jew ceases to be a Jew, the Jew becomes a Christian. For the Nazis, being Jewish was a matter of your blood. Right, Right. And you did not change your blood. So in other words, if a Jew were baptized, you remained a Jew. Right. Baptism meant nothing. Basically.

They would just be accusing them of.

Of trying to, you know, muddy the issue and hide and, and, and, and escape, you know, the condemnation that they were supposedly do.

No, exactly. Yeah. And and of course your, your baptismal certificate was, was the way you determined whether you're truly a part of the German Volk. Right. If your blood was pure, if you had four grandparents who were baptized Christian, you were good. But if you had, I think, I think the distinction was if you had two Jewish grandparents, you were in trouble. If you had three, you could very. You, you would be denied civil liberties, government pensions, government job, danger of being sent to the camps. And if you had four, of course you're more like more than likely to, to face some extermination. And so your baptismal certificates, especially in your family, were crucial to establishing your identity. And of course that would be totally foreign to Luther's way of thinking. So, so I think it is a distinction worth a difference. Luther was. And the people in his time were not so much anti Semitic as they Were anti Jewish. So that's one thing. The other thing that comes along, I think is that when the Nazis came to power, the emphasis then on purity becomes paramount. And of course anything that was impure and that of course there was a long list of things with regard to, you know, whether if you're handicapped, if you're mentally challenged, right, You're Jewish, if you were, if you were homosexual, if you were a. Well, they don't say the gypsy aroma cinta. So, so Job's witness, that emphasis then on purity was so, Was so central. And so Luther's texts then get used to this, this uber German what he wrote gets used to justify then this. It's one of the voices, not just the only voice, of course, but one of the voices, key voices that gets used to justify this emphasis on purity and of course this emphasis on, on the German Volk, the German people, German nationalism. And of course the Nazis are trying to promote. What you have then too is the rise. And maybe you folks know this, but there's a rise of a party within the German church called the. This is confusing, but they're called the German Christians. So they're not a big, big group. But, but, but they're liked by the Nazis, especially early on in the early 1930s, because they attempt to combine Nazism and Christianity. And they use Luther, of course, as one of their voices in doing this. So they had their own institute. I mean, they had, they had, they had Bibles where they excised any mention of the Old Testament. And I mean, you can see how this goes, right? They had their own hymn book and there were no hallelujahs in it. On and on and on it goes. And so these folks were very influential and Luther was named as one of their heroes and forebears. And these writings then were used to, to justify that as well. So I mean, the Nazis would have existed without Martin Luther. Let's be clear. I mean, there were so many sources in German history that resulted in the rise. Luther is one voice a long time ago. But there is a broken line. Not a direct line, but there's a broken line from the way some of his writings were used to justify then what the Third Reich attempt to.

And there aren't any remnants. There aren't any remnants of that. And say, you know, in our confessions, right, in the Book of Concord, say more remnants. You mean, you know, if we, if we look through the Book of Concord, we're not going to find this.

No.

This thing at all.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, so. So. So the. The foundational documents of our church are confessional documents.

Right.

Are not. Right. So the problem is Luther's later writings.

Right, but. But that kind of shows that the. The folks that are incorporating all this together are leaving that out on purpose.

Right, yeah. This was not their issue.

Right.

I mean, there's some tough stuff against Catholic Church, as, you know. Right, but. But no, but the Jews. The Jews and the Jews and the Turks generally get left out. The Anabaptists don't fare very well either. But. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's kind of evidence that his contemporaries in the first generation after are not following that train of thought.

No, I think you're absolutely right, Ben. This is not a big issue. Or you could also say, unfortunately, Luther's voice was not that unusual the way he said it. Yes, but the fact that he was saying these things. Well, perhaps it's done by a lot of people.

Someone else saying it probably wouldn't have been preserved the same way.

No, yeah, absolutely. Right.

Yep.

Partly.

