Agora Fall 2017

Agora

THE LIBERAL ARTS AT LUTHER COLLEGE

FALL 2017

LUTHER COLLEGE, DECORAH, IOWA

The Reformation

Of Everything, Part I

THE LIBERAL ARTS AT LUTHER COLLEGE

Martin Klammer, editor

FALL 2017 VOLUME 30 NUMBER 1

Judy K. Boese, production editor

Agora, an interdisciplinary journal grounded in the humanities, is a project of the Luther College Paideia Program. Paideia consists of many activities and opportunities, including a three-course interdisciplinary core curriculum; performances and events, including an annual lecture series; library acquisitions; student writing services; networked computer classrooms; and a faculty development program that includes sabbatical grants and summer workshops. All these activities receive support from the Paideia Endowment, originally established through National Endowment for the Humanities grants matched by friends of Luther College. To see the current issue and archival issues on-line, go to <http://www. luther.edu/paideia/agora>.

The primary Agora contributors are Luther College faculty; writing is also solicited from other college community members and, occasionally, from outside writers. The journal was established in 1988 by then Paideia Director Wilfred F. Bunge, Professor of Religion and Classics. Mark Z. Muggli, Professor of English, was the editor from 1998-2004 and Peter A. Scholl, Professor of English, from 2004-2014.

Agora is distributed to five hundred on-campus faculty and administrators and to another five hundred off-campus friends of the college. Anyone wishing to be included on the mailing list should contact the editor. phone: (563) 387-2112 e-mail: klammerm@luther.edu

Contents Public Addresses

The Identities We Inherit and the Identities We Create Meline Toumani............................................................................................................. 3 Slavery, Paul, and Luther’s Legacy Katherine A. Shaner....................................................................................................... 6

2017-18 Paideia Texts and Issues Lecture Series: Be the Change

The Paradox of Change: Using Migration to Consider the Disruptive and Constructive Power of Change Susan Schmidt.............................................................................................................. 13

Sabbatical Reports

Dr. Green Goes to Washington Todd Green................................................................................................................... 19 Two Studies in Communication: Biochemical and Popular John Jefferson................................................................................................................ 23

Symposium Presentations - October 31, 2017 The Reformation of Everything, 1517-2017

Shakespeare: The Reformation, Religion, and God Mark. Z. Muggli.......................................................................................................... 25 Taking God Seriously: Martin Luther and the Peasants’ War Storm Bailey................................................................................................................. 30 Comrade Luther: The Commemoration of the 450th Anniversary of the Reformation in 1967 in the GDR Sören Steding................................................................................................................ 35 The Other Wittenberg: Lutheranism, Luther College, and an Indian Mission School Joseph Breitenstein........................................................................................................ 41 The Reformation of Medical Care Jayme Nelson................................................................................................................ 47 Reforming Spirit: the Luther College Mission Statement David Faldet................................................................................................................ 51 Did Women Have a Reformation?

Carol A. Gilbertson....................................................................................................... 56 Grace, Boldness, and Freedom: Luther for Writers Amy Weldon.................................................................................................................. 65 OCD, Martin, and Me Paul Gardner................................................................................................................ 68 An Economics Teacher Confronts Sola Scriptura, Romans 12:2, and the Great Commandment Wade Shilts................................................................................................................... 71

Cover: Young girls in formal dress at the Bethany Indian Mission School, Wittenberg, Wisconsin (date unknown).

Photo courtesy of Vesterheim Norwegian American Museum, Decorah, Iowa

Introduction

by MARTIN KLAMMER, Professor of English, Agora Editor

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his issue’s cover illustrates the complexity of the legacy of Martin Luther and Lutheranism on the 500th anniversary of his nailing the 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg.

The three Native American girls in the photo, taken perhaps about 100 years ago, were also from Wittenberg, a small town in north central Wisconsin that was home to the Bethany Indian Mission School for about 50 years, ending in 1933. As Joe Breitenstein, professor of psychology, reports in his fascinating essay (page 41), the school was founded and staffed in part by Luther College alumni and funded by the Norwegian Lutheran Synod, whose leadership included Luther College’s first president, Laur Laursen.

The school was started to carry out the exhortation of Martin Luther to “diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, and engraving them in the hearts of youth.” In the American context at the time, Luther alumnus Reverend Erik Olsen Morestad wrote that the school’s “furtherance of God’s Kingdom among the heathens has had a beneficial effect on the church.

Furthermore, it is right to begin a mission among the Indians since we occupy the land which was once their land, and that we are obligated to them.”

The legacy of this school is as complicated as the legacy of Luther himself. On one hand, the children were given an education that taught them the Christian faith as well as “domestic, agricultural, and occupational skills.” On the other hand, the effort “to fully civilize and Christianize heathen” meant removing native children from the “immense woods” of northern Wisconsin where they lived so “contented,” shearing their hair against their will, and dressing them 2

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in clothes as unfamiliar as the new spiritual teachings they were learning.

The mission was part of a larger cultural phenomenon of mission schools at the time, which one scholar describes as “in perhaps varying degrees, simply exercises in cultural genocide.”

Such complexities and contradictions of Luther and his legacy were richly explored in the October 31 “Reformation of Everything, 15172017” symposium held at the college.

This issue includes ten of those talks across a range of subjects, and another series of these essays will appear in our spring 2018 issue. Almost anywhere our faculty presenters looked, they found a rich vein to explore relating to Martin Luther and his legacy. In this issue, for example, Sören Steding examines how the communist, secular nation of East Germany wrestled with how to both honor and distance itself from Luther’s legacy during the era of the Cold War. Carol Gilbertson carefully measures both the benefits and losses to women due to the Reformation regarding “their education and social expectations, their religious lives and understandings, and their sexuality, marriage and family life.”

Closer to home and our time, David Faldet reports on how the drafting of the current Luther College mission statement helped him see that “although Martin Luther’s theology means increasingly less in the culture at large, it was still alive and well in the minds of many faculty, alumni, and regents.”

In this issue we are also happy to include essays on Luther and the Peasants War, Luther and the Reformers on medicine, and Luther and Shakespeare. You will also find more personal reflections on Luther and writing, Luther and mental health, and the profound effect of Luther’s sola scriptura on one faculty member’s spiritual growth and sense of vocation.

If all this isn’t quite enough Luther for you, there is also Kat Shaner’s illuminating Phi Beta Kappa lecture on “Slavery, Paul, and Luther’s Legacy,” in which she tells us that Luther translated the New Testament into German according to what he felt to be “theologically apt,” including his creation of the phrase “faith alone,” the very foundation of what Lutherans believe.

Add to all this a couple of first-rate lectures and two interesting sabbatical reports, and what we offer in this issue is not just the largest but also I believe the most diverse set of writings during my three years as Agora editor. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Merry Christmas.

The Identities We Inherit and the Identities We Create

by MELINE TOUMANI

Meline Toumani is the author of the campus-wide summer reading for the 2017-2018 academic year, There Was and There Was Not: A Journey Through Hate and Possibility in Turkey, Armenia, and Beyond. This text was delivered as the convocation address, August 31, 2017.

Now, I’ve spent enough time around academics to know that someone out there—maybe a philosophy professor— just let loose a silent groan. And I don’t blame them. When we talk about identity, the potential is high for clichés about valuing diversity and respecting differences—or about finding yourself and “doing you”—so much so that when writer friends in New York asked me what I would be talking about in this speech, I was almost embarrassed to utter this word: identity.

But at the same time that it’s a breeding ground for clichés, identity is probably the most complicated, controversial issue on college campuses today: we are living in the time of trigger warnings, micro-aggressions, new gender pronouns, and debates about freedom of expression whose answers are not obvious. Students, you thought you were entering the dignified halls of learning, and you are; but you’re also walking into a minefield. For that matter, I’m walking into a minefield, because it’s almost impossible to talk about identity without offending someone, forgetting someone, misunderstanding someone, or being misunderstood. Identity is how we understand ourselves as human beings.

But it’s also a gigantic, thorny mess.

You’ll notice I haven’t even defined, yet, what I mean by identity; that’s partly because I only have a short time here, and there is a massive body of academic

theory on the subject, which you have four years ahead of you to learn about.

It’s also because I think sometimes there can be value in keeping things simple, to see what comes up in your own mind, before all the theorizing and problematizing and contextualizing and other -izings that you will soon become fluent in.

For now let’s just say that when I talk about identity I’m talking about the things you probably think I’m talking about: racial and ethnic background (and that’s regardless of whether you belong to a minority group or to the majority, by the way), religion, gender, sexuality, class, political positions, anything that feels so central to your sense of who you are and where you came from and what you have experienced that when someone says something about it that interferes even a little bit with the story you’ve already settled on, you feel your blood pressure shoot up.

The experience of identity can be many different things for different people, and sometimes many different things for the same person. It may be an experience of persecution, of privilege, of suffering, of feeling superior, of feeling unequal.

It can be a feeling of being trapped between different sets of traditions. And sometimes also enjoying the movement between two different worlds. It has the potential to both broaden and limit your perspective.

Before I go any further I’m going to tell you a story.1 Once upon a time, there was a man named Jim Collins. Jim was born in 1913. His mother died when he was a baby, and his father died a

LUTHER COLLEGE PHOTO BUREAU

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oday I’m going to share some brief thoughts about an issue that was central to my book and that has also become central to life on American college campuses. The issue is identity.

Meline Toumani speaks with first-year students about her book, which they read as their first text in Paideia 111. few years after that. Jim spent part of his childhood in an orphanage in the Bronx, and had little contact with any extended family. As a result, he knew almost nothing about where he came from. But he knew one thing: his people were Irish.

Jim Collins was extremely proud of his Irish-American heritage. It was the core of his identity. He married an Irish-American woman and together they built a solid middle-class life. His Irish pride was all he had left from his parents and it was the thing he most wanted to pass on to his seven children.

One of those children was a daughter named Alice, who is now in her seventies. One day a few years ago, Alice saw a commercial for a company called Ancestry.com. I’m sure most of you know about it; it’s a service that helps people build out their family trees, and you can even send in your actual DNA and have it analyzed.

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Alice already knew she was Irish on both sides, of course. But by this time, her father—Jim Collins—had passed on, and she regretted that she knew so little detail about the family history on his side. She was thinking it would be nice to find some long-lost relatives, maybe find out what part of Ireland the family had come from. So she ordered a DNA test kit, filled up a little plastic vial with her saliva, and sent it off.

switched with another little baby boy who was born on the same day.

lives are, in fact, the very opposite of an accident.

Jim Collins was supposed to have been Phillip Benson, son of Ida and Sam, a Jewish couple. Phillip Benson was supposed to be Jim Collins, son of Katie and John. Both men died without knowing a thing about their mistaken origins. And when Jim Collins died, his family gave him an Irish wake and sang Danny Boy, just as he had always wanted.

When I talk about identity as an accident my point is not to ridicule it, or to minimize it. But at a time when our country is seeing a resurgence of intolerance and flat-out racism, we need to find new ways to talk about identity that strike a difficult balance: neither dismissing the power it has over us, nor blindly giving in to that power.

Identity is probably the most complicated, controversial issue on college campuses today: we are living in the time of trigger warnings, micro-aggressions, new gender pronouns, and debates about freedom of expression whose answers are not obvious.

When I read this story in the newspaper I couldn’t stop thinking about it. What I couldn’t stop thinking about was the fact that Jim Collins’ idea about his Irish origins, the thing he valued the most, resulted from nothing more than an accident. What does it mean to have given so much importance to something so random? For something to feel so true for a person when all it took was a little tube of spit to prove it false?

When she got back the results, she was disappointed. I should have known better, she thought—it was all just a gimmick, totally not accurate. How could it be accurate? It showed that she was only half Irish. The other half was supposedly Jewish. This was obviously impossible.

She was sure there had been a mix-up in the lab, but just to quiet any questions, she tried again, this time sending away her vial of saliva to a different DNA testing company, 23andme. The results came back identical: half Irish … and half Jewish.

What happened next involved a long and fascinating odyssey of research, and we don’t have time for all the details; I encourage you to read the full story in the Washington Post. But after two years of investigations, and with the help of a network of genealogy experts, Alice figured out what had happened.

There was no mix-up in the lab at Ancestry.com or 23andme. The mix-up happened in Fordham Hospital in the Bronx, on September 23, 1913. Her father, Jim Collins, was accidentally 4

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Now let me be clear: I am in no way suggesting that Jim Collins’ Irishness would have had some deeper, more valid meaning if he actually did have Irish DNA, whatever that even means. On the contrary: the story got me thinking about how so much of identity is a story we learn to tell ourselves about ourselves. Jim Collins’ Irishness would have been an accident even if he were born of Irish parents. After all, being born is the original accident at the foundation of each of our lives.

And you may be thinking, well, that’s interesting, but it seems harmless enough. So maybe he wore green on St. Patrick’s Day and liked a good corned beef sandwich. No big deal.

Unfortunately, identity doesn’t usually stop with food and holidays, not in Ireland and not anywhere else either.

We saw a very dark example of this in Charlottesville a few weeks ago.

The problem is that identity is on the one hand a kind of accident, and on the other hand, it’s a means of survival. It’s tied in to one of our most primal needs as human beings: the need to belong to something, to feel that we come from somewhere, that we have a history, that in this great, unknowable mystery of a universe, we have a tribe. That our

If you’re starting to get a little bit confused now, that’s okay. Am I talking about the kind of identity that you’ve been taught to respect—that of ethnic minorities, women, the LGBTQ community; or am I talking about something ugly, like nationalism or white supremacy?

Well, that’s part of why this is so complicated. The problem with identity is that everybody has one.

As those of you who’ve read my book already know, I was born in Iran, into an Armenian, nominally Christian family.

We moved to the U.S. when I was three, about six months before the 1979 Islamic revolution.

To tell you the truth, I think I ended up with a rather convenient deluxe combo package of identity—I’ve got a Caucasian, Christian ethnicity, complicated just enough by a tragic history of genocide and a massive victim complex to keep things interesting; I’ve got birthrights to a Muslim country— very on trend right now—and, to round things out, a full K-12 schooling in the U.S. This particular set of identity markers has left me with the unusual privilege of choosing, more or less, when to inhabit my foreignness and when to set it aside.

Throughout my life, my identity has been a source of pride, a source of shame, a way of pulling rank on certain conversation topics, a reason for others to tokenize me and project their assumptions about the immigrant experience, a way for me to feel special, a way for me to feel deeply, viscerally alienated; a way to be treated as an expert about an entire region by people who wouldn’t dare risk questioning my authority.

The huge range of ways that my identity has both enriched my life and complicated it has left me highly skeptical of the entire enterprise.

Identity can be used and abused in so many ways. We know exactly why it’s ugly when we see it in Charlottesville.

But sometimes we lose track of the ways that it influences us on a more ordinary, everyday level.

We need to find new ways to talk about identity that strike a difficult balance: neither dismissing the power it has over us, nor blindly giving in to that power.

And college is a time when you’ll come face to face with what this means for you personally. Every single one of you, sitting here, looking around and thinking about the days ahead, is having both a shared experience and a private experience.

Maybe you don’t see many people whose skin is the same color as yours; maybe, by contrast, a whole group of kids from your high school are here, and secretly you were hoping to have a little more space. Maybe your parents donated a whole bunch of money to the college. Maybe your parents didn’t go to college.

And just as each of you arrives with a unique history, there are unique struggles and discoveries ahead for each of you. There will be classroom debates, personal relationships, perhaps study abroad experiences, and all sorts of other adventures that will stretch your sense of who you are in relation to other people.

Now, back to our man Jim Collins and the idea of identity as an accident.

When I talk about it this way, my hope is to create a bit of space around the subject: space for empathy and for understanding why people are driven to do the things they do in the name of identity.

Our identities can be so powerful that it’s almost impossible to think of them as something accidental or constructed.

I know, because I tried it. You should try it too. If you really take a moment—it doesn’t need to be right now, but maybe later when you’re walking back to your dorm, or falling asleep at night—really take a moment to imagine that whatever is the core thing that you believe makes you you—whether it’s that you’re Christian or Jewish or Norwegian or Native American or gay or wealthy or you use a wheelchair or come from a military family—whatever that thing is that will flare up inside you later this semester when you find yourself in a classroom discussion that touches on a topic that feels like your turf—just take a moment and imagine if that thing about you just … weren’t the case.

