LUTHERANISM

branch of Christianity that traces its distinctive interpretation of the Gospel to Martin Luther and the 16th-century movements that issued from his reforms. Lutherans take their place alongside Anglican and Calvinist communions to make up one of the three major branches of Protestantism. The Lutheran churches, originally in Germany but quickly spreading to Scandinavia, did not wish to be called after their founder. He had seen his work as an evangelical (i.e., Gospel-centred) reform within the Western Catholic church. The name Lutheran came from opponents of Luther and his reforms, but the epithet eventually came to be turned into a badge of honour among partisans of the reformer's interpretation. Still, many of the leaders attempted to adopt other terms such as Evangelical, which has subsequently become part of the official name of the church in various nations and territories. Others preferred, and prefer, to be called The Church of the Augsburg Confession, a title that recalls the Lutheran document presented by evangelicals to the emperor at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530. In the 20th century many have chosen to speak of their church as an evangelical Catholic movement, yet Lutheran they became and remain. For several decades after 1530 this oldest and largest Protestant body hardly broke the European geographic bounds that were set for it. It was a negligible force in Presbyterian Scotland, Anglican England, the Reformed Lowlands and Switzerland, or in Catholic France, Spain, and Italy. There were early Lutheran movements in central Europe, as in Hungary, where the Reformed came to dominate in 1543, and in Transylvania. But Lutheranism prospered most in the many territories that were eventually to make up modern Germany and then the northern lands: Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. From this significant but well-defined territory, Lutheranism moved with substantial numbers into North America after the 1740s and in the 19th century from European and North American bases into much of the rest of the world. Still, most of its theological, intellectual, cultural, and political expression as well as the major trends in its development are best measured from northern Europe and especially from the German territories that it shared with Reformed and Roman Catholic Christians. Lutherans claim to see their movement centred in the understanding that, thanks to the saving activity of God in Jesus Christ, they are themselves justified by grace through faith. Early Lutherans invoked this theme against both Catholic and Reformed Christianity, both of which, though on differing grounds, they professed to see stressing salvation in part through good works or moral earnestness. This would be an endeavour to help the believer make a claim upon God and thus, thought Lutherans, would deprive Christians of the security of faith and would arrogate to human beings activities that belonged only to God. In Lutheranism the bond between God and the redeemed was entirely at God's initiative and through God's grace. The believer trusts this God. With most other Protestants, Lutherans based their teachings not on churchly authority but on the divinely inspired Bible. the branch of the Western Christian church that adopted the religious principles of Martin Luther, as opposed to those of the Roman Catholic Church and of the followers of John Calvin, the Anglican Communion, and the sectaries of the Reformation period. Lutheran churches often term themselves Evangelical as distinct from Reformed, but these uses are not always strictly applied. Lutheranism cannot be defined or understood without some reference to the personal experience and the biblical studies of Luther, which came to voice in 1517 in his famous Ninety-five Theses for debate over indulgences and in his attack on the theology and sacramental practice of the late medieval church of the West. In 1521 Luther was excommunicated; his followers accepted the designation Lutheran in part against his will and in spite of the fact that it was filled, in many instances, with implications of derision and sectarianism. The Lutheran movement spread from the University of Wittenberg through much of Germany and into Scandinavia, where it was established by law. The theological vigour of Luther's generation gave way to an arid orthodoxy in the late 16th and 17th centuries. This in turn precipitated a pietist reaction that asserted the need for living faith in addition to right doctrine (see Pietism). The Pietists encouraged missionary and charitable work in addition to devotional practice. Eighteenth-century Lutheranism was marked by Rationalist influences. Orthodoxy was reasserted during the next century, notably by the Danish bishop and poet N.F.S. Grundtvig. Grundtvig's contemporary and countryman Sren Kierkegaard criticized orthodoxy and the state church through a highly personalized philosophy that was to form the basis of Existentialism. In America, Lutherans were among the earliest colonists to settle in New Netherland and New Sweden (on the Delaware River), and they were followed by German colonists who settled especially in the present Middle Atlantic states, the Shenandoah Valley, Georgia, and