Yeah, partly. We've got everything that Luther said because of what everything was that Luther said. You know, it's all been. It's all been recorded because of, you know, who he was becoming even as it was starting. And then, you know, with the traditions about his students and his associates preserving his. His words, you know, that's both. That's both a great blessing. And it's to our, you know, somewhat to our detriment in terms of trying.

To look back on.

Well, not. Not to our detriment, because I think it's. It wouldn't be fair if we only had, you know, the bright, shiny parts of.

Of Martin Luther either, you know, to know.

To know his. His brokenness is to be able to establish his humanity. And then that gives us a lens through which we can critically evaluate what to follow. You know, if.

If.

If we treated Luther as if he.

Were Jesus, we'd have a really hard.

Time, you know, being able to step away from the things that we just don't think are worth paying attention to. Yeah, but we ought to know that they're there so that we know how to think critically of him.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, unfortunately, what's happened, and I think in more secular circles, it becomes the only thing known or one of the only things known and. And the things we value in terms of the positive dimensions and the great theological insights, unfortunately, that. That. That is lesser known. I think so anyway.

Mark, this question only occurs to me, and I may not ask it very well but if, you know, you mentioned a broken line that can connect Luther's writings to, to the Third Reich. Is there, are there other places along that broken line? Like, you know, is there a, is there a school of interpretation of Luther that may be slightly more to blame for how Luther gets used in the Third Reich than Luther himself? Does that make sense?

Yeah, that's a good question. I'm not quite. I mean, as you probably know, there were some shameful examples in German theology in the third 1930s, well, in the early 20th century that people who were. I mean, I think of the. You guys have heard of Martin Niemoller. Right, right. The submarine commander who went on then to oppose Hitler and spend eight years in concentration camps. And I remember something he said when he was growing up. He said, well, we were all against the Jews. Nobody thought anything of it. Of course the Jews were, you know, we, we didn't want to do with the things that the Nazis said, but the sense that we were opposed the Jews or the Jews were wrong or the Jews were se. Or the Jews did not deserve even civil liberties. You know, in the German state, most people would have agreed with that. It was kind of in the air that they breathed. And so some of the German theologians of that time, Paul Althaus, for example, for famous Luther interpreter, was a fellow traveler in the. With the Nazis early, early on trying to think of the other two that were famous. Robert Erickson wrote a book on it, on the, on sort of these Nazi friendly theologians. So, I mean, so in other words, I guess what I'm saying is you had enough in the German academy, both authoritative voices in theology and in the general sort of atmosphere, in the air that was breathed, you had enough to, to, I think to contribute then to this acceptance of, of anti. Semitism, you know. Yeah, it's, it is, it's kind of scary to see the way it became.

And I think that bleeds over to the, the second part that we wanted to talk about a little bit. I don't know that we'll have, you know, is, is that Luther sort of backs an authoritarian view of, of civil life. You know, he gives us these two kingdoms.

Yeah.

And then, you know, so, so he tells us directly that, that God works through the government. And, and I believe I, I read a, I read a line of his that said that if the government does harm to us, it's to, to make us better. Right. It's for us to, you know, the, the harm will, will grow from it in some way. I don't think he envisioned what the Nazis were doing. But, you know, speak, speak more to that because I think that plays also into why maybe German Lutherans or the German people are going to accept what their government does to them.

That's a very good point. So back in the 16th century, right. I mean, the Lutherans threw out the bishops, right. But they needed somebody to oversee the church. And of course, in each of the respective. Germany did not become a State until 1870. So you have all these principalities and towns that are sort of semi autonomous, self governing, sort of. Anyway, who's going to oversee the church? Well, the princes took over. And so there you have then a situation where you have the government overseeing the church. I think maybe to this day, I'm not sure this is true. I think it's true. German Protestant clergy still get their paychecks from the state. Sure, I think that's true.

That's true.

And anyway, so you've got this unhealthy relationship, I would say, that really doesn't allow much critical distance. You can imagine if you were a person of power in the church and you might be tempted to criticize the governing authorities, you'd be less likely to do it knowing that there would be repercussions for that.