Just really try to imagine it. I can tell you how strange this feels because I tried it myself. I tried to imagine if I weren’t Armenian. If I weren’t from Iran. Even, on a simpler level, if I didn’t identify with California or New York, the two main places I’ve lived most my life. It’s destabilizing. Everything in you will resist it.

But if this little experiment can loosen the grip, for just a moment, that your sense of identity has on you, interesting things can begin to happen. A space suddenly opens up. And in that space, you get to make choices—and here’s where we move from the realm of accidents to the realm of intentions.

But I’m not talking about choosing a different label or political party or pronoun. I’m talking about choosing how to relate to your identity.

Do you want to use your identity as a blindfold or as a lens? As a weapon?

As a shield? Do you want to drop it into conversations as a showstopper?

As a way of pulling rank? Do you want to use it as a way to say to the person across from you, here’s something you might not have considered? Or: what you’re describing doesn’t fit with what I’ve witnessed. Let me tell you why.

Sometimes, when we are driven by identity, what we really want is to feel seen. We want to matter. We want someone to acknowledge what we have been through—even if on the surface it looks like we haven’t been through much of anything at all.

Take a moment to imagine that whatever is the core thing that you believe makes you you … just weren’t the case.

This is natural. It’s human. Fighting it is useless. But part of what makes us human is the ability—sometimes, when we’re at our very best—to choose how we react to our feelings, or at the very least to choose an intention about how to react. Just like animals, we have powerful, primal impulses, but unlike animals we can sometimes override them.

Here are some reactions that will take over if you don’t make a conscious choice: Defensiveness. Fear. Judgment.

Anger.

Here are some examples of intentions you can choose: Patience. Curiosity.

A sense of humor about yourself. The intention to open up the conversation instead of shutting it down.

Then, with our best intentions at play, instead of being driven by a feeling that says see me, we can choose a reaction that says: Let me see.

Notes 1. The following story is paraphrased from an article in the Washington Post, by the journalist Libby Copeland: “Who was she?

A DNA test only opened new mysteries,” July 27, 2017.

What about using your identity to ask yourself questions: what am I resisting seeing because it’s too uncomfortable?

What emotion is motivating me?

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Slavery, Paul, and Luther’s Legacy

by KATHERINE A. SHANER

Katherine A. Shaner (’98) is the assistant professor of New Testament at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. This text was delivered as the Phi Beta Kappa Homecoming Symposium Address.

Twenty years ago this fall, H. George Anderson, on a visit to campus after his election as Bishop of the ELCA, reinvigorated a seedling of nerdiness that Lise Kildegaard had planted. A few years earlier, Professor Kildegaard found me in the library one Saturday afternoon pouring over Milton. She told me that I seriously needed to consider graduate school. I balked. Several years later, Bishop Anderson reiterated this.

Both suggested places like Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago. They, of course, did not know how crazy those suggestions seemed to me. After all, I was just a kid from the sticks of Nebraska.

Also twenty years ago this fall, I borrowed the key to Professor Tom Kraabel’s office so that I could use the beta version of Accordance Bible Software to research Romans 3:28 and all instances of ouk alla … kai monon 6

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HTTP://DIVINITY.WFU.EDU/ACADEMICS/FACULTY/ KATHERINE-A-SHANER/

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wenty years ago this weekend, I was a senior here at Luther College, thinking about graduation, and clueless about all the transformations for which this place had prepared me.1 I had just applied for the Fulbright Fellowship, or perhaps better said, Peter Scholl had guilted me into applying for the Fulbright Fellowship. You see, I was pretty sure that finishing my application would cause me to neglect studying for my chemistry midterm and thus I would fail. Such failure would show I was a fraud and prove that I didn’t deserve the fellowship anyway. Professor Scholl simply said, “Fine. But I thought you were going to get it.” One of my few late night study and writing sessions in my Luther career followed. And it turns out, Professor Scholl was right.

(Greek for “not only … but also”) in the New Testament. I spent five hours in his office again, on a Saturday afternoon. I got delightfully lost in the nerdy details of Greek syntax. Those hours led to my senior paper examining Luther’s translation of Romans 3:28—a paper that I wrote in German and now must apologize to Ruth Kath for its horrors of grammar and style.

Each of these encounters fostered a transformation not just in confidence but in a sense of call and a sense of how I could use my own voice for the world. You see, the transformation for which Luther College prepared me was the ability to see myself as a scholar by simply being me—intellectually curious, eager to be engaged, fascinated by language. And in my best moments over the past 20 years trusting the me that Luther College formed and endorsed has helped me to walk in places I didn’t know a kid from Nebraska could ever go. Trusting in the me that Luther College formed and endorsed also got me to sit myself down in the library on many Saturday afternoons over the past two decades, working on homework, dissertation, sermons, articles, lectures, even a

book. Little did I know that all those hours of pouring over ancient texts and slides of archaeological artifacts and even digging out a few from the ground would lead me right back here to Luther College. So this morning I am grateful to Kate Narveson and Will Bunge for the invitation to think about Luther’s legacy and how it might converse with my work on Roman-era slavery and the biblical text.

Ad Fontes, Sola Scriptura, and the Language of Translation The first thing I want to do this morning is to quickly remind you of a couple of concepts from Martin Luther and the Reformation that still have enormous impact in the world of biblical studies today. The first is the Enlightenment concept, the humanist concept of ad fontes, a return to the sources. In Luther’s day Latin was the official language of theology and of the church and of all things biblical, but the biblical text was not originally written in Latin. It was written in Greek and Hebrew. And so, Luther went back to the Greek to retranslate the New Testament, to rethink theology, to go back to the sources. Three hundred and fifty years later in the nineteenth century, as scholars continue to work with these sources in Greek, historicalcritical methods begin to appear on the European biblical studies scene.

Although this seems far removed from the Reformation, Luther’s move back to the sources puts in motion a scholarly genealogy that ultimately makes historical-critical studies possible. Over the first centuries of the Reformation, the ad fontes impulse shifts interpretive lenses from a view of the biblical text as a systematic theological treatise to a

view of the biblical text as embedded in historical contexts and histories of interpretation. While this is the briefest of arguments, it is the historical-critical shift in biblical studies in which I now stand as a feminist biblical scholar— and as a scholar who likes to look at archaeological stuff and think about who’s been left out of our stories of the earliest Christians.

The second Reformation concept that I want to highlight is sola scriptura. Sola scriptura is the idea that the scripture is the most reliable way in which the word of God speaks to us in our time.

This concept has been parsed many ways over the last 500 years, and as Protestants, we certainly do not fully agree on the meaning of sola scriptura.

But I am operating on a principle that I have read in Luther and experienced in community, which is this: The word of God, the Gospel, comes to us through our biblical texts when they are wrestled with, scrutinized, and proclaimed in community. Sola scriptura in our Lutheran reformation heritage claims that God’s voice is to be found when the Bible is read and interpreted in community. In the wrestlings and wranglings—that is where the Gospel can be found. Thus we have the liberty, in community, to shift some of our hermeneutical lenses. I’ll talk about that in just a minute.

The third concept is one of Luther’s greatest contributions to humanities scholarship, the translation of the biblical text into German. Luther insisted that the biblical text should be read in the vernacular, in the language of the people. Of course, this got him in trouble with his critics. The critics became so adamant that in 1530 he wrote an open letter defending his translation of the New Testament: Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen und Fürbitte der Heiligen (On Translating: An Open Letter). Luther writes: “We do not have to inquire of the literal Latin how we are to speak in German as these asses do. Rather we must inquire about this of the mother in the home, the children in the street, the common man in the marketplace. We must be guided by their language. The way they speak and do our translating accordingly that way

they’ll understand it and recognize that we are speaking German to them.”2 Now you can substitute German for English, for whatever the vernacular language is, and this impulse still challenges us. Luther advocates inthe-streets German. In the process of collating multiple German dialects, Luther effectively standardized the language. I don’t think we can fathom exactly how much that standardization of language permeates all that we do.

I certainly got a glimpse of why such standardizations are important while reading unedited Shakespeare and Chaucer as an English major here at Luther. But we also start to see how much we take the standardization of language for granted, especially when reading the biblical text, especially Paul’s letters. Paul was working with a Greek language that crossed geography, but the written form was far from standard.

Thus, Martin Luther fundamentally transformed scripture by translating it into a standardized language.

Sola scriptura in our Lutheran reformation heritage claims that God’s voice is to be found when the Bible is read and interpreted in community.

In the wrestlings and wranglings—that is where the Gospel can be found.

But Luther is also very clear in his Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen that he translated the New Testament according to his sense of theology. He did not translate it not according to the literal letter of the Greek but rather according to what he knew to be theologically apt.

Thus, in Romans 3:28 when Paul says, “For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law,” Luther actually adds, “a person is justified by faith alone apart from works prescribed by the law.” The Sendbrief argues that this expression “faith alone” with a contrastive conjunction “apart” is the one that speaks German.3 That

is, there is a German idiom which he follows. Thus, the right translation is the one that folks in the street can understand. Luther is very clear that German syntax needs to be one principle in translation, not Greek or Latin syntax. Funny enough, though, Luther does not use this idiom to translate any other verse in the New Testament. He must have known this argument was weak because he further justifies his translation by saying that the right theology produces the right translation and that “faith alone” is the right theology.

Let me pause for a moment and critique Luther just a bit. This idea of translating according to what the mother in the home, the children in the streets, and the people in the marketplace are speaking is certainly one that makes the biblical text more accessible. In the sixteenth century, books and printed materials in vernacular languages were becoming cheaper and easier to find, but they were still not accessible to the mother in the house, the children in the street, or the folks in the marketplace.

A person needed money to commission and purchase such works, education to read them, and storage space to keep them. Luther does not have a means of taking this move to the vernacular all the way down to the streets. Now I know scholars like our own Kate Narveson are doing research on how these biblical texts matter on the ground, and I am excited for it. But the idea that folks are reading these texts instead of hearing them, the idea that they are opening their own personal Bibles and reading from them the way we do today, is not quite the image that is most useful.

Instead let’s think about the ways in which the larger cultural context—the mother in the home, the children in the streets, the person in the marketplace— is in fact what shapes languages and concepts. For my own research concerns, getting down to those streets is the key to understanding how it is that we relate ad fontes, back to the sources.

So in the spirit of ecclesia semper reformanda est—the church is always reforming—I would like to suggest three shifts in the way that we read the Bible. These shifts are built on Fall 2017/Agora

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possibilities opened by the Reformation.

The first is a shift from singular voices to communal voices. The second is a shift from words to context or rather from the linguistic world to the lived world—a shift that brings vernacular language and lived culture into our translations and our understandings of the text. A third shift is a little more controversial: I want to advocate for a shift from justification to justice.

Shift 1: From Singular Voices to Communal Voices Since Ad fontes takes us back to the Greek text of the New Testament, interpreters now read Paul’s letters in their original language, and examine closely the ways in which Paul is using Greek idioms, the ways in which Paul’s language is playing off of Plato, is playing off of many of the other Greek texts that he had been reading. We see now the way in which Paul’s language is the language in the streets. You see, Paul is writing letters to folks he knows on the ground, in cities around the Aegean—to the mother in the home, the children in the streets, the folks in the marketplace. He uses their common language. If we know that Paul wrote to the mother in the home, the children in streets, the people in marketplace, we also know that they wrote back to him.

The Corinthian correspondence certainly tells us that (1 Corinthians 1:11; 7:1).

Thus we cannot understand Paul’s language unless we understand it in dialogue with those in the communities to whom he wrote. Folks wrote back to Paul. They have constituted their own communities and their own understanding of what it means to be faithful to the gospel. Since these communities existed apart from Paul, we need to shift our interpretive lenses from Paul as the central figure of these early Christian communities in Corinth, in Philippi, in Thessaloniki, to the communities themselves as the central repository for the gospel.4 Paul’s letters present the perfect opportunity for this shift because as texts they are self-aware that they are dialogical and rhetorical in nature. So, if we decenter Paul and look to the community, diversity appears in our earliest Christ-following communities. New, richer contexts 8

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and meanings are possible from these letters—and the letters themselves are more alive, more complex. Ultimately, a clearer picture of ad fontes emerges when we go back to the sources of our communal pasts.

Let’s look very briefly, perhaps the briefest jaunt possible, at some of the contexts, geographical and prosopographical,5 where communities to which Paul wrote lived their faith.

What I want to emphasize here is that these communities were living in their contexts, not against or outside of the Roman Empire, but fully within it.

Imagine a map of the Roman Empire.

Paul is from somewhere on the relatively eastern edge, from Tarsus. He traveled a lot, though. He went to Damascus, to Arabia, Jerusalem, Galatia, Colossae, Laodikea, Ephesos, Assos, Philippi, Thessaloniki, Athens, Corinth. He wrote to communities as far away as Rome and he wanted to go to Spain. Paul got around. Paul knew a lot of folks. Since he got around and knew a lot of folks, Paul also encountered an incredible amount of diversity. The Roman Empire was not homogeneous, especially these cities which are major metropolitan areas. Paul physically traveled to these cities, and he often related one-on-one with communities in these cities. The landscapes and city lay-outs might have looked similar, but each community that Paul wrote to had a different character to it. We know this because of the very different themes that show up in each of Paul’s undisputed letters.

If we’re going to shift from Paul as center of our inquiry to the people in these communities, the first question we really need to ask is, “Who are these folks?” If you put together a list of all the people Paul named in his correspondence, you get 71 people—and these are just the folks who Paul greeted or talked about or asked about or who wrote themselves into the letters. And yes, we do hear other people speak.

With these named people a diversity of voices comes through the text. So if we ask ourselves another question—“Who writes and who preaches in these communities?”—we can answer: Paul, Timothy, Titus, Sosthenes, Apollos, Cephas, Barnabas, Silvanus. All of these

people are either co-writers with Paul on these letters or people Paul disclosed as preachers within the communities to which he related. But there is one person in particular who stands out to me: a guy named Tertius in Romans 16:22. He wrote, “I, Tertius, the writer of this letter greet you in the Lord.”

Now Tertius is the name of an enslaved or formerly enslaved person. Many slaves in antiquity were named after numbers: Primus, Secundus, Tertius, Quatrus. Tertius’s name means “third.”

That’s not a name you give to your beloved third-born child ordinarily. We also know that Paul employed scribes.

Many times these scribes were enslaved laborers within the Roman economy.

Enslaved folks in the Roman economy didn’t only labor according to chattel principles—although they did that too—but sometimes they were trained in specific technical arts, like writing.

Why would you ever want to write if you could have someone else do it for you? Paul’s culture was an oral culture.

Tertius’ culture was an oral culture. He has a special skill within that culture that other folks do not have. In Romans 16, we hear the voice of an enslaved laborer. When we de-center Paul’s voice, we start to hear others in the community whose voices might give us a different picture of how these earliest Christ-following communities might have existed on their own terms.

Of course, this creates a problem if our aim is to find the definitive, valid-forall-time meaning of the biblical text.

Luther’s embrace of ad fontes and his insistence on the vernacular pave the way for multiple readers to interpret scripture and thus to produce multiple meanings. Whenever we allow multiple voices to interpret a text—and we should do this—we must also allow the biblical text to have multiple meanings from multiple perspectives in multiple contexts—even in Paul’s day. So Tertius might in fact understand Paul’s teachings on slavery in 1 Corinthians 7:21–24 or Galatians 4:21–5:1 much, much differently than Sosthenes would.

Timothy might see it still differently (1 Timothy 6:1–2).

Philippians is a good example of a letter that contains multiple voices.

In Philippians Timothy is the cowriter (Philippians 1:1, 2:19–24).

Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:25–30), another enslaved name, acts in roles that are familiar within Roman slavery; he was sent on behalf of someone to serve Paul while was imprisoned. Paul sent him back after an acute illness.