Nova Scotia, Canada. Because of some geographic and much linguistic isolation and because the majority of American Protestantism was at first of Reformed background, Lutheranism did not play a major role in shaping the early political and religious complexion of the nation. The geographic spread of Lutheranism in the United States was extended by migrations to the western frontier and by the large immigrations during the 19th and early 20th centuries of Germans, Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, and Finns. Many of these immigrants settled in the Midwest, and from there later pushed on to the far West. Since immigrants brought with them from Europe a variety of languages and customs, they organized in congregations and later synods according to their national origins. It was largely the prolongation of linguistic and ethnic barriers that prevented Lutheran union until well into the 20th century, when the barriers broke down and advance into intra-Lutheran ecumenical relations became rapid. Lutheran doctrinal statements are usually said to include nine separate formulations that together form the Book of Concord. Three belong to the early Christian churchthe Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed in its western form, and the so-called Athanasian Creed. Six derive from the 16th-century Reformationthe Augsburg Confession, the Apology for the Augsburg Confession, the Schmalkald Articles, Luther's two Catechisms, and the Formula of Concord. Only the three early creeds and the Augsburg Confession are recognized by all Lutherans. Luther's Catechisms have met almost universal acceptance, but many Lutheran churches rejected the Formula of Concord because of its strict and detailed doctrinal statements. The Augsburg Confession and Luther's Small Catechism may properly be said to define Lutheranism inclusively in its doctrinal aspect, though Lutherans may be divided on many issues raised since the Augsburg Confession of 1530. The largest and one of the oldest of non-Roman Catholic, non-Orthodox families of Christians, Lutheranism is represented in most areas of the world, but its particular geographic orientation has been in northern and western Europe and in younger countries settled by Germans and Scandinavians. It has been represented with less strength in Switzerland, the Low Countries, and Scotland, where Reformed confessions predominated, and it has been a secondary influence in the British empire and the Commonwealth of Nations, where the Anglican communion has prevailed. Because of early and persistent efforts of continental missionary societies and later separate Lutheran denominations, Lutheranism has been significantly represented in the mission fields and in the formation of what were formerly called the younger churches. Lutheranism acknowledges no world headquarters, but the vast majority of the world's Lutherans cooperate in the Lutheran World Federation, which has offices in Geneva. Additional reading Conrad Bergendoff, The Church of the Lutheran Reformation (1967), a survey of Lutheranism, but especially useful for information on Lutheranism in the Scandinavian countries, in a very readable narrative with bibliography; and Jaroslav Pelikan, From Luther to Kierkegaard: A Study in the History of Theology (1950, reprinted 1963), a brief history of developments in Lutheran theology to the mid-19th century. Julius Bodensieck (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the Lutheran Church, 3 vol. (1965), is the standard English reference work on Lutheranism, although articles vary from the scholarly to the propagandistic.On Lutheranism in the United States, see Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Theology in America: A Historical Survey, in James Ward Smith and A. Leland Jamison, Religion in American Life, vol. 1, The Shaping of American Religion (1961), pp. 232321, a survey that sets Lutheran theology in the context of other developments; and Abdel R. Wentz, A Basic History of Lutheranism in America, rev. ed. (1964), a standard work on the major developments. E. Clifford Nelson, The Rise of World Lutheranism: An American Perspective (1982), is a discussion of the cooperation among 20th-century Lutheran churches. E. Clifford Nelson (ed.), Lutherans in North America, rev. ed. (1980), is a study on the various periods of American history.Works on Lutheran teachings include Theodore G. Tappert (ed. and trans.), The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (1959, reprinted 1987), official translation; Edmund Schlink, Theology of the Lutheran Confessions (1961, reissued 1975; originally published in German, 1940), a dialectical approach to Lutheran theology; Wilhelm Maurer, Historical Commentary on the Augsburg Confession (1986; originally published in German, 2 vol., 197678), a thorough work on the basic Lutheran document; Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3 vol. (195163, reprinted 1973), a systematics by the most original Lutheran theologian of the 20th century; and Karl Ferdinand Mller and Walter Blankenburg, Leiturgia: Handbuch des evangelischen Gottesdienstes, 5 vol. (195470), a historical and theological examination of the Lutheran service. Robert P. Scharlemann Martin E. Marty