Your pension's on the line.

Yeah, your pension's in line. The second thing is what that forces then people to do. And what happens in German society is faith goes inward. Faith becomes private. The government, then the, the prince, bishops, quote, unquote. Right. They're the ones appointed by God to look after civic affairs. And what does the church take care of? Well, it takes care of what's within. And so the private and the public become separated. And that's never a good thing because then the public is allowed to run on its own, more or less unquestioned. And therefore a lot of church people in the, in Germany, in the, in the, in the 1930s simply had no critical apparatus, no. No sort of framework within which to think that their government might be wrong. And so when you have, you know, faith being privatized like that, the repercussions, you know, it allows then for all kinds of mischief. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, and Luther himself, you know, given the, the environment in his. In his earlier life where he's first, you know, coming to prominence and post the 95 theses, he benefits from the protection of Frederick the Wise, the Elector of Saxony. And so, you know, he, he would have no reason personally to say a harsh word against the government in that it's what's protecting him and enabling him and, and, you know, giving him patronage to continue the, the good work that he's. He's doing. You know, by and large, it's not a bad marriage of powers at one.

Point in his life.

It becomes problematic more later on.

But no, Luther knew the success of the Reformation depended upon the, the favor of the princes. Absolutely. So he was, he was not uncritical of them. Some of his sermons, he would rip. He would go after the nobility, no question about that. But at the same time, yeah, he's treading. I mean, Frederick the Wise is a fascinating example. I mean, Luther criticizes indulgences. Right. He also criticizes the, the, the whole relic trade. And Chris, Frederick the Wise is a great patron of, of relics and is. And there's much revenue there. And so Luther's treading a fine line. How that all got sorted out is still kind of mysterious. So he's not a toady of the princes, as he was often accused of being. However, you're absolutely right, Keith. I mean, there's a sense in which he needed the princes, he needed the governing authorities to support the Reformation. Although he would have said, of course, well, it's the gospel. It's God doing this. But he was not naive either.

Right?

And just as, you know, Luther had his hit, his had his good sides and bad sides, you know, then the government does, too. That's a much more. I don't know if it's more complicated or less in, you know, a more authoritarian environment than, say, we live in now in the United States and in a, In a democratic society.

And I know we were.

We're not looking to talk about civil disobedience in this example.

I see where you're going. I know where you're going here, but.

We'Ve, we've talked about it as another possible episode that we could discuss. You know, what does it mean for Lutherans to appropriately, faithfully resist, you know, when government does overstep? And, and so, you know, it makes me wonder, like, could Luther have even have conceived of that notion?

Well, no, it's a, It's a really good point, too. I mean.

Well, they don't have democracy.

No, they don't. It's 200 years early. He did. However, it's kind of interesting, kind of moves a little bit. There were some resistance theories being promulgated in, during, during his time. He's very reticent to go there. But after the augsburg confession of 1530, though, in the 1530s, 30s, he starts to Say, you know what, given the Catholic princes are moving against the Lutheran princes, even though I'm against armed resistance, this ought to be God's affair. I can see at least the necessity for a defensive league to at least protect what we have. And so you start to see some movement in the direction of okay, we're not going to let the Catholics take over. We're not going to aggressively promote the Reformation by means of armed of armies and you know, invading other countries or something like that. So even there he starts to recognize. And then the later on Lutherans, there's a famous episode, we could talk about this later too, but at the city of Magdeburg in northern Germany, they fall out in the name of the Gospel, resisted the imperial forces. And so, and that resistance theory then that they developed actually gets carried over into the Netherlands and even up to Scotland and John Knox. And so Lutherans weren't as passive as we make them out to be sometimes. Although Luther certainly he's, he always prefers tyranny. I'm sorry, he always prefers. Well, he really does. He prefers turn tyranny to chaos. He just does. Or anarchy. And, and he's a 16th century person that way. And there's walls around all those cities for a reason. And. Yeah.