Philippians also names Syntyche and Eudoia whom Paul says need to reconcile (Philippians 4:2–3). Both women have slave names. Thus, enslaved or formerly enslaved women appear in Philippians. This “discovery” of the named community voices in the text also means that there are other, missing voices from our texts—voices that make early Christian communities even more full, even more diverse. Do you see how this shift from Paul to the communities starts to shift our understanding of Christian communities today? We can no longer assume uniformity with Paul, or even unity among communities in the early Christian world. We can, however, assume a communal spirit within this diversity and multiplicity.

This history, then, becomes the impulse for us today to assume the spirit of diversity and multiplicity within our own Christian communities.

Whenever we allow multiple voices to interpret a text—and we should do this—we must also allow the biblical text to have multiple meanings from multiple perspectives in multiple contexts—even in Paul’s day.

One quick note here before we move to the next shift. I want to tell some truths about slavery, Paul’s relationship to it, and these communities’ relationship to it. Slavery and its omnipresence in the biblical text is one of the most difficult parts of our Christian legacy.

Nowhere in Paul’s undisputed letters do we hear slavery clearly, unambiguously condemned. Even in Galatians 3:28 abolition is not the intent, rather the assertion that neither enslaved nor free

status is better—but the verse does not advocate for a change in actual status.

Now there are lots of different ways in which scholars have tried to explain this particular absence. There are a lot of hermeneutical backflips that we turn in order to assert that the text liberates slaves. But the logics of enslavement are thoroughly embedded in the text from its metaphorical expressions—Paul is the slave Christ when he writes to the Romans (Romans 1:1)—to the text’s inability to fully free Onesimos in Philemon. Slavery and slave logics are embedded within most of our scriptural texts. When I come to my last shift from justification to justice, I will talk a little bit more about that.

Shift 2: From Words to Contexts If we shift from singular voices to communal voices, we also need to take seriously not just the words of the biblical text, but also their embodied, lived context. The shift from words to context, or from the linguistic world to the lived world fundamentally changes our relationship to the biblical text.

Those of you who knew me as a student at Luther College know well that I love words. I majored in German and English and studied Greek on the side while I was here. My training in New Testament was very word-heavy— words are my daily companions. But I will argue that it is ethically necessary for us to move beyond words into lived contexts when we interpret the Bible, especially Paul’s letters. In Martin Luther’s world, words mattered. Words were the things that scholars studied.

Words are the starting point for sola scriptura. Our scriptures are made up of words. And through the centuries we have tethered scriptural authority to words in ways that have proven difficult for us to untangle—particularly with the rise of evangelical (in the American sense) biblical interpretation.

Historical-critical methods in biblical studies already bring into question some of this impulse toward words.

In fact, “context” has become all the buzzword in biblical studies for a move beyond the literal words on the page.

As such the literary context of any given verse needs to be examined— something quite familiar to me with

my English-major education. We need to study, for example, the Christ hymn in Philippians 2:5–11 within the whole context of the letter of the Philippians, and we need to study Philippians in the whole context of Paul’s works, which need to be studied in the whole context of scripture. But in this kind of literary analysis, we are always still stuck with words.

Sometimes, even in literature studies, the call for context is a call to understand the historical background of our texts. Historical-critical methods in the last 150 years have brought historical studies and in particular archaeology into the picture of biblical studies. But even there, our archaeological finds and our historical research have mostly been pressed into service to the biblical text. In other words, history becomes the background for the text rather than a context in which the text is itself embedded. So, the text stands apart from the context of the Roman Empire, instead of being thoroughly embedded in it—and all of its socio-political structures.

This move toward historical context, toward contextualizing texts historically, introduced more texts with more words into our inquiries. Scholars have argued that the diversity of perspectives of theologies within early Christianity needs to be part of New Testament interpretation. Thus, most students of the New Testament and early Christian history study texts outside of the canon in addition to those within it—texts like the Dead Sea Scrolls, the apocryphal acts of apostles, various apocalypses, Clement’s writings, Ignatius’s letters, Justin Martyr, the Nag Hammadi texts, and, most recently, the Tchacos Codex in which the Gospel of Judas was found.

Scholars who insist on understanding the diversity of early Christian texts have shown that early Christianity and its attendant texts was just as diverse as any other historical period of literature.

We simply don’t have as much preserved as we do from some other periods. And our polemicizing of “heretical” texts has kept us from seeing them as part and parcel of the Christian heritage —even if they haven’t been deemed useful.

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and non-scriptural—as literature that is dependent upon each other and as a body of work that reveals a dialogue among early communities. In other words, we have shown a critical lens on the literary heritage of the first century.

But I want to push this a little further.

You see, the lived context of early Christ-following communities shaped their theological imaginations and thus their texts. In fact, this lived, embodied context, I argue, shaped their theological possibilities more definitively than words. Now what do I mean by their lived, embodied contexts? What I mean by this are the buildings they lived in, the toilets they used, the pots they cooked in or refrigerated their grain in—I found one of those this summer while digging in Omrit, Israel. Their lived contexts included the inscriptions that were written all over their marketplaces.

Their lived contexts included the statues and images that permeated the streets where the children played. Their lived contexts included the spaces where mothers raised their children. Their lived contexts included the economic trade routes they built and traveled.

Their lived contexts took for granted that slaves were everywhere, that some people were rich and others weren’t, that some women were powerful and some were property. These were their lived contexts. As biblical interpreters, we need to pay attention to these contexts as much as we do to the words we have inherited from them.

Let me walk you through an example of the difference this shift from words to context makes. One of the heritages of the historical-critical method, indeed of Luther and his defense of his translation, is the discipline of philology—the art of figuring out what words mean and how and why.

Philologists who study Greek have typically done their work in Classics departments, but there is also a long tradition of New Testament philology as well. These lovers of Greek words have put together invaluable, by now standard, very large dictionaries for our reference. They have collated these dictionaries based on other Greek literature of the day—literary 10

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contexts—so that those of us in subsequent generations would know what individual Greek words mean.

There are always Greek words that are a little bit tricky to define. We find one of these in the Christ hymn of Philippians 2:5–11. The first verses (vv. 5–6) of this Christ hymn read: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus who, though he was in the form of God, did not consider rape and robbery as being equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, being found in a role as human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”6 Anyone notice anything peculiar about that translation? It is certainly not translated the way you’ve heard it before. This is my translation. The key piece in this translation is this one little word, harpagmos. Harpagmos is a word that has baffled interpreters and translators for a long time, in part because it is so blunt in its meaning: rape and robbery. Such meanings are not exactly the actions we want to associate with God. In fact, this meaning is so blunt that in the standard dictionary of New Testament literature several entries discuss this word and its meaning as “rape and robbery” through multiple strands of Greek literature. But at the very bottom of the entry, the very last definition, the compilers say that defining harpagmos as “rape and robbery” is “next to impossible in Philippians 2.

Being equal to God cannot be equated with the act of robbery.”7 Perhaps it is true in our contemporary theologies that being equal to God cannot be equated with rape and robbery. The way that we translate this text in our New Revised Standard Version, in our typical translations of this text, follows our contemporary theology. So modern translators are actually working within the spirit of Luther’s reformation and his ideas about the relationship between translation and theology. But if we look at the larger lived context, if we start to look at the Roman world surrounding this text, we see that theologies that include harpagmos as the prerogative of the divinity are everywhere. Such theologies go hand-in-hand with Roman imperial ideas about victory,

about divinity of the emperors. Just look at coins from first-century Philippi. One well-known coin shows on one side Augustus with the goddess Nike, the goddess of victory. On the other side it shows Romulus and Remus, the twin founders of Rome. The divi Iulii who come from them constitute the family lineage of those who inherit the favor of divine victory. The earliest Christfollowers held these coins in their hands. They were using them in the marketplace. The children were flipping them on the streets. The mother in the house was giving them to their children to go buy a pomegranate. These coins were everywhere in this time-period.

Thus, when we think about a place like Philippi, where Paul and Silvanus’s letter is received, we must take seriously the fact that the Roman Empire and its attendant theologies were simply “in the air.”

If I could, I would take you to Greece, to see the Roman forum in Philippi.

You would see a very large rectangular open space—at least as big as a football field. In the center of the rectangle would have been a paved, open-air market area. Along the edges would have been stoas, or covered walkways, where philosophers, politicians, and scholars gathered. Shops would have lined the outer long edges, and temples to Roman deities and administrative buildings from the Roman Empire would have lined the shorter ends. This forum was built in the late first century bce just after the victory at the Battle of Actium when the Romans took over the city. When they took over, the Romans fundamentally changed the center of the city. There was no way to do your normal business—get groceries, converse with a philosopher, debate with politicians, participate in civic life, without encountering this space or spaces like it. Roman imperial influence was everywhere from the roads that were built, to the aqueducts that brought water, to the Latin that appeared in inscriptions on the statues of the victorious Roman emperor and his captives that populated the area.

Most of the archaeological evidence from Philippi is incomplete. Ancient stones are very weathered, very broken.

We often go to other places within the Roman Empire in order to see the types of images that most likely were part of any Roman city, including Philippi. To that end, I want to take you to a place called Aphrodisias in modern-day Turkey. We know little or nothing about Christian communities there. Thus, our explorations in the first century will not be of Christian artifacts, but rather of Roman artifacts that were part of the lived context in the city. The city of Aphrodisias was a walled city that was well fortified. As a city, they really loved Augustus. In fact, they built a temple to Augustus where sacrifices were regularly performed, and the road leading up to the temple was lined with two, two-story buildings that displayed reliefs across the tops.

These reliefs were images from Greek and Roman mythology. They were images of stories that everyone in the city knew. There were also images of conquered peoples among the reliefs, too. Some of the captured peoples were statues of single women, hand bound, clothing disheveled. Under each woman was a caption. One of them says, “ethnos Ioudaion”, the captive Jews.

These women were not represented as honorable women. Being conquered is not a good thing.

suggests the kind of relationship Rome sustained with Britannia.

This is an image of harpagmos. This is an image of rape and robbery.

This is an image in which being god equals showing one’s ability to effect harpagmos. The image in the Roman Empire of what it meant to conquer a people and rule with divine sanction was an image of rape and robbery. So, if we use lived contexts to understand the nuance of words, we can use these images to help us understand harpagmos.

What difference does it make when we return to Philippians 2:6? The NRSV translates the verse this way: “Jesus who though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited.” That translation is not nearly as blunt as the Greek, particularly if we take the images into account. After seeing this image, it is difficult to dismiss harpagmos as mere exploitation.

Shift 3: From Justification to Justice

PHOTO BY KATHERINE A. SHANER

Among these reliefs were also more active scenes of conquering. Emperors hold partially nude women in brutal poses like the one pictured.

This is an image of Claudius conquering Brittania—and as hard as it is for us to see the image—there is something beautiful about Claudius. There was something celebratory about this image that we can still discern in its rhetoric.

You can see the way in which the beautiful Roman imperial presence, Claudius, and his captive, Britannia, are in a clear power relationship to each other. The depiction of Claudius as the partially nude signals his divinity. As an aside, I’m very glad we don’t signal divinity that way today. But this heroic nudity was in fact one of the standard iconographic ways to signal that someone was a little more than human.

The woman at the bottom of the relief is defenseless in Claudius’s hands. In part, her gender signals as much—and

gendered hierarchies, and enslavement. I am also clear that our American context struggles with cultures of dominance, violence, imperialism, gender inequality, and enslavement. We see these worked out in our streets nearly every day. From another perspective, however, the Christ hymn can be quite liberating because it ascribes to Jesus the form of a slave.

Jesus is the enslaved woman in this image. Picturing a dishonored woman, a captive, a slave, as the divinity creates liberating space for some of our fellow disenfranchised citizens. We see a possibility for liberation for people who know deep in their bones and their flesh the legacies of slavery in our country.

This text and the way we understand it within lived contexts can have multiple meanings and in fact must have multiple meanings. Sometimes we need to use it for resistance to imperial power structures. Sometimes we need to use it for resistance to the ways in which our culture tells certain people that they don’t matter. Each of us has our own lived context which we bring to this text. In the shift from words to context, we see biblical texts in multiple contexts and in multiple ways.

Claudius conquering Britannia, 1st century CE from Sebasteion in Aphrodisias, Turkey.

Of course, I am looking at this text with my own feminist concerns: understanding religious violence, wrestling with enslaved logics that permeate our texts. I am clear that my goal is to tell some truths about our earliest Christ-following communities.

They were immersed in cultures of domination, violence, imperialism,

In taking seriously the Reformation turn to vernacular language, to the language on the streets, we need to listen for perspectives other than our own. We need to listen to the voices that ask different questions from our own. We need to listen to the voices that call out for justice even when our own theologies have traditionally suggested that answering such cries is not crucial to our salvation. Luther’s main theological question, the one he wrestled with most vehemently was, “How can I find a gracious God?” The answer to this question has been considered the kerygma, the singular point of the Gospel. Luther concludes that we do, indeed, have a gracious God to whom we are already justified by faith alone, from whom we are no longer separated. We do still wrestle with this question today, but it is a little unsettling to me that it would still be our central question 500 years later after Luther, as we claim, answered it Fall 2017/Agora

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definitively. Luther himself says that our salvation is already worked out. This claim alone should free us from the need to put more energy into our own salvation. And since we have already found our salvation through faith in Christ, we can turn that energy to the work for justice in this world, for reconciliation and justification with each other. This is one of the great promises of the Reformation. We no longer need to worry about our own salvation, for we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.

In fact, Luther’s insertion of “alone” into Romans 3:28 makes this justification quite clear. We no longer need to worry about justification. So what should we do? We are free and bound at the same time8—even as I want to resist Luther’s metaphor of perfectly free and perfectly subservient as embedded in enslavement logics—and thus we must shift our theological energy from justification to justice. This shift calls us to be just people in the world, to worry less about the dichotomies of law and gospel. Rather we should ask: Whose perspective am I missing? Whose voice is left out? And how might I in fact help that voice be heard? How might we decenter one voice for the sake of bringing many to the table and to the conversation?

Notes 1. I am grateful to Erica Saunders for transcribing this lecture from the recording.

2. Martin Luther, On Translating: An Open Letter (1530), in Luther’s Works, vol 35, ed. E. Theodore Bachmann (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1960) 189.

3. Ibid.

4. Several feminist New Testament scholars have called for this move. For one excellent example see Melanie Johnson DeBaufre and Laura S. Nasrallah, “Beyond the Heroic Paul: Toward a Feminist Decolonizing Approach to the Letters of Paul,” in The Colonized Apostle: Paul through Postcolonial Eyes, ed. Christopher D. Stanley (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), 161–74.

5. Editor’s note: Prosopography refers to a “study that identifies and relates a group of persons or characters within a particular historical or literary context” (www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prosopography).

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6. For a more detailed argument see, Katherine A. Shaner, “Seeing Rape and Robbery: ἁρπαγμαός and the Philippians Christ-Hymn (Phil. 2:5-11)” Biblical Interpretation (2017): 342-63.

7. W. Bauer, F.W. Gingrich, and F. Danker “ἁρπαγμαός οῦ, ὁ,” A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, trans. W.F. Arndt and F.W. Gingrich, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd edn, 1979) 108b–109a.

8. Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian (1520), in Luther’s Works, vol. 31, ed. J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald, and H. T. Lehmann, (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1999) 327–43.

The Paradox of Change: Using Migration to Consider the Disruptive and Constructive Power of Change

by SUSAN SCHMIDT, Assistant Professor of Social Work and Field Director

•something we both seek and avoid;

•We call ourselves change agents (Nandan, London & BentGoodley, 2015).

•We promote social change in our professional Code of Ethics, particularly in the areas of “poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and other forms of social injustice” (NASW Code of Ethics, 2008).

•something that can be good for us, and something that can be painful;

•We empower clients to bring about desired change in their own lives (Lee, 2001).

•something in ourselves, and something orchestrated by others outside of ourselves;

•And we teach what we call the planned change process (KirstAshman & Hull, 2017).

•something whose possibility can give us hope, and whose absence can make us cynical or despondent.

When we say “be the change,” what do we mean? How can the concept of change span so much?

In addition to my professional interests in the concept of change, this topic further relates to my career as a social worker. I have worked principally on migration issues, in which a geographic change can be viewed alternatively as both a problem and a solution. More specifically: (1) Migratory change can be a force that is simultaneously destructive and disruptive, and that leads to displacement, homelessness, even death; (2) At the same time, migratory change can also provide safety, restoration, and new beginnings.