So tell us a little then, you know, for those of us that don't.

Remember our church history classes, what I.

Know or you know, we haven't listened to the episode recently, but tell us a little bit about the Peasants War and that specific example of how Luther. Yeah, again, another, another, that, that next kind of challenging piece about Luther's writings and, and being that we, that we.

Struggle with is, it is a challenging piece piece. And again as a context, so you know, in Germany, the Germany of the time, the holy Roman Empire, 80 to 90% of the people were peasants. We're talking about a hand to mouth existence. It's, it's a rough, brutish life, all right. And the peasants were getting squeezed by the nobility and others, especially in the areas, you know, they depended upon common lands that they could use all together to graze their flocks and herds, grow crops. And the nobility, it seems in the 16th century in particular were encroaching on some of those ancient rites and the peasants were getting squeezed and you can imagine, both in terms of income, food to eat, providing for your family.

So was it.

So the 16th century, especially in southern Germany, it was rough and revolts erupted and not so much in Luther's area, but south of him, although they became, came fairly close to him. And Luther's in. Now we're talking 1525. So, right, 1521 is the diet of worms. So four years after that, the Reformation is kind of getting going. Nobody's sure where it's going, but it is growing. Anyway, in the midst of all this, this peasants rebellion happens. And Luther, of course, has to comment about everything. So he writes a tract where he says, you know what, you nobility, you're the ones who are at fault here. All you do is starve and abuse the peasants. And of course, Luther had some peasants talk himself, so he's sensitive to this. And he says, you're the. You're the ones we have to thank for this rebellion. And he really takes on the. What would be called the upper class, the nobility, and accuses them of being harsh and unrelenting in their. In their attempt to usurp some of these common lands. Anyway, and the peasants rebellion is ongoing. It becomes much bigger than I think Luther ever conceived it would be. And the peasants then issue some demands where they attempt to justify what they're doing by quoting the Bible. And that in particular upset Luther because he said, you might have a just cause, but don't claim it's God's cause. You know, he thought that you crossed a line there for him. Right. In other words, the peasants desire for freedom they claim was in the name of Christian freedom. And Luther said, no, no, no, that's not Christian freedom. Your desire for freedom is fine, but that's not Christian for you. Anyway, you can see how for Luther, the use of the scriptures to justify rebellion, he thought was a. Was one step too far. And therefore, as the rebellion became more widespread, it never got to his area, but it did spread north. And again, let's be clear, this was. This was incredibly violent. The burning of estates, of monasteries, of schools, the invasion of towns. I mean, these people are desperate, they're fairly leaderless. These are roving bands. And again, I don't think their cause is unjust, but I also recognize it was very violent and very sort of unformed and unpredictable. Luther got worried. And again, like I said, he always preferred. He always preferred order to any kind of anarchy. This scared him terribly. Like. Like Ben said, right. We're 200 years before any kind of democratic society, before the Enlightenment. So there's no notion of that in his mind. So he writes another tract. And again, this is the one that I think we can regret. It's called against the Murdering and Robbing Hordes of peasants. So you already know by the time. Yeah. And the famous phrase in there. He. He urges then the authorities to put down the peasants rebellion. And he says, smite, slave, stab. There's nothing more hurtful or murderous than a mad dog, you know. And again, it's not like the authorities are waiting around for Martin Luther to write something and then they're going to act. They were already acting against the peasants rebellion, so it's not like Luther's words were a spur to the authorities to put down the rebellion. That's not true. However. However, at that point, it became very clear that Luther was on the side of the authorities. And this notion that the Reformation might be a widespread popular movement, that kind of. That idea got. Got quashed now.

Yeah.

Really something coming from the top and not necessarily bubbling up from. From the common folk.

Yeah. He was not.

If he wasn't an inspiration, you know, or the. Or the. What was pulling the trigger of the. Of the authorities at the time. It sounds like he was. Would definitely have been dispiriting the peasants themselves very much.

Actively resisting.

Very much so. Very much. And so he. He was identified then with. With the cause of the authorities. And. And again, it's. It's complicated. Right. I mean, I can see why he might have made that move. Unfortunately, the words he used. He's angry.

Right.

I mean, these are. These are horrible words, because these are the words then that get repeated again and again and again. And Luther is simply on the side of the magisterial authorities, the princes, the nobility, and he really doesn't care about us, which wasn't true. But. But when you write things like that that are so incendiary and, you know, there's a printing press, obviously.

Yeah.

These are the words that are going to get repeated again and again and again and used against him. And again, I. You can't defend what he said.

Right.

So did that have a lasting impact in Germany? Does that. Does that have a continuous line through or is it. Does it disappear at all?

That's a great question. I'm not sure about the tract itself.

Yeah.

But I do know the phrases from the tract were echoed. I mean, even the Catholics used it and they said, see this? Luther's not a man of the people. Yeah. I mean, you can imagine the propaganda war and the value of words like smite, slay, stab. Yeah.

I just think of in the 1970s, I lived in Marysville, Ohio. Honda was building a plant. They wanted to build a plant somewhere in the United States to make their cars. And the legend is. And I think there's some validity to it, that they were looking for a place that was primarily German Americans because they saw them as compliant.

Yeah.

And I think that Lutheran, you know, that idea of being compliant and you know, efficiency, that sort of thing I think comes from that idea that we will do, you know, what the, you know, if not the government, but the leaders of our effort, we will do what they want us to do because that is, you know, who we are. It's baked into our DNA.

Yeah.

And, and at least that was the, that was the impression that people have had for a very long time. And I think that's part of why like we had in, in World War II, we did have issues with Germans in America thinking that they would, you know, be German actors in the United States. We didn't need them as much as anyone would have thought. We had plenty of people working on that site anyway. It's just an interesting through line there.

Yeah, I know it is, it is. And you know, and then, I mean, what happened in Germany we already talked.

About a little bit.

Right. The privatization of faith.

Sure.

So government basically is given a carte blanche. The thing is there though too we got to be careful because the counter example of course is Denmark and Norway.

Right.

Which are both very Lutheran countries. And, and the resistance movements there were often Lutheran led Einvet Bear Graf in Norway, for example, especially the bishop of the Norwegian church and the Norwegian resistance movement were very faithful Lutheran people who saw their faith demanding them then to resist the German. So, so it, Yeah, I don't, but there is this, I mean it's really hard to just sort of dismiss what happened in Germany. It is complicated though.

Right? Yeah, well, so, so it's been great talking with you. I think we've got at least one more topic we, we want to talk about with, with nonviolent resistance in the church. And, and how do we, how do we, we rise up as a, as a community in, in face of, of community problems for sure. But this is, this has been very informative. I think it's gonna, gonna help a lot of folks and, and that you've written some books. Does do any of those touch on any of these topics?

Actually I wrote a book called Martin Luther and the called Life. Yes, there is a chapter in there and on, on, on, on our vocation as citizens which talks about then not so much non violent resistance, although, you know, mentions that, but also then what are we called to do vis a vis our public life?

Sure.

What does that look like? And, and why is that a crucial part of what it means to have a Calling as a Christian. So, yeah, I do talk about a little bit there.

And that came out in 2016. So that's before a lot of. A lot of the more recent stuff that we think of these days. And then you've got a more recent. You edited. Trying to remember what it was. The coming out just now.

Right. Freedom of Christian. There's a new edition coming out. Oh, it's funny you should mention it. There's a new edition coming out and then I'm working on a book on Luther's theology of baptism as well, so.

Oh, excellent.

But, but I do I. A very. A very keen interest of mine is the church in public life. And then what is it? What does it mean? Especially helping pastors and lay people think about what does it mean to live out their faith in the public realm. And, and all the, you know, it's. You're. We just. We walk a knife's edge there. You, you, you know this, Keith, you know it as a pastor, it's not easy.