What can we learn from considering migration as a form of change?

Let me start by drawing on the discipline of social work. Social workers talk a lot about the positive power of change.

Playlist of change-oriented songs: “Change” by Churchill “Change the World” by Eric Clapton “A Change Would Do You Good” by Sheryl Crow “It Don’t Have to Change” by John Legend “Waiting On the World to Change” by John Mayer “A Change is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke “Algo Ha Cambiado” de Porta “Changes (Some Things Will Never Change)”

by Tupac Shakur

The simplest version of the planned change process in social work lays out four steps that order the way in which we should pursue change.

First, engagement, in which we build rapport and trust with those we are trying to help. Through engagement, we lay a social groundwork before moving ahead with more challenging work.

Second, assessment, through which we take time to learn about the individual, group, or community that we are helping, and to find out how they define the problem themselves. In social work, we call this “starting where the

LUTHER COLLEGE PHOTO BUREAU

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ur Paideia theme this year—to “Be the Change”—intrigued me, because social workers talk a lot about change. Change presents for us humans a conundrum of both negative adjustments and positive potential. We get a sense of this paradox in the playlist of songs that I selected for this occasion that change is:

client is.” Analogously, when we go to the doctor, we want the doctor to find out what’s wrong with us before prescribing medicine. Similarly, social workers should listen and assess a client’s presenting problems before moving towards an agreed upon intervention.

Third, we progress to the intervention.

Our assessment allows us to choose the appropriate intervention or treatment, in consultation with our client.

The cycle ends with evaluation. Both during and after we implement the intervention, we use both formal and informal methods to evaluate the success of the intervention. What worked? What could we do differently?

What is the feedback from the client?

What have we learned?

So, from a disciplinary perspective, change is something that we can control and even willingly pursue. At the same time, social workers can learn from other professions, like nursing, in order to incorporate prevention into our perspective (McCave & Rishel, 2011).

•How do we think ahead and make proactive changes now, so that reactive changes in the future are less necessary?

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•How do we better incorporate prevention into our planned change efforts?

Unfortunately, the field of international migration is typically one of reaction rather than prevention.

•Forced migration, both inside and outside of one’s home country, is often the result of unwanted change, leading to sudden flight.

•So how do I reconcile this professional emphasis on intentional planned change, with my own experience and research regarding migration as a form of unplanned change?

I’ve organized my comments around three main principles. My father was a minister, and a good talk always seemed to have three points. Here are mine: •Change is disruptive; •Change is constructive; •Change is instructive.

Change as disruptive In the migration field, an unexpected or undesired change can be what leads to migration: this unwanted change results in an unplanned move, a flight for safety. In this scenario, something destructive or oppressive disrupts the normal flow of life and leads to flight.

In the late 1990s, I was part of a needs assessment team organized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that spent time in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, in order to consider whether resettlement to the US should be used with a group called the “Lost Boys of Sudan.” This group of primarily, but not exclusively, males were between the ages of about 15-25—a group of thousands of young people who had been displaced for about a decade.

Initially they fled what is now Southern Sudan into western Ethiopia, due to the disruption from Sudanese government bombings and fighting between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

After these young people had lived in Ethiopian refugee camps for several 14

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years, the Ethiopian government was overthrown. This change led the new government to expel at gunpoint Sudanese refugees who had been living in refugee camps near the SudanEthiopian border. The displaced, many of them children, fled on foot back into Sudan and then into northwest Kenya, where the Kakuma refugee camp emerged in response, and which continues today more than 25 years later (UNHCR, n.d.-a).

In their story, we see that external change—first in Sudan, then in Ethiopia—was disruptive, destructive, even fatal for some. About 3,000 to 4,000 of these young men were ultimately resettled to the US in the early 2000s. And while there was some initial optimism following the independence of Southern Sudan in 2011, civil war and war with Sudan has returned, with South Sudan now one of the top 3 refugee producing countries in the world, behind Syria and Afghanistan (UNHCR, 2017).

Closer to the US, and more recently, we have the continuing flow of Central Americans to our southern border. The arrival of Central Americans to the US has ebbed and flowed since the 1970s, when the US was involved in a series of proxy wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. For those who have been watching the Ken Burns documentary series about the Vietnam war, the civil wars in Central America were another front in the cold war between the US and the Soviet Union, but one where the US provided money and arms, without officially supplying soldiers. These historical conflicts, in combination with failed drug policies, provide the disruptive and destructive background in which today’s gang violence and political corruption has flourished, combined with continuing poverty for certain sectors of society.

In 2013, I worked as a Senior Research Consultant for UNHCR on a project in which we interviewed over 400 unaccompanied children from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. These young people had been apprehended by immigration officials on the US side of our southern border with Mexico. The research resulted in

a report called, Children on the Run: Unaccompanied Children Leaving Central America and Mexico and the Need for International Protection (UNHCR, 2014).

Many of these teens’ stories included tragic tales of violence and disruption, like this 17-year-old girl from El Salvador.

The problem was that where I studied there were lots of M-18 gang members, and where I lived was under control of the other gang, the MS-13. The M-18 gang thought I belonged to the MS-13. They had killed the two police officers who protected our school. They waited for me outside the school. It was a Friday, the week before Easter, and I was headed home. The gang told me that if I returned to school, I wouldn’t make it home alive. The gang had killed two kids I went to school with, and I thought I might be the next one. After that, I couldn’t even leave my neighborhood. They prohibited me. I know someone whom the gangs threatened this way. He didn’t take their threats seriously. They killed him in the park. He was wearing his school uniform. If I hadn’t had these problems, I wouldn’t have come here. (UNHCR, 2014) In this case, a violent and threatening change in this young person’s family situation led her to flee to the US. For my dissertation, I received permission from UNHCR to analyze several subsets of these interviews.

Additionally this summer, with the help of a Luther College grant from the Doris and Ragnvald Ylvisaker Endowment for Faculty Growth, I began analyzing 11 of the interviews that involved girls who were pregnant at the time they entered the US. Another 17-year-old Honduran girl whom I interviewed gives a sense of the disruptive and destructive power of change in her personal life that led to her migration. In response to the question, “Why did you want to leave your country” she replied:

Because of what happened with my baby’s father. When I was 16, I went to live with my [common law] husband. He was fine until I got pregnant. Then he changed.

After I got pregnant I didn’t want to have relations with him because it was bad. Then he would beat me. He would throw me against the wall or against the bed. (Schmidt, n.d.)

Abuse among these pregnant girls was not unusual. Of the 11 pregnant girls whose interviews I analyzed, nine of them mentioned one or more safety issues for themselves in the present or past: these included abusive boyfriends; family abuse; and gang threats (Schmidt, n.d.). Two girls also mentioned concerns about their child’s safety from an abusive partner. Other safety concerns included threats by a neighbor, religious persecution, and sexual assault (Schmidt, n.d.).

In addition to these pregnant girls, I analyzed interviews in which children mentioned maltreatment. It became apparent that girls spoke more than boys about risks within the home environment, while boys mentioned more risks outside the home, particularly from gangs (Schmidt, 2017-a).

Change as constructive From this research, we can see that sometimes the risks mentioned by these girls represented a change from the norm. However, at other times in these interviews, the risks were persistent and represented a continuation of the norm, which brings me to my next point. Change is sometimes constructive: This may in some ways contradict the point I just made, however sometimes a lack of change—the perpetuation of unsatisfactory conditions—can also lead people to make intentional change, including migration.

In a song played earlier, Tupac Shakur sings, in part, about police brutality, and then later sings, “Some things will never change” (“Changes”). But sometimes that sense that nothing is changing leads people to act, or to be change agents—in other words, a

lack of change can lead people to act for change. And interestingly, some of the themes in Tupac Shakur’s song are similar to the concerns of the Central American youth we interviewed— injustice by authorities, poverty, violence. In the words of Tupac, “It’s time for us as a people to start makin’ some changes” (Hornsby, Shakur & Evens, 1998).

Returning to the Central American unaccompanied youth I interviewed, I also analyzed their responses to one question about how to help other children like themselves. In that, I noticed that much of the children’s responses revolved around the issues of economics, security, and education, and that these three realms impacted one another (Schmidt, 2017-b). For example, a 16-year-old Guatemalan male said: Jobs require experience, and how can you get experience if they don’t give you a job? There are gang members because there are children that haven’t been given an education. (Schmidt, 2017-b, p. 67).

A lack of adequate education, and a sense of hopelessness about finding work, can make young people easy targets for gang recruitment. And a sense that this situation will not change can lead some youth to migrate in order to have a better future. Migration becomes a desperate and potentially constructive action in pursuit of a better future.

Among the pregnant girls’ interviews, a 17-year-old girl from El Salvador, already the parent of a 5-year-old and 1-year-old, had been abused by her step-father. She described her reasons for coming to the US: There’s no work, sometimes there’s not enough to eat, the harvest runs out and you can’t find more work. Sometimes the river overflows and carries away what you have planted and you can’t work. This happens every year—it carries away the cattle and everything. I came to help my children. (Schmidt, n.d.)

The change lesson from this was that both change, and a lack of change, could motivate migration. For some youth, a specific threat created a change which led a child to flee. For example, a youth who was threatened unless he joined the gang was compelled to flee for his own safety. By contrast, other youth talked of unchanging poverty, violence in the community, corruption in the police, as finally leading to their flight. The lack of any change in sight led the child to leave. Change can lead to migration, and a lack of change can also lead to migration.

A similar analysis was recently published by Michael Clemens, an economist with the Center for Global Development, who wrote “Violence, Development, and Migration Waves: Evidence from Central American Child Migrant Apprehensions” (2017-a).

Following three years of requests during the Obama administration, he was granted access to de-identified data on all 179,000 unaccompanied children who had been apprehended at the US border from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala between the years 2011 to 2016. From this, he analyzed links between violence and employment data in the children’s home communities.

Among other things, he learned: •8% of all the 17-year-olds in these three countries were apprehended at the US border (Clemens, 2017a). Try to imagine the impact if 8% of US 17-year-olds left for Canada.

•Spikes in violence were the primary drivers of child migration to the US (Clemens, 2017-a).

•Every 10 additional homicides in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, from 2011 - 2016, caused 6 additional unaccompanied children to leave for the US (Clemens, 2017-b).

•Both violence and economics are migration drivers, with the economic situation shaping the choices that young people have in responding to violence by moving.

In other words, you cannot truly separate the violence and the economic pressures—these happen in tandem. (Clemens, 2017-b).

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This finding parallels my own qualitative interview findings with this same population, in which their responses indicated the interconnected nature of economics, security, and education as migration factors (Schmidt, 2017-b).

Most interesting related to change, Clemens noted that spikes in violence cause more change than chronic violence (Clemens, 2017-a). On the other hand, economics lead to an opposite result: chronically poor economic situations lead to more migration than sudden economic deterioration (Clemens, 2017-a).

So, a change in violence can lead to migration, while unchanging poverty can as well.

Change as instructive This brings me to my third point, that change is instructive. What can we learn from change—in ourselves, in others, in our environment?

One insight involved changes in circumstances. I mentioned that I examined the interviews of children who talked about child abuse, including when in the interview they talked about abuse (Schmidt, 2017-a). What prompted them to disclose?

Out of 77 interviews analyzed in which children spoke of maltreatment, 35 first mentioned abuse in response to a question about their reasons for leaving home (Schmidt, 2017-a). Another 25 first mentioned abuse during a set of follow-up questions about whether anyone had caused them suffering, harm, or danger (Schmidt, 2017-a).

Beyond these, another 17 children first mentioned abuse elsewhere in the interview, and these are the ones I want to focus on for a moment. I noticed with these 17 children that they tended to first mention their abuse experiences in relation to some other change in circumstance—it did not come out in the places we would expect it to be disclosed. Instead, these children spoke of abuse in response to questions about who they lived with, where they lived, or how much schooling they had completed. Here is an example of one 16

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girl’s response to a question about where she had grown up.

When I was less than two I lived with my mother, and my stepfather was abusive and my mom left me with my grandfather. After that, my mother left and she never came back until I was about fourteen years old. Finally, when I was fifteen, she called me, but she did not come to visit me or anything.

(Schmidt, 2017-a) Or in response to “where else have you lived since you were born”: I have lived in many places.

When I was born, I lived with mother … until I was about four or five. Then, we went to a new house, but I do not remember where. We were with my father. My mother went to Italy. My younger brother was also with us. Then, my mother came back and we lived in my grandmother’s house when I was six … I lived 1.5 years with my grandmother and my parents came to the United States together. Then, I moved from house to house, friends, uncles, aunts. My grandmother did not want me there and she did not treat me well … Since I was eleven, I lived in Virginia first with my mom and then I left to live with my boyfriend because my mother was deported. Then I had no choice and had to live with my boyfriend who was not good to me. Then, I went back to El Salvador when I was about fourteen and then I lived in El Salvador for one year and then came back again this time.

(Schmidt, 2017-a) By examining when children talked about abuse within the interviews, I noticed that sometimes the abuse would be revealed when talking about a change in the child’s life circumstance. For example, a question about who raised them might lead to a description of why they moved from one home to another, or from the care of one relative to another. Similarly, a question about how

much schooling they had completed might result in an explanation of why they began at one school and then moved to another, or left school altogether.

This led to a recognition that sometimes a child’s change in circumstances can be an indicator of something more—or at the very least, it should trigger further inquiry, for example if a social worker or attorney is interviewing a child to determine possible grounds for legal protections in the US. So change can be a signal to those of us working with vulnerable populations.

Are we listening for the cues?

Change can also be what we make of it. Are we looking for learning opportunities to turn those destructive circumstances into constructive and instructive ones?

Going back to the example of Lost Boys of Sudan, I am reminded of Lopez Lomong, a refugee resettled at age 16 with a foster family in Syracuse, New York, who went on to represent the US in the 1500-meter run in both the 2008 and 2012 Olympics (Lomong & Tabb, 2012). He now uses his own story to inspire others, and gives back philanthropically to his home community in Southern Sudan. He has looked for lessons in his migration story, so that he can inspire others.

So where does this leave us in considering change? I am reminded of an overused joke about social workers.

“How many social workers does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.” Self-determination is an important determinant in whether change is positive or negative. Change that we choose can be far more palatable than change that is forced upon us. In one of my courses, we read several chapters of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, as a historic community organizer. Alinsky writes: Everywhere you look all change shows this complementarity … It is the constant struggle between the positive and its converse negative, which includes the reversal of roles so that the

positive of today is the negative of tomorrow and vice versa. This view of nature recognizes that reality is dual. (1971, p. 16) Furthermore, we must consider who defines the problem at the root of our change efforts. In the case of migration to the US, our government is defining the problem rather simplistically and from solely an enforcement perspective, while seemingly omitting the perspective of those who are migrating.

The problem has been narrowed to an entry problem, not a humanitarian or human rights or social justice problem, therefore our governmental responses seek to increase border enforcement, to build a bigger and longer wall, to reduce or cease refugee resettlement. If we asked these refugees and migrants themselves what they think the problem is, what do you think they would say?

The Central American children I interviewed described the problems leading to migration as: •Security, specifically gang violence and a lack of effective law enforcement; •Economics and opportunities, a lack of well-paying jobs and sometimes a lack of safe and affordable education; •A desire for family reunification with relatives in the US (Schmidt, 2017-b).

Seeing this discrepancy—between their definition of what needs changing, and our government’s decisions about what needs changing—makes me realize the importance of listening to those affected by change, not imposing our own skewed interpretation. In social work we call this “starting where the client is.” As a nation, are we listening to people themselves about why they are migrating to our borders? Do we care?

In sum, change contains both destructive and generative elements.

From the tragedies that cause migration, we can and we should help people to build new lives. I have spoken about refugees—people fleeing danger. Our president has just signed a Presidential Determination stating that the US will resettle only 45,000 refugees

next year (Trump, 2017), down from President Obama’s 2016 Presidential Determination to resettle 110,000 (a number later reduced to 50,000 by incoming President Trump (Obama, 2016). All this is occurring at a time when the number of uprooted people in the world is higher than at any time in the history of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR, 2017; Edwards, 2017), and less than 1% of refugees are ever resettled (UNHCR, n.d.-b).

This reduction in refugee resettlement also represents a type of planned change, and a move away from social justice commitments of the past. Is this the type of change we want? Does it represent who we are?

You students have power. You are not only the future, you are the present.

Here are things you can do as change agents.

•Be informed: Read the news, real news, and stay informed. Avoid relying on news that is chosen for you by a social media platform, or that comes from sources focused on pop culture. Instead, identify one, or several, reliable news outlets and keep up with the news.

It will help you to connect the classroom with the real world, and it will expand your worldview. We have access to the New York Times online through the library, which can be like a college education in itself if you read it regularly. Take advantage of these resources while they are accessible, and while you are paying for them through your tuition.

•Build authentic relationships: Talk with, and make friends with, people who come from places different from yourself—different communities in the US; different countries in the world; different size populations; different languages, cultures, faith perspectives, and histories. Check our human tendency to bring the conversation back to ourselves, and be willing to listen and learn about someone else’s reality. Open yourself to being changed and challenged by what you learn. Be authentic, and be a learner.

•My last exhortation is to vote, whatever your political persuasion: About half of the eligible voters ages 18-29 turned out to vote in the 2016 election (CIRCLE, 2016). While similar to the young voter turnout in 2012 (CIRCLE, 2016), this is lower than the overall general population voter turnout of 58% (Green, 2016).

While this turnout rate decreases at the younger end of this group (with those age 18-21 voting at a rate of 44.8% in 2016), we can be encouraged that this voting rate increased four points from 2012 (Thomas et al., 2017).

“Refugees” by Brian Bilston (n.d.)

They have no need of our help So do not tell me These haggard faces could belong to you or me Should life have dealt a different hand We need to see them for who they really are Chancers and scroungers Layabouts and loungers With bombs up their sleeves Cut-throats and thieves They are not Welcome here We should make them Go back to where they came from They cannot Share our food Share our homes Share our countries Instead let us Build a wall to keep them out It is not okay to say These are people just like us A place should only belong to those who are born there Do not be so stupid to think that The world can be looked at another way (now read from bottom to top) Change multifaceted—destructive, constructive, and instructive. Seeking and promoting opportunities for self-determination within changing circumstances can increase the generative capacity of change.

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There are things we can do right now to be change agents: stay informed, build authentic relationships with people who are different from ourselves, participate in our messy democracy by voting.

And as this poem by Brian Bilston demonstrates, try viewing the world from another perspective—in this case, turn our current perspective upside down, and see how it changes.

Hornsby, B., Shakur, T. A. & Evens, D. (1998). “Changes (Some Things Will Never Change)” [Recorded music].

2-Pac, Great-est Hits.

All of us in this room have the capacity to “be the change.” Where will you start?

Lomong, L., & Tabb, M. (2012). Running for my life: One lost boy’s journey from the killing fields of Sudan to the Olympic games. Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson.

References Alinsky, S. (1971). Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1st ed.). New York: Vintage Books.

Bilston, B. (n.d.) “Refugees” [Poem].

Retrieved from https://brianbilston. com/2016/03/23/refugees/.

CIRCLE. (2016). “2016 Election—Young Voters in the 2016 General Election: Data and Analysis of Youth Turnout, Vote Choice, and Composition of Electorate. Retrieved from https://civicyouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/ CIRCLE-Full-Exit-Poll-Analysis_Final.pdf.

Clemens, M. A. (2017-a, July). “Violence, Development, and Migration Waves: Evidence from Central American Child Migrant Apprehensions.” Working Paper 459, Center for Global Development.

Retrieved from https://www.cgdev.org/ sites/default/files/violence-development-and-migration-waves-evidencecentral-american-child-migrant.pdf.

Clemens, M. A. (2017-b, August 24). Violence and forced migration of unaccompanied children from Northern Triangle Coun-tries [Webinar]. Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

Edwards, A. (2017 June 19). Forced displacement worldwide at its highest in decades. Retrieved from http://www.unhcr.org/afr/news/ stories/2017/6/5941561f4/forceddisplacement-worldwide-its-highestdecades.html.

Green, M. (2016 November 15). “How Millennials Voted in the 2016 Presidential Election (with Lesson Plan).”

The Lowdown, KQED News. Retrieved from https://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2016/11/15/how-millennials-voted-in-the-2016-presidential-election/.

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Kirst-Ashman, K. K. & Hull, G. H., Jr. (2017). Understanding Generalist Practice (8th ed). Belmont, CA: Brooks Cole.

Student Voting. Institute for Democracy & Higher Education, Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life. Retrieved from https://idhe.tufts. edu/sites/default/files/NSLVE%20Report%202012-2016_1.pdf.

Lee, J. (2001). The Empowerment Approach to Social Work Practice: Building the Beloved Community (2nd ed.). New York: Colum-bia University Press.

Trump, D. J. (2017). Presidential Memorandum for the Secretary of State. Retrieved from https://www.whitehouse. gov/the-press-office/2017/09/29/presidential-memorandum-secretary-state.

McCave, E.L. & Rishel, C.W. (2011).

“Prevention as an Explicit Part of the Social Work Profession: A Systematic Investiga-tion.” Advances in Social Work 12.2 (2011): 226-240.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (n.d.-b). Resettlement.

Retrieved from http://www.unhcr.org/ en-us/resettlement.html.

Nandan, M., London, M., & Bent-Goodley, T. (2015). “Social Workers as Social Change Agents: Social Innovation, Social In-trapreneurship, and Social Entrepreneurship.” Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance 39(1): 38-56.

National Association of Social Workers [NASW]. (2008). Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers.

Obama, B.H. (2016). Presidential Determination—Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2017. Retrieved from https:// obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/thepress-office/2016/09/28/presidentialdetermination-refugee-admissionsfiscal-year-2017.

Schmidt, S. (2017-a). “Child maltreatment and child migration: What Central American & Mexican Unaccompanied Migrant Children Say About Abuse and Neglect and its Implications for Post-Migration Practice.” In Lessons from Listening to the Voices of Unaccompanied Central American and Mexican Children. Doctor of Social Work Banded Dissertations, 12. Retrieved from http://sophia.stkate.edu/dsw/12.

Schmidt, S. (2017-b). “’They need to give us a voice’: Lessons from listening to unaccompanied Central American and Mexican children on helping children like themselves.” Journal on Migration and Human Security 5(1): 57-81.

Schmidt, S. (n.d.). Desperate Mothers or “Anchor Babies”? Migration Motivators for Pregnant Unaccompanied Teens [Manuscript in process].

Thomas, N., Bergom, I., Casellas Connors, I., Gautam, P., Gismondi, A., & Roshko, A. (2017). Democracy counts: A Report on U.S. College and University

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR]. (n.d.-a) Kakuma refugee camp [Webpage]. Retrieved from http://www.unhcr.org/ke/kakumarefugee-camp.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2014). Children on the run: Unaccompanied children leaving Central Ameri-ca and Mexico and the need for international protection.

Retrieved from http://www.refworld. org/docid/532180c24.html.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2017). Figures at a glance.

Retrieved from http://www.unhcr.org/ en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html.

Dr. Green Goes to Washington

by TODD GREEN, Associate Professor of Religion

According to a 2016 report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), thirty-three antiMuslim organizations constitute the inner core of the U.S. Islamophobia network. This network consists of far right politicians, bloggers, authors, and pseudo-journalists who make a living and a career out of demonizing and dehumanizing Muslims. Many of these individuals and organizations—once on the fringe of political discourse—have managed to find media platforms to amplify their anti-Muslim narratives in recent years. They have also found political favor with the new presidential administration. The CAIR report reveals that these thirty-three organizations had a combined revenue of $205,838,077 between 2008 and 2013.2 It literally pays to hate Muslims!

But manufacturing hostility and fear toward Muslims is politically profitable as well. We see this particularly during election cycles. In the United States, the most recent presidential election witnessed some of the most hostile rhetoric and policy proposals targeting Muslims that we’ve ever seen or experienced as a nation. One candidate insisted that Muslims should be excluded from the White House.

Another called for patrolling Muslim neighborhoods. Yet another maintained

Todd Green, front row left, and other Franklin Fellows with Secretary of State John Kerry, Washington, DC, August 2016. an openness to Muslim ID cards and a Muslim registration system while also demanding a complete halt to Muslims entering the country. In Europe, far right candidates in recent elections have called for prohibiting headscarves in public, closing all mosques and Islamic schools, and banning the Qur’an.

or neutrality is compromised when you attempt to apply your research to social or ethical problems. I’m o.k. with that perception. When it comes to Islamophobia, neutrality is not an option. I am not now, nor will I ever be, neutral on anti-Muslim racism and discrimination.

Had any of these proposals targeted Jews instead of Muslims, the careers of these candidates likely would have come to a grinding halt. But again, we’re talking about Muslims, and it is all but a given that marginalizing and demonizing Muslims can give one’s political career a boost.

It’s my commitment to engaged scholarship and to combating the rise in anti-Muslim discrimination that led me to serve as a Franklin Fellow at the U.S. Department of State during my sabbatical year (2016-2017). The purpose of the Franklin Fellow program is to bring into the State Department outside experts in areas deemed of vital importance to United States foreign policy. In my case, the fellowship was co-sponsored by the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in conjunction with the Luce Foundation.

The AAR has developed a strong interest in recent decades in bridging the gap between the academic study of religion and public understanding of religion, including understanding within the federal government.

These issues weigh heavily on me, and they have for some time. My career at Luther College has increasingly developed along the path of engaged scholarship. Engaged scholarship is teaching and research geared toward addressing pressing ethical, social, and civic problems and promoting the common good. This form of scholarship is sometimes viewed as controversial within academia since the perception is that your objectivity

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slamophobia presents us with one of the greatest moral dilemmas of our time. We live in an age in which you can pretty much say anything about Muslims and not only get away with it but benefit from it personally or financially. If we adopt a standard definition of Islamophobia—an irrational fear or hatred of Islam and Muslims along with the exclusionary and discriminatory practices arising from this fear or hatred—then it’s clear that the manufacturing of Islamophobia has become a veritable industry.1

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I spent my year at the State Department working in the Office of Policy and Global Issues in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. I was tasked with assessing and analyzing Islamophobia in Europe, with a particular focus on the impact of anti-Muslim prejudice and discrimination on Countering Violent Extremism initiatives, refugee and migration policies, and human rights.3 While Islamophobia is not a type of discrimination that historically has received lots of attention in the State Department, during the Obama administration greater efforts were made to address the growing prejudices facing Muslims in Europe.

Such a task naturally falls to the State Department, whose mission it is to “[c]reate a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community.”4 Working with governments abroad to eliminate religious bigotry is one way to promote a more secure and democratic world.

My work began at a tense time in Europe. Paris and Brussels were still reeling from brutal terrorist attacks that had taken place in the winter and spring. Debates over burkinis erupted in France. Hate crimes targeting Muslims skyrocketed in the previous year.

Refugees and asylum seekers flooded into European countries in the wake of violent upheavals in their countries of origin. Despite these tensions, or perhaps because of them, I was eager to jump in and get to work as I stepped into the Harry S. Truman Building in Washington’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood on a hot summer day in July 2016.

a massive cruise ship. You can turn a cruise ship around, but it takes lots and lots of time, and considerable will power, to do so. While I hoped to participate in turning the government’s thinking on Islam and Muslim communities in a new direction, it’s unrealistic to believe that one person can do all that much in such a short period of time. At best, you can make the strongest case possible for a course change and then hope that the captain(s) will consider your advice.

Throughout the year, I encountered many people of good will who were open to reexamining the ways that the State Department approached the topic of Islam and reached out to Muslim communities. I had opportunities to weigh in on speeches by senior officials on refugees in Europe, to give feedback on memos concerning religious freedom for European Muslims, and to craft my own documents seeking to educate career government employees about how to understand and respond to Islamophobia. I gave lectures at the State Department in Washington as well as at events sponsored by U.S. consulates or embassies in Germany and Belgium. My lectures focused on the problems involved in engaging Muslims primarily through the lens of national

security and terrorism and on the manufacturing of anti-Muslim fear for political gain. From what I can tell, all of this work was generally well received.

But I won’t lie. This work was far more difficult under the Trump administration than the Obama administration. I’m not suggesting that government efforts to reach out to Muslim communities or to counter Islamophobia in Europe were beyond criticism under President Obama or Secretary Kerry. The Obama administration still tended to securitize Muslims, to conceive of them primarily as security risks.

This tendency held sway over foreign policy in Europe. Even so, the Obama administration officially stood opposed to Islamophobia, and this meant there was a receptive atmosphere within the State Department when it came to addressing anti-Muslim prejudice and proposing constructive ways of reaching out to Muslim communities.

With President Trump’s inauguration, it was clear that countering Islamophobia was not even on the radar when it came to foreign policy. On more than one occasion, I remarked to my wife, Tabita, that I now had the most ridiculous job in Washington. I was a State

Honestly, I don’t know. The problem with trying to assess my work at State within such a limited time frame is that the U.S. Government does not change its way of thinking overnight, or over many nights. One of my office colleagues at State was fond of comparing the federal government to 20

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Since my return to Luther, the most common question I’ve received is this: Were you successful? In other words, did you make a difference in your time at the State Department?

With university students who represent the Young Islam Conference outside the U.S. Consulate in Hamburg, Germany. Todd gave a lecture to the students while visiting the Consulate on behalf of the State Department.

That hope didn’t last long. Within two weeks of the inauguration, tensions flared between the White House and the State Department thanks to an Islamophobic campaign promise that the president wanted to make good on—the so-called “Muslim ban.”

President Trump issued an executive order in late January that temporarily suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and halted immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Or at least this is what he tried to do before the federal courts stepped in to block the ban.5 The executive order was an effort to inscribe Islamophobia into U.S. immigration and refugee policy. This was not lost on many within the State Department. Over 1,000 State Department employees in Washington and at U.S. embassies abroad signed a dissent memo that was leaked to the media. In the memo, employees protested the executive order and pointed out its unfair targeting of Muslims. The White House fired back, with press secretary Sean Spicer demanding that State Department officials and employees “should either get with the program” or get out of Dodge.6 In this environment, it was very difficult for me to engage in my work on Islamophobia as freely and vigorously as I had done in the months leading up to the inauguration. My overall workload decreased after January 2017. The Trump administration had zero interests in countering or even acknowledging Islamophobia.

But some interesting opportunities did arise even after Trump took office. For example, I was invited by some senior officials in my bureau to offer insights and counsel on how to address the language of “radical Islam” and “radical Islamic terrorism” that President Trump pushed for so vigorously during the

campaign and that Secretary Tillerson had relied on in his Senate confirmation hearing.7 There was widespread concern in State that this language would undermine U.S. relations with Muslim-majority countries since it inferred an organic link between Islam and terrorism.

My role was to help brainstorm alternative language to offer the new administration, language that would not worsen tensions with Muslim populations. This, in turn, opened the door for opportunities within the bureau to analyze how the Trump administration more broadly framed the relationship between Islam and violence.

I had less work to do once Trump became president, but the work I was doing garnered more attention from the bureau’s leadership than was the case in the waning months of the Obama administration.

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Department adviser on Islamophobia under a president with a reputation for, well, Islamophobia. My hope early on was that the Islamophobia of the campaign trail would be set aside and that my work at State would largely continue as it had under the Obama administration, with maybe some minor adjustments.

Todd and Tabita Green in the C Street Lobby of the State Department in Washington. Tabita is Director of Web Content at Luther College.

Some of my Luther colleagues have asked if I have any regrets over choosing to spend my sabbatical year at the State Department, particularly in light of the political upheaval and chaos that emerged from the election. Not at all. It was an incredible experience in many ways. I expanded my network of conversation partners considerably.

I gained insight into how the U.S. Government develops and articulates foreign policy. I learned how better to communicate my research and scholarly insights to federal employees, many of whom have little patience for obtuse academic jargon. I experienced firsthand how U.S. embassies engage with Muslim communities in Europe, and what I learned in this regard will go a long way toward enhancing the Islam in Europe study abroad course I teach at Luther.