It's.

It's. It's fraught with all kinds of difficulties on both sides. So I think it's really important to. To discuss these things and, and to. And to talk about the pitfalls and. And also. Yeah. Better what we're called to do. Right.

Right.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Dr. Mark Tranvik, thank you so very much for taking time to be with us for this episode. We look forward to doing it again sometime.

Thank you. Really fun being with you.

Well, thanks to Dr. Tranvik. This was a very enlightening conversation. We are going to sort of break it down how we feel. We're recording a few days, a couple days later. And this has been an interview. We often have these interviews.

We.

We get some incredible guests that, that really share a tremendous amount with us and we really appreciate it. And Dr. Tranvik is no exception to that. You know, sitting with this for a little bit, I am. I don't feel like I learned anything in particular, but that our conversation was able to put some things together that helped me look at this in a way. I feel like I have a response to people that now say, well, Luther was this evil man and he hated Jewish people.

Right? Yeah, Yeah. I mean, just the notions of, you know, the context matters, that, you know, a lot of what Luther may have said about Jews, again, we're not looking to excuse it, but he certainly wasn't the only person saying them at the time and that, you know, some of his own contemporaries, people that he was. Was close to and respected, didn't agree with him. That's.

And people he disagreed with.

Yeah, yeah. People that he.

Not just people who agreed with him, everybody. You know, there are people on all sides that distinctly said no to this.

Right.

Yeah. People that were generally Luther's enemies that disagreed with him, and people that were generally Luther's friends that disagreed with him. Yeah. But, yeah, so that context matters. And then the notion of us being, again, given permission to think critically about our, you know, kind of collective pasts, our collective traditions and our collective ancestors, you know, like Martin Luther, it's okay for us to be able to say, you know, he had a lot of great things to say about these subjects. God, the Holy Spirit, scripture, theology. He had a lot of great things to say about, you know, the importance of education and learning to read and write. You know, we could even say there was. He had some good things to say about the proper role of government, but he also had some awful things to say about Jews, about the place of the Holy Land in our world, about the need for people to tolerate tyranny. You know, and no, we don't admire, just lock, stock and barrel everything that Luther said and did in spite of.

Naming our church or, you know, or individual churches.

Right.

St. Matthew Lutheran Church in York, Pennsylvania, isn't going to get rid of the Lutheran part necessarily.

No, no. It's funny, I was thinking about that since this interview, like this idea that, that our denomination and others like it, you know, do have the name of a. Of a human being in our collective title. Right. And that there aren't in Christianity very many of those. We're not the only ones. The Mennonites, the Amish, Zwinglians, you know, Lutherans. They're all names that are taken from actual historical people of great influence to our traditions. But there are lots of other Christian denominations that don't have a person's name, you know, the Episcopalians, the Methodists, the Baptists, etc. And so, yeah, and the name Lutheran originally, you know, back in the 16th century, was a pejorative. You know, people that were not impressed by Luther and his writings or thought he was a heretic, etc. You know, they were calling his followers Lutherans as a way of undermining them, writing them off. And I wonder about where. Where it was in history that. That the reversal happened that people started kind of reclaiming that name in a positive way for themselves. It wasn't Luther himself. He didn't want to call the church Lutheran. He wanted to call it evangelical or gospel centered. Yeah. Somewhere along the line we decided hey we're okay being called Lutherans and began to reclaim that that name in a positive way for ourselves.

Yeah.

So I hope that this conversation is helpful to you folks. We appreciate you listening. If you have any questions about this, go ahead and send them in to us. We've got, we've got lots of room for that. Also if you want to turn, if you want to tell us about your congregation, we've got forms on our website and in the episode notes. Just go through those links and fill out our form and we can tell the world about your your congregation with our Better Know a Congregation segment. So Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fot and the show is produced by Phote Media Productions. Find all our contact information, links and a transcript in the episode notes. Thanks to Dr. Mark Tranvik and thanks for being with us and until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.