In return, I had access to a platform that gave me ample opportunity to raise critical questions within the foreign policy establishment about how the U.S. Government approaches and “manages” Muslim communities. I weighed in on many exhilarating, thought-provoking discussions and debates about how Western nations can improve their

commitments to civil liberties and human rights for Muslim minority communities. I developed friendships with diplomats, foreign service officers, and civil servants whose dedication to diplomacy and foreign affairs was inspiring and encouraging.

I am a better scholar and teacher because of my time in Washington. I also developed a greater appreciation for the freedom I have as an academic to speak out and to engage the public on policy matters pertaining to the treatment of Muslim communities in Western nations. When I was sworn into my State Department position, I had to relinquish some of this freedom.

State Department employees are not allowed to make public statements pertaining to their areas of expertise or responsibility without such statements being vetted and approved by the appropriate officials. This includes public lectures or published articles. The purpose is to maintain a clear, consistent message from the U.S. Government on foreign policy matters. All of this was worth it. I have no regrets about giving up some of my academic freedom for a year. But I am thrilled to enter back into “civilian” life and to regain my public voice. And I am grateful to do this at a Fall 2017/Agora

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college that continues to value engaged scholarship as part of its mission “to serve with distinction for the common good.”

Notes 1. In the scholarship on Islamophobia, there is a general consensus that the concept refers both to animosity toward Islam as a religion and prejudice toward those who practice this religion. Some skeptics believe that one can have legitimate fears or concerns about a religion without harboring prejudice against practitioners of the religion. I do not believe that a neat distinction can be made between hostility toward Islam and hostility toward Muslims.

We must keep in mind that Muslims, or those presumed (sometimes mistakenly) to be Muslims, encounter significant discrimination because of their real or perceived connection to the religion of Islam. This discrimination, moreover, takes a variety of forms in Western nations, including profiling, surveillance, detentions, deportations, restrictions on religious liberty, and hate crimes. For a general overview of the debates pertaining to how to define Islamophobia along with the discriminatory forms Islamophobia takes, see Todd H. Green, The Fear of Islam: An Introduction to Islamophobia in the West (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 9–33, 267–309.

2. Council on American-Islamic Relations and the U.C. Berkeley Center for Race and Gender, Confronting Fear: Islamophobia and Its Impact the United States (CAIR: Washington, DC, 2016), vii.

3. Countering Violent Extremism, referred to in government circles as CVE, involves preventative efforts to reduce or counteract act violent extremism. CVE makes use of “soft” measures to deter individuals from becoming attracted to extremist ideologies or organizations. These efforts often involve collaboration between law enforcement and government agencies on the one hand and religious leaders, social workers, teachers, and health care professionals on the other.

4. “Mission,” U.S. Department of State, accessed on July 4, 2017, available online as archived content at https://2009-2017.state. gov/s/d/rm/rls/dosstrat/2004/23503.htm.

5. The legality of the most recent of several travel bans issued by the Trump administration remains at issue and will likely be determined in the U.S. courts in the coming months.

6. Jeffrey Gettleman, “State Dept.

Dissent Cable on Trump’s Ban Draws 1,000 Signatures,” New York Times, January 31, 2017, available online at https://www.

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nytimes.com/2017/01/31/world/americas/ state-dept-dissent-cable-trump-immigration-order.html.

7. In his brief opening statement during Senate confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Designate Rex Tillerson invoked the phrase “radical Islam” eight times. For the full text of his testimony, see https:// www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/ doc/011117_Tillerson_Opening_Statement. pdf.

Since the time when Todd submitted this essay, we have learned that his book, The Fear of Islam, was cited in an Amicus Curiae Brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, filed on behalf of the NAACP and a number of other civil liberties organizations in support of the respondents in the cases against the Trump administration regarding one of the versions of the travel ban.

(The Editor)

Two Studies in Communication: Biochemical and Popular

by JOHN JEFFERSON, Professor of Chemistry

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their combination was reasonable and manageable due in part to the culture at Mayo which encourages multiple collaborations as part of its mission to “integrate clinical practice, education and research.”

To examine exosome signaling, I worked with cultures of cholangiocyte cells, the polarized epithelial cells that line the bile ducts of the liver. Being polarized means they have two distinct faces (see Fig. below), an apical side facing the inside of the duct which is attached to the intestine, and a basolateral side facing the underlying connective tissue.

These cells function to selectively move digested nutrients from your intestine into the bloodstream. As shown, there are two distinct populations of exosomes secreted from cholangiocytes; those originating from the apical face into the bile lumen (shown in blue) which are in communication with other cholangiocytes, and those originating from the basolateral face (shown in red) which, in principle, are in communication with all of the other cells of your body via the blood stream.

It is this kind of communication that enables individual cells to function together as an organ as well as for the organ to function properly in the context of the body. I was able to make significant contributions in two aspects of this project: the procedures to grow these cells in culture so as to maintain their polarity, and the measurement of cholesterol levels which yielded insights in the mechanism of their biosynthesis. The challenges I encountered BRIAN DAVIES, MAYO CLINIC

y sabbatical time away from Luther began in the summer of 2016 and continued through the fall semester. It encompassed two projects which were both conducted at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. These projects shared a theme related to communication; the first involved the biochemical exchange of information at the cellular level, and the second between scientists and the general public. The laboratory project looked at the exosomal signaling pathways in liver cells. Exosomes are packets of chemicals encapsulated in lipid vesicles. We have evidence that they coordinate the function of these cells. This project was the continuation of a collaboration with Dr. Nick La Russo, Mayo Clinic Professor of Biochemistry/Molecular Biology and Medicine that has been ongoing for over ten years. The second project, exploring the communication between scientists and the general public, was a new field for me and was made possible through an internship with Robert Nellis of the Mayo Clinic’s Department of Public Affairs. The two projects were in principle very distinct, but

Figure 1

in this study were mostly due to the extremely small size of exosomes, comparable to that of a virus (about 100 nm diameter).

The second focus was to develop skills in science writing for the general public. This interest grew out of my passion for more scientists to add their voices to the public discourse and my frustration with the science content of much of what is written in the popular media. For example, a common criticism from the general public is that scientists tend to write in their own special language, which is unfamiliar to most people making the story hard to follow. Scientists put a lot of effort into learning the language or jargon of their field, enabling them to use specialized terms which can encapsulate a textbook worth of information. But it leaves the untrained reader wondering about the meaning. In addition, the use of terms which can have ambiguous meanings needs to be avoided. For example, when scientists talk about error, they mean the difference between a measured number and the exact value of that quantity, while the public may interpret the word error to mean a mistake and something that is wrong or inaccurate. And when scientists describe manipulating their data in the sense of data processing, the general public often concludes that this refers to illicit tampering. These types of problems can easily be avoided when the original scientific report is rewritten into an appropriate style for the general public. The fruits of my work on this project have been compiled into a web site [Dr. J’s Science Page—https:// companion283.wordpress.com/] and from this platform I hope to continue addressing current scientific issues in a way that will make them more accessible.

At this point in my career, having taught at Luther for more than 25 years, Fall 2017/Agora

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people often ask me what it was like to put my lab coat back on and work with the researchers at Mayo. My standard response is to say, “It was a character building experience.” Some days I felt like Indiana Jones from the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, the fearless, but somewhat awkward college professor who charges off into exotic places in search of fame and treasure. While other days I felt like Rip Van Winkle who just woke up from a long sleep to discover that the world had changed seemingly overnight. In addition, I experienced what I perceived as a bit of age discrimination for the first time when a young post doc indicated that I might not understand how to perform a particular technique. I was able to ease their concerns by telling them that I had mastered that skill in 1987 while I was a post-doc at the NIH. (Was that really 30 years ago?) Building character can take time.

Upon returning to Luther, I am refreshed and excited to continue my efforts to help train the next generation of biochemists. In addition, I anticipate that the connections I made with Dr. LaRusso’s lab in Rochester will continue to bear fruit through collaborative research during the years to come.

Finally, I hope to find more time to pursue my new found interest in science writing.

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Shakespeare: The Reformation, Religion, and God

by MARK Z. MUGGLI, Professor Emeritus of English

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esides being huge, my topic “Shakespeare: The Reformation, Religion, and God” is both old-fashioned and quite up to date. For the first couple of hundred years after Shakespeare’s death in 1616, people knew of his baptismal record in the Stratford-upon-Avon Church of the Holy Trinity and of his bust and grave marker in the same church, and they pretty much assumed that he was a more-or-less faithful member of the established Church of England—much like they were, I suppose. Many people believe Shakespeare wrote the grave marker himself, and everyone has followed its instructions:

In the eighteenth century, there began some speculation that Shakespeare might have been Catholic, since there was some proof that his father was. In the twentieth-century, however, literary scholars considered Shakespeare a secular sage: someone who knew his Bible and his Book of Common Prayer, but who was personally a sceptic, or even an agnostic, a great artist without any particular personal beliefs.

In some opposition to that view, my simple claim today is that Shakespeare was deeply concerned with the most fundamental Christian questions, including those made prominent by the Reformation.

Let me review England’s religious history, just in case you’ve been obsessing about Reformation Germany for the last year.

Isabella appealing to Angelo in Measure for Measure. (William Hamilton, oil on canvas, 1793).

•Christianity arrived in England with Roman soldiers already in the first century A.D.

•England initially opposed the Reformation, but Henry VIII’s marital problems led to the 1534 Act of Supremacy, which declared that the king, not the pope, was the head of the English church.

•In the eleventh century, the Norman victory in England solidified England’s place in a universal Christian church.

•There followed a hundred-twentyfive-year historical see-saw:

•By the sixth century there were serious attempts at large-scale conversion.

ºHenry VIII’s church was actually quite “Catholic” in its theology and practice, despite the split from Rome; Fall 2017/Agora

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SOURCE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare, To dig the dust enclosed here.

Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones.

ºThe England of his son Edward VI, a young boy who only ruled from 1547-1553, was rigorously Protestant; ºFrom 1553-1558, under Edward’s oldest sister Mary I, England returned to being vigorously, even bloodily, Roman Catholic; ºAnd then came the middle of Henry VIII’s three legitimate children, Elizabeth I, who ruled in England from 1558 to 1603, up through the middle of Shakespeare’s writing career.

As might be expected from that recent past, Elizabeth’s reign bubbled with religious ferment. In the early years, Catholic sympathizers outnumbered Protestants. But even as the populace became increasingly Protestant, splinter groups rose up, including a strong Puritanism that was initially separatist but which eventually became a “reforming” movement within the larger church. Catholicism was forbidden, but only sporadically prosecuted, and the Catholics proselytized illegally throughout the period. Those professing Protestantism included a range of beliefs. This ferment continued after the arrival of King James I in 1603: he was an intellectual theological Calvinist, but his mother had been the Catholic, Mary, Queen of Scots, and his wife was raised Danish Lutheran, but refused Church of England Eucharist at their coronation, and was reputed to have converted to Catholicism.

It would be tempting to continue this historical skim down through the Puritan Pilgrims emigrating to America in the 1620s, past the religious English civil war of the mid-seventeenth century that led to the king’s beheading, all the way up to the Church of England restoration in 1660. But let’s stop here around 1600 and say that, yes, during Shakespeare’s working years there was an established, generally Calvinist, Church of England. There was also a fluid overlap between various Christian religious strands and a riot of religious controversy. This diversity of belief generated vigorous public debate, sermons representing a range of belief, 26

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and even political insurrection like the Catholic Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

And where did all this ferment leave Shakespeare? He was baptized and was buried “Church of England” in Stratford. He was registered in London church parishes while he worked there in the theatre from 1590 to 1611. But there is no proof that he was a regular churchgoer—although he might have been—and his religious identification is not apparent in the way that it was for some of his contemporary dramatists.

All in all, the historical record cannot demonstrate the particularities of his belief.

My simple claim is that Shakespeare was deeply concerned with the most fundamental Christian questions, including those made prominent by the Reformation.

In recent years, there have been renewed claims, based on his plays, for his Catholicism. True, Hamlet’s father may represent the old Catholic faith, since his ghost returns from Purgatory, which is part of Catholic, but not Protestant cosmology. But Hamlet himself has been studying at that Lutheran center, Wittenberg, and he expresses some very Calvinist views of Predestination. But, really, how can we draw conclusions about Shakespeare from the situation or beliefs of fictional characters?

Which might seem to lead us back to where we started, with Shakespeare the sceptic.

But as I’ve said, I am arguing today that whatever his personal beliefs, Shakespeare’s art was deeply committed to some key Reformation issues.

For a start, let’s glance briefly at Henry IV, Part 1, 1.2, where the young Prince Hal, who will soon become King Henry V, famous for the lopsided English victory at the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, is arguing with one of

the most well-known figures in all of literature, his older, fat, dissolute knight friend, Falstaff. Falstaff ’s charm, to the Prince and to the audience, is his facility with language. In this passage, he pretends to be a virtuous man chiding his younger friend for misleading him.

The discussion then turns to “taking a purse” (= robbery). Their mutual friend Poins then enters and Falstaff comments on Gadshill, another of their low-life accomplices.

FALSTAFF. O, thou … art indeed able to corrupt a saint.

Thou hast done much harm upon me, Hal, God forgive thee for it. Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing; and now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked.

I must give over this life, and I will give it over. By the Lord, an I do not, I am a villain. I’ll be damned for never a king’s son in Christendom.

PRINCE HARRY. Where shall we take a purse tomorrow, Jack?

FALSTAFF. Zounds, where thou wilt, lad! I’ll make one; an I do not, call me a villain and baffle me.

PRINCE HARRY. I see a good amendment of life in thee, from praying to purse-taking.

FALSTAFF. Why, Hal, ‘tis my vocation, Hal. Tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation.

Enter POINS Poins! Now shall we know if Gadshill have set a match. O, if men were to be saved by merit, what hole in hell were hot enough for him? This is the most omnipotent villain that ever cried “Stand!” to a true man. (1.2.8097) Falstaff ’s comment, “if men were to be saved by merit, what hole in hell were hot enough for him” mimics Luther’s insistence that grace, not works, brings salvation. Luther’s emphasis on grace is the foundation of the “priesthood of all believers.” If all are saved by grace, there is no special merit for priests or

monks, which means that all Christians are priests, and all work is sanctified

by God. Medieval Christianity didn’t deny non-religious vocations, but the priesthood and the monastic life were increasingly valorized. The Augustinian monk Luther, as he struggled with his own righteousness before God, emphasized that everyone, whatever their work, was engaged in a religious call. Thus the call to be a shoemaker equals a call to church ordination. This Reformation concept was embedded in the English church’s printed homilies, catechism, and communion service.

Shakespeare’s engagement with Reformation issues like grace, vocation, and religion and politics is often unrecognized because he reflexively dramatizes multiple viewpoints on any issue.

Falstaff anachronistically knows this argument, and is merely extending the church’s position to its logical, absurd extreme. Most commentators note that Falstaff ’s line about “vocation” is a direct allusion to 1 Corinthians 7:20 and Ephesians 4:1. But the phrase had become proverbial in the Renaissance, often as a joking defense of thievery or other sins.

Just to reiterate my point. These references to salvation by grace and the equality of all vocations don’t prove that Shakespeare was a believing member of the Church of England, nor, on the other hand, given the passage’s satiric humor, do they prove that he was skeptical of the church’s Protestantism.

At a minimum the passage shows Shakespeare’s familiarity with the central Reformation debates over grace and vocation. But I would go one step further and argue that it indicates Shakespeare’s serious engagement with the debate, an engagement that a careful reader should remember when noting the strangely religious language of a number of Shakespeare criminals who don’t explicitly use the word

“vocation.” I’m thinking, for example, of the paid assassins in Richard III and Macbeth.

that went to sea with the Ten Commandments, but scraped one out of the table.

In the time remaining, I will highlight a couple of the Reformation controversies that permeate Shakespeare’s 1604 play Measure for Measure. The play has plenty of religion in it—the title itself comes from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7:2, “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” But if you did a quick survey of productions and publications from the last 100 years, you would get the impression that Shakespeare’s interests were largely sexual and political, not religious.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. ‘Thou shalt not steal’?

Measure for Measure begins with the Duke of Vienna’s announcement that he will be travelling to Poland and leaving the young man Angelo in charge of the city. The Duke never actually leaves Vienna. Disguised as a Franciscan Friar, he observes his city and his deputy, and inserts himself as a religious figure into the city’s life. At the same time, a young woman, Isabella, about to enter a very strict religious order of nuns, is drawn away to help her brother, Claudio, who has been condemned to death for impregnating his betrothed.

The play’s final scene, in which the Duke gives up his Friar’s disguise and proposes marriage to Isabella, is psychologically challenging, but finally more or less comic. It also incorporates the established Reformation debate over vocation, the monastic life, and the religious calling of the laity.

In the second scene of the first act, Lucio, a decayed gentleman, is chatting in a public street with two other nameless gentlemen: LUCIO. If the duke with the other dukes come not to composition with the King of Hungary, why then, all the dukes fall upon the king.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King of Hungary’s!

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Amen.

LUCIO. Thou concludest like the sanctimonious pirate,

LUCIO. Ay, that he razed.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Why, ‘twas a commandment to command the captain and all the rest from their functions: they put forth to steal. There’s not a soldier of us all, that, in the thanksgiving before meat, do relish the petition well that prays for peace.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. I never heard any soldier dislike it.

LUCIO. I believe thee; for I think thou never wast where grace was said.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. No? a dozen times at least.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. What, in metre?

LUCIO. In any proportion or in any language.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. I think, or in any religion.

LUCIO. Ay, why not? Grace is grace, despite of all controversy: as, for example, thou thyself art a wicked villain, despite of all grace. (1.2.1-25) Idle chatter from idle gentlemen, right?

But note, first of all that little joke about the pirate who erases one of the Ten Commandments in order to avoid losing his “function.” That’s the same “vocation” joke as Falstaff ’s in I Henry IV. A pirate is following his vocation, and is therefore acting religiously; but he recognizes a conflict with the Ten Commandments, and therefore erases one. I don’t believe any Reformer ever suggested cutting some of the Ten Commandments. But probably there is a joke here about the Sacraments—here were seven in the Roman Catholic Church, but just two among Lutherans.

As he argued at length in the pamphlet “On Christian Liberty,” Luther specifically removed ordination as a Fall 2017/Agora

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sacrament because he didn’t believe that ordained priests were stamped with a special indelible mark.

Notice also Lucio’s comment on grace: “Grace is grace, despite of all controversy; and for example, thou thyself art a wicked villain despite of all grace.” The controversy here is the same Reformation debate over grace and works already cited in the Falstaff passage. The Biblical background is Romans 11:6, “If it be of grace, then is it not now of works: for then grace is no more grace,” a passage that Luther often studied as he worked out his understanding of faith and righteousness. The passage can’t be used to determine whether Shakespeare was Catholic or Protestant, although there are critics who have tried. But this casual riff, coming so early in the play, should raise our antennas for related issues.

And in fact just two scenes later, when Lucio addresses Isabella even as she is about to enter a strict religious convent—while, by the way, regretting that it isn’t even more strict—he continues an implicit attack on the inappropriateness of celibacy as “vocation.” Of course Lucio, who is corrupt to the core, especially when it comes to sex, is an ironic commentator on celibacy. Nevertheless, he does make a strong case against the unnatural a-sexuality of the Duke’s substitute Angelo, who he makes sound more like a Medieval monk than like the contemporary Puritan he is sometimes identified as. Angelo, he says, is

a man whose blood Is very snow-broth; one who never feels The wanton stings and motions of the sense; But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge With profits of the mind, study and fast. (1.4.57-61) Later in the play, Lucio makes a similar point: They say this Angelo was not made by man and woman….

Some report a sea-maid spawned him. Some, that he was begot between two stockfishes. [“Stockfish” are kind of like dried 28

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lutefisk.] But it is certain that when he makes water, his urine is congealed ice; that I know to be true. And he is a motion ungenerative; that’s infallible.

(3.3.100-108) [The phrase a “motion ungenerative” means, more or less, a “puppet incapable of reproduction.”]

In some ways Angelo is a bit like the Duke, who early in the play describes himself as being immune to “the dribbling dart of Love” (1.3.3).

In a contrasting vein, Lucio celebrates in luxuriant language the natural sexuality of his friend Claudio and his betrothed Juliet, who, he says, have embraced; As those that feed grow full, as blossoming time That from the seedness the bare fallow brings To teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry. (1.4.40-44) This contrast between Claudio and Juliet’s natural sexuality and Angelo’s unnatural celibacy should be understood as part of the Reformation debate over “vocation,” in particular the assertion that God’s grace can energize all lives, especially those committed to the community’s well-being.

When the almost-nun Isabella goes to plead with Angelo, she cites the related Reformation insistence on the power of God’s mercy and the impotence of human achievement. She says to Angelo, hoping to convince him to be merciful to her brother,

How would you be If He, which is the top of judgment, should But judge you as you are? O, think on that, And Mercy then will breathe within your lips, Like man new made. (2.2.75-70) And then things get complicated.

Angelo, supposedly virtuous and perhaps even frigid, falls into a deep passion for Isabella, who he then tries to take advantage of by trading sex for her brother’s life.

The debates between Angelo and Isabella that follow are among the most interesting features of the play. Of course the Harvey Weinstein dimension smacks us in the face. But Angelo argues, amidst all his other angles, that Isabella can have sex with him without damning herself, since she does it with a pure soul, good intentions, and a dependency on God’s forgiveness.

Luther specifically argues against such specious arguments made by some of his followers, but once Luther had downplayed the righteousness of good works, this defense of “guilt-free sin, redeemed by grace“ was in the air.

Measure for Measure refers often to the personal works/grace/vocation debate. And in fact this debate occurs in one form or another in just about every one of Shakespeare’s thirty-eight plays. But I want to shift to another topic in Measure for Measure, which, it turns out, was the central focus of Brad Gregory’s plenary address. The issue is religion and politics, or, more generally, personal belief and public engagement. That relationship was problematic for Christianity from the beginning. In a story recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels, Jesus responded to a questioner by pointing at one of Caesar’s coins: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 20:21). The Medieval world tried to clarify this relationship at the local, “national,” and cross-national level.

But the Reformation re-opened the question with special fervor.

Luther’s position changed over time, and was never absolute, but it derived from his idea of the two kingdoms. At its purest, the doctrine suggested that the church had authority in spiritual matters and the state in worldly matters—or, to put it negatively, that the church should stay out of politics, and that the state should not judge or coerce religious belief. The American founder James Madison explicitly acknowledged Luther’s views as he argued for the so-called separation of church and state.

Of course Luther assumed that political leaders in a Christian world ought to act like good Christians, and that church leaders would help political leaders

understand their Christian obligations.

And in particular disputes, Luther’s general ideas got even more muddled.

Calvin agreed with Luther generally, but was much more inclined from the beginning to emphasize the state’s obligation for Christian souls; Geneva under Calvin was a strict theocracy. In England, Elizabeth’s successor in 1603, James I, articulated one of the strongest contemporary statements of the fundamentally Calvinist Divine Right of Kings, the belief that the king, as God’s deputy on earth, is responsible for the right ordering of both church and state.

Exploring the nuances of these Reformation positions is less crucial than acknowledging the battleground they represented. Shakespeare dealt with the issue prominently in his English history plays, which dramatize England before the Reformation, when both godly and ungodly kings attempted to impose beliefs and ethical norms on the populace. But Measure for Measure, which has a contemporary Renaissance setting, brings the debate into Shakespeare’s present.

The issue of church and state is implicit in the play’s opening speech, in which the Duke is tempted “Of government the properties to unfold” (1.1.3).

And the problem is embedded in the whole play’s action, from the Duke’s temporary abdication because of his lax enforcement of religious/political law, his deputy Angelo’s aggressive monitoring of public morality, and Angelo’s personal immorality. The Duke’s dense soliloquy at the end of Act 3 anatomizes hypocrisy, one aspect of the religion/politics relationship: He who the sword of heaven will bear Should be as holy as severe; Pattern in himself to know, Grace to stand, and virtue go; More nor less to others paying Than by self-offences weighing.

Shame to him whose cruel striking Kills for faults of his own liking!

Twice treble shame on Angelo, To weed my vice and let his grow!

O, what may man within him hide, Though angel on the outward side! …

Craft against vice I must apply: With Angelo to-night shall lie His old betrothed but despised; So disguise shall, by the disguised, Pay with falsehood false exacting, And perform an old contracting. (3.1.481-502) These last lines will be unclear to someone who doesn’t know the play.

Suffice it to say that the Duke is defending his own use of a religiouslysanctioned deception to control Angelo’s hypocritical political-religious deception. The Duke, in disguise as a Friar, is going to arrange for Angelo to have sex in the dark with the woman he was betrothed to (and then unscrupulously dropped because she had lost her dowry), while Angelo will think he is having sex with the ex-nun who he coerced by agreeing to free her brother from the death sentence Angelo had imposed for having sex with his betrothed. That’s a lot of sex, a lot of deception, and even more confusion over what constitutes legitimate religious/political authority. Let me conclude my summary by saying that it all ends “happily!!!” with possibly ironic quotation marks, italics, and triple exclamation points around that word “happily.”

nothing whatever to do with the Reformation, and there are some major Reformation issues that don’t appear in Shakespeare. (For example, even though Biblical references are everywhere in Shakespeare, I can’t find any reference to Luther’s “sola scriptura,” the principle that the scriptures are the sole source of religious truth.)

On the other, other hand, God is itself explored everywhere in Shakespeare: in the Roman plays, classical gods and the fates are the whole framework for action; in the English history plays, the Judaeo-Christian God and Jesus Christ are acknowledged by everyone and prayed to by many; in the tragedies, although positioned in a range of historical/cultural settings, an all-encompassing divine power is both a constant hope and a prayer; and in the comedies, early and late, a kind of natural, regenerating, sometimes explicitly divine force runs through the sap, blood, and cosmos.

On the other, other, other hand, we still don’t know whether Shakespeare himself was religious.

But I’ll end by suggesting that you take every opportunity to explore the presence of the Reformation, religion, and God in Shakespeare by attending, reading, and re-reading these nearly divine works of art.

Shakespeare’s engagement with Reformation issues like grace, vocation, and religion and politics is often unrecognized because he reflexively dramatizes multiple viewpoints on any issue. This “multiperspectivism” is coupled with Shakespeare’s precociously broad cultural reference and his own artistic evasiveness about time-andplace-bound solutions. The result is a kind of universalizing of the issues his plays treat.

Thus my thesis all over again, that modern readers tend to underemphasize Shakespeare’s immersion in Reformation debates.

On the other hand, there are many parts of Shakespeare that have Fall 2017/Agora

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Taking God Seriously: Martin Luther and the Peasants’ War

by STORM BAILEY, Professor of Philosophy

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he Reformation was barely seven years old when the peasants of Germany took up arms against the princes and feudal lords who oppressed them. Martin Luther is infamous for his denunciation of the peasant revolt—especially since many suggest that Luther’s proclamation of Christian liberty indirectly encouraged the push for more social equality. But if the rebels appealed to Luther’s gospel, that only increased Luther’s rage against them: “Let everyone who can smite, slay and stab” them he wrote in his tract Against the Robbing and Murdering Hoards of Peasants. Before the tract— written in May of 1525—was published in June, the rebellion was over. At the battle (or massacre) of Frankenhausen on May 15th, 6000 peasants died (casualties in the forces of Philip of Hesse and George of Saxony: six … yes, 1000 to 1). Thomas Muntzer—a rebel leader and target of Luther’s teaching—was soon captured, tortured and beheaded.1 Criticism against Luther was instant— from rebels, from Catholics, even from his friends—who urged him to write a retraction. What Luther wrote instead was an explanation, An Open Letter on the Harsh Book Against the Peasants, which appeared in July of 1525. In this letter Luther sets the record straight about false accusations, and also about true ones: … as I wrote then, so I write now; Let no one have mercy on the obstinate, hardened, blinded peasants who refuse to listen to reason; but let everyone, as he is able, strike, hew, stab, and slay, as though among mad dogs, so that by so doing he may show mercy to those who are ruined, put to flight, and lead astray by these peasants, so that peace and safety may be maintained.2 30

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To the claim that his position is too harsh, and amounts to silencing people with violence, Luther replies: That is right. A rebel is not worth rational arguments, for he does not accept them. You have to answer people like that with a fist … The peasants would not listen; they would not let anyone tell them anything, so their ears must now be unbuttoned with musket balls till their heads jump off their shoulders. Such pupils need such a rod.3 I’m not interested in defending Luther’s attitude, his manner of speaking, or even his character. I don’t have a temperament that rejoices to side with such authority as the German princes wielded, and I won’t strictly speaking defend that either. But I do want at least to understand Luther, which must in any case be prior to agreeing (or disagreeing) with him.

And as my title suggests, I don’t think we can understand him unless we recognize the sense in which he takes God seriously. It might just turn out that there is something instructive (and surprising) for us today—especially for those who would take God seriously in our time.

Leaving aside his bluster, Luther’s position on the peasants’ revolt was rooted in a clearly developed account of the role of temporal authority—the sword—and the relation of the church to those powers. I don’t suppose that being an Augustinian monk guarantees that one thinks like Augustine, but in this case Luther certainly does.

Luther’s account of temporal authority reflects the central principle of Augustine’s City of God—written at the beginning of the 5th century (exactly 1100 years before the Peasants’ War in Germany).

Augustine on Church and State How is Christianity—in individual experience or the institution of the church—related to the exercise of temporal power? Augustine’s account depends upon the central image of the monumental City of God (written in the years from 413 to 426): the image of the “two cities.” These cities are not political entities, but spiritual categories into which humanity is divided without remainder. Augustine writes: For all the difference of the many and very great nations throughout the world in religion and morals, language, weapons and dress, there exist no more than two kinds of society, which, according to our Scriptures, we have rightly called the two cities.

One city is that of men who live according to the flesh. The other is of men who live according to the spirit.4 Membership in these communities is not determined by institutional affiliation, nor any other external sign, but by loving and willing. Members of the earthly city (“the city of Man”) are characterized by love of themselves and their own ends, and by enmity towards the will of God. The “City of God” consists of those who love and honor God. What we see, then, [says Augustine] is that two societies have issued from two kinds of love. Worldly society has flowered from a selfish love which dared to despise even God, whereas the communion of the saints is rooted in a love of God that is ready to trample on self.5 These opposing spiritual communities transcend all human institutions. No earthly organization consists exclusively

of one city’s members. Augustine recognizes that even the Christian church—all of whose members profess citizenship in the City of God—is composed of a mixture of individuals from the two societies. Thus, though the genuine interests of the church are God-centered and eternal and those of the state are temporal and practical, the “City of God” and the “City of Man” are not church and state, and the essential enmity of the two cities does not represent a necessary conflict of earthly institutions.

Still, we might ask how the followers of Jesus could ever be involved in government. In the New Testament, neither the gospels, the book of Acts, nor the epistles seem to tell members of the City of God how cheek-turning, putting-away-your-sword, Mykingdom-is-not-of-this-world living (according to the words of Jesus) is possible while bearing the sword of the state in this world. That might be because it isn’t possible, but it also could be because these are not the issues of the apostolic times. Prior to the fourth century, Christianity is alternately tolerated or persecuted, but governing just isn’t an option for members of the City of God. But the fourth century sees the transition from persecution to Constantinian toleration to a full embrace of Christianity as the religion of the empire, and Augustine’s pastoral and theological work must address the question of Christian participation in government (bearing the sword). His clear distinction between the spiritual societies and the temporal institutions of church and state provides grounds for uncompromised Christian participation in government. The key conceptual foundation for such participation is the notion of “common cause.” Members of the earthly city and the heavenly require temporal peace secured by civil government. This common interest in civil order legitimizes the cooperation of Christians with their spiritual counterparts in the task of government.

Augustine writes: [T]he earthly city … seeks only an earthly peace, and limits the goal of its peace, of its harmony of authority and

obedience among its citizens, to the voluntary and collective attainment of objectives necessary to mortal existence.

The heavenly City, meanwhile— or, rather, that part that is on pilgrimage in mortal life...—must use this earthly peace until such time as our mortality which needs such peace has passed away … [and] has no hesitation about keeping in step with the civil law which governs matters pertaining to our existence here below. For, as mortal life is the same for all, there ought to be common cause between the two cities in what concerns our purely human living.6 Affairs of the mortal life are organized and governed by civil authorities.

Members of both spiritual cities have common interests regarding these affairs and those interests combined with their abilities—not to mention love for neighbor—qualify and perhaps in some cases require Christian participation in civil government.

By the time Augustine becomes Bishop of Hippo there are, of course, professing Christian emperors. If they truly are members of the city of God, shouldn’t they use that power to get other people to join the heavenly city? Augustine’s account of the nature of the two cities entails emphatically that they should not. This follows from the nature of civil government and of the heavenly City.

The state has one means to accomplish its purpose of maintaining civil order: coercion. However, the essential features of the two cities, loving and willing, are not subject to coercion. Civil authority can regulate the external activities of individuals, but is powerless to force or prevent true participation in either the city of God or the earthly city.

Augustine acknowledges this limitation in a letter enumerating the benefits of coercive civil power: Men are not to be called good because they refrain from wrongdoing through the fear of [the power of ] kings—no one is good through dread of punishment but through love of righteousness...7

The city of God expresses itself in “love of righteousness,” not simply right actions. Since the state can produce the latter but not the former, Christian rulers have no duty to enact legislation to produce the city of God. On the contrary, insofar as such efforts misrepresent the nature of true religion, they ought to be avoided by Christian rulers. State religious neutrality is dictated by an acknowledgment of the limitations of civil power and Augustine’s account of the true nature of the city of God.8 Love for neighbor allows Christian participation in the state, but only for temporal peace— never to build the kingdom of God. Students of Martin Luther’s work should find all this quite familiar, as it is the clear position of his Temporal Authority.

Luther on Temporal Authority The background is well known: Luther’s unease—institutionally and personally—with how his church had come to represent (or misrepresent) the gospel of Jesus Christ. Luther’s questions: famously formulated on this day in 1517. And, Luther’s proclamation—in sermons, in teaching, and in writing that “the Christian is the perfectly free lord of all, subject to none,” and “the Christian is the perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all” (this from the 1520 tract On Christian Freedom).

Along the way Luther tangled, of course, with ecclesiastical authority— and also with temporal authority (he refused to obey the emperor’s order at Worms in 1521 to recant). But what of the scriptural injunction to submit to temporal authorities (Romans 13:1, I Peter 2:13-15), or of the medieval interpretation of temporal authority as subject to the church? Luther addressed these issues in 1523 in his treatise Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed. Here our reading of Augustine bursts forth in Luther.

“We must divide the children of Adam and all mankind into two classes,” says Luther, “the first belonging to the kingdom of God, the second to the kingdom of the world. Those who belong to the kingdom of God are all Fall 2017/Agora

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the true believers who are in Christ.”9 These are the members of Augustine’s “city of God.” Luther goes on to say that true Christians have no need to be governed by the sword, since “they do of their own accord much more than all laws and all teachings can demand.”10 Augustine’s city of man is here too: “All who are not Christians belong to the kingdom of the world and are under the law.” God, says Luther, “has provided for them a different government … He has subjected them to the sword so that, even though they would like to, they are unable to practice their wickedness, and if they do practice it they cannot do so without fear or with success and impunity.”11 Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms is accompanied by a doctrine of two governments: “[T]he spiritual, by which the Holy Spirit produces Christians and righteous people under Christ, and the temporal, which restrains the un-Christian and wicked so that—no thanks to them—they are obliged to keep still and maintain an outward peace.”12 According to Luther, this is the apostle Paul’s interpretation of the temporal sword in Romans 13 (that it is “not a terror to good conduct but to bad”).13 So, there are two kingdoms—everybody is in one or the other and nobody is in both. And there are two governments: one (the church) rules Christians by moral exhortation and the Holy Spirit, the other (the state/temporal government) maintains order and protects the innocent from injustice by restraining evil actions via external force or coercion. We should note that Luther sometimes speaks as if Christians are in two kingdoms (he uses that actual phrase), but nobody is in both kingdoms. Members of the kingdom of God live in the world; that is, they live in civil society which is ruled by the sword, but as noted there is no need of the sword to keep them from hurting the innocent. When we see Luther saying that a Christian is in two kingdoms (as in Temporal Authority, p. 96), we must for consistency read him as meaning two governments.

Nobody in the kingdom of the world is governed by the church. (Think about 32

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that for a minute.) And the kingdom of God is not governed by the sword. We coerce people for the good of others (to restrain evil)—we cannot coerce people for their own moral good.

Can Christians bear the sword, according to Luther? Yes, but only in service of the world’s (temporal) government. This mirrors what I have characterized in Augustine as common cause, motivated by love for neighbor.

Luther writes (to Christians): You are under obligation to serve and assist the sword by whatever means you can, with body, goods, honor, and soul. For it is something that you do not need, but which is very beneficial and essential for the whole world, and for your neighbor.

Therefore, if you see that there is a lack of hangmen, constables, judges, lords or princes, and you find that you are qualified, you should offer your services and seek the position, that the essential governmental authority may not be despised and become enfeebled or perish. The world cannot and dare not dispense with it.14 Of course this participation does not include permission to do injustice if the sword—though God-given to the state—is used for injustice. And, in fact, one is under no obligation to obey the temporal authority if it attempts to rule unjustly or beyond its bounds. This is why Luther writes to delineate, about temporal authority, “to what extent it should be obeyed.” The laws of the temporal government “extend no further than to life and property and external affairs on earth.”15 Beyond this, one is not obligated to obey. Luther has a practical and pointed application: If your prince or temporal ruler commands you to side with the pope, to believe thus and so, or to get rid of certain books, you should say ‘ … I will not obey; for then you are a tyrant and overreach yourself.’16 If the ruler should seize the property, then Luther says “you are blessed” because worthy to suffer for the divine

word. Active resistance, he says, is not permitted, but one must not “lift a finger” to comply with the command— even if punished. What does all this tell us about the Peasants’ War?

The Peasants’ War Some say that feudal society was crumbling for a century before the Reformation—in the sense that it increasingly failed to sustain a stable life for peasants. Whether there were increased burdens and demands on the peasants of Europe, or simply a decrease in their willingness to tolerate their exploitation, peasant insurrections were becoming frequent by the end of the fifteenth century. The last and most violent of these revolts was the peasants’ revolt of 1525.17 (I’ve already mentioned the significance of this revolt occurring AFTER the beginning of the Reformation, and some of its leaders explicitly invoke Luther’s teaching in support of their cause. And it didn’t help that some of the chief landlords were bishops and abbots of the church.) One of the manifestos in which the peasants formulated their demands is the Twelve Articles of the Swabian peasants—a document which Luther addresses directly in April 1525.

In his Admonition to Peace: A Reply to the Twelve Articles of the Peasants of Swabia, Luther first addresses the nobles. He says they are in the wrong; the situation is their fault. “As temporal rulers you do nothing but cheat and rob the people so that you may lead a life of luxury and extravagance. The poor common people cannot bear it any longer”18 Luther does not agree with all of the demands of the peasants, but he clearly and publicly agrees with their general complaint that the rulers are using their power unjustly.

“The peasants,” he writes to the nobles, “have just published twelve articles, some of which are so fair and just as to take away your reputation in the eyes of God and the world.”19 Having rebuked the princes, and sided in general with peasants’ claims about justice, Luther then addresses the rebels directly: “So far you have learned … that I agree that … the princes and lords who forbid the preaching of the gospel and oppress the people unbearably

Title page of the 1525 pamphlet: “Actions, demands, and instructions as adopted by the ranks and troops of the peasants, to which they committed, 1525.” Translation

by Soren Steding

of God. But Luther teaches that God gives the sword only to temporal authority—to suppress evil externally for the good of others. Luther’s vehemence in denouncing the peasants’ rebellion is rooted not just in his conviction that they threaten the order of temporal government—and hence threaten all for whom the government exists in the providence of God to protect. The rebels also attack the essence of the gospel, in Luther’s mind, because they pretend to bear the sword on behalf of the kingdom of God—which cannot be served by the sword. (The sword does good to no one, although it does good for some.)

SOURCE WIKICOMMONS

deserve to have God put them down from their thrones.”20 But, he goes on to say, “The fact that the rulers are wicked and unjust does not excuse disorder and rebellion, for the punishing of wickedness is not the responsibility of everyone, but of the worldly rulers who bear the sword.”21 Luther interprets the admonition of Jesus that “the one who takes the sword will perish by the sword” as follows: “This should help us understand that we do not have the right to use the sword simply because someone has done us an injustice and because the law and justice are on our side. We must also have received power and authority from God to use the sword and to punish wrong.”22 Luther means that one must be part of the government to bear the sword; rebellion (violent overthrow of the government) is never permissible.

We must acknowledge, without time to explore the topic, that Luther seems to identify the holders of legitimate authority by seeing who in fact has political power. (This would be something like Thomas Hobbes’s view.)23 But Luther has an additional reason for supposing that the Swabian peasants are not the divinely appointed sword: they claim to be “a Christian association” and to bear the sword to further the kingdom

This brings us back to the harsh words with which we began. When the peasants fail to heed Luther’s admonition to peace, he calls for their destruction if they will not surrender their arms. In so doing he is appealing to temporal rulers to do the job for which God has given them the sword: to maintain order and protect the innocent from violence. (This responsibility is not affected by the rulers’ own injustice—for which Luther insists they will answer to God.) The warring peasants both threaten the lives of their neighbors and compel others to join their murderous project, so swiftly putting down the rebellion protects the innocent. “Therefore, dear lords,” Luther writes, “here is a place where you can release, rescue, help. Have mercy on those poor people! Let whoever can stab, smite, slay.”24 This alone does not reveal the way in which Luther must take God seriously.

Hobbes claims as much—with no appeal to God—when he argues that rebellion threatens the stability of the order which protects the peace and must be put down at all costs.

Luther’s demands on the peasants—if they are Christians as they profess to be—show us more, especially since Luther acknowledges the justice of their complaints against the princes.

The peasants claim to be establishing the kingdom of God via the sword.

But this simply cannot be done given the Augustinian—and Lutheran— conception of the kingdom as a matter of loving and willing, which cannot be coerced. The sword is only to be used to

suppress outward evil. Are the peasants doing that? No, for two reasons: they claim to be building the kingdom of God, and they are fighting on their own behalf. God gives the sword, according to Luther, to temporal authorities to use on behalf of others. What are the peasants supposed to do? Appeal to unjust rulers, and wait either for God to change those rulers, or for God to give the peasants what they deserve in this life or the next? That’s just what Luther thinks they should do, and that’s just why, for example, the Marxist critiques of Luther (along with many others) endure to this day. Waiting for God to take your side means letting those who wield power with injustice walk all over you so long as God does nothing. And let’s be clear. If you trust in God like that, and there is no God, or you’re wrong about what God allows, you are screwed. [It would be entirely Lutheran of me to put that even more graphically.] Could that be what the apostle Paul is alluding to when he writes to the church in Corinth that “if we have hoped in Christ for this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied”?25 Jesus is reported to have said to the Roman governor Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would be fighting … but as it is, my kingdom is not of this realm.” Luther takes that seriously in this matter.26 His word to the princes is that God demands they give up the benefit they gain from the unjust use of authority. His word to the peasants is that God demands they not take up arms against temporal authority to fight for what is unjustly held from them. And look, if God isn’t real and you do either one of those things, you’re screwed. But the bottom line is this: if your trust in God is misplaced, YOU get hurt. The positions that Luther opposes (complete Christian pacifism, an imperial church imposing religion, militarized millenarianism) have this feature: if you’re wrong about God, OTHERS get hurt. To risk your OWN earthly comfort for the sake of what God requires—whether it’s crazy or not—is to take God seriously. What if that is what it means for the just to live by faith?

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Notes 1. Walter Altmann, Luther and Liberation: A Latin American Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, Publishers, 2015), 294.

2. Luther, An Open Letter on the Harsh Book Against the Peasants, trans. Charles M. Jacobs, in ed. Robert C. Schulz, Luther’s Works vol. 46 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), 73.

3. ibid., 65

4. City of God, bk.14, ch.1. This and succeeding quotations are from Fathers of the Church, vols. 6-8 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press); vol.

6, trans. Demetrius B. Zema and Gerald G. Walsh (1950); vol. 7, trans. Gerald G. Walsh and Grace Monahan (1952); vol. 8, trans.

Gerald G. Walsh and Daniel J. Honan (1954).

5. City of God, Bk.14, ch.28.

6. XIX ch. 17 (emphasis added).

7. Letter 153. Fathers of the Church, vol.

20, trans. Wilfrid Parsons (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1953).

8. It is ironic, given Luther’s struggle against what we might call the imperial church, that Augustine’s chief political legacy in the Middle Ages is not this version of the separation of church and state—but the imperial church itself. This is because of his position on the Donatist controversy. Although Augustine argues (mostly convincingly) that his position on imperial suppression of this heretical movement is consistent with his doctrine of the two cities, in practice the influence of his teaching helps put the sword in the hand of the church, with tragic results.

9. Temporal Authority:To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed. trans. J. J. Schindel, in ed. Walther I. Brandt, Luther’s Works vol. 45 (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1962), 88.

10. ibid., 89 11. ibid., 90 12. ibid., 91

13. Some readers will reject Luther’s claim that only true Christians are righteous from within, but we need not be distracted at this point by Luther’s exclusivism. The point to keep in mind is that if you really have a righteous heart, and genuinely love your neighbor, you have no need for the sword to rule you. (A community of perfect love doesn’t need bike locks...or parking tickets.)

Luther isn’t saying that anybody who joins a church or professes to be a Christian can do whatever they want—the whole point of his movement is to deny that. Luther believes the only way to become perfectly loving is a 34

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transformation performed by God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, but if there is another way the political implications are the same—as long as you see it can’t be done by external force.

14. Temporal Authority., 95 15. ibid., 105 16. ibid., 112

17. Walther I. Brandt, “Introduction,” Luther’s Works vol. 45, 77-78.

18. Luther’s Works vol. 46, 19.

19. ibid., 22.

20. ibid., 23.

21. bid., 25.

22. ibid., 30.

23. Famously expressed in Leviathan (1651).

24. Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of the Peasants, trans. Charles M. Jacobs, in ed. Robert C. Schulz, Luther’s Works vol. 46 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), 54.

25. I Corinthians 15:19.

26. John 18:16; Arguably by 1530 Luther starts to slide into permitting forms of active resistance; and his support for the execution of Anabaptists raise questions of later consistency as well. But his position is clear in 1525.

Comrade Luther: The Commemoration of the 450th Anniversary of the Reformation in 1967 in the GDR

PHOTO CREDIT: (C) EPD-BILD/BERND BOHM

by SÖREN STEDING, Professor of German

Just before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Martin Luther memorial from 1895, which had been relocated after the Second World War, was moved back to the center of then East Berlin to stand close to its original location next to the Marienkirche. A statue of Lenin can be seen in the background.

T

he 500th anniversary of the Reformation is remarkable in itself as an anniversary. Very few events in Western history have inspired people over such a long time to commemorate them. It is also quite remarkable how the commemoration has changed over the years. When Protestants in 1617 (unbeknownst to them: at the eve of the Thirty Years War) looked back to the act they identified as the beginning of the Reformation—the posting of the 95 Theses by Martin Luther—they did it with a different understanding of what had happened and how it still was relevant for them more than it is today. For them, the Reformation was a return to the true religion, to a true understanding of God. For us … it is complicated.

In his 2012 book, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society, Brad Gregory writes:

“What transpired five centuries ago continues today profoundly to influence the lives of everyone not only in Europe and North America but all around the world, whether or not they are Christians or indeed religious believers of any kind.”1 It is my assumption that no one with an understanding of Western history would say that the Reformation did not matter, that it did not bring forth changes—or at the very least dramatically accelerate changes—that were responsible for the world in which we live today. But if we confidently claim that the Reformation “ushered in Western modernity, with its separation of church and state, secularization of public politics, privatization of religion,”2 and if we recognize that there is a connection “between late medieval metaphysics and contemporary neoDarwinian atheism,”3 we also see why this anniversary creates tensions: How

do you solve a problem like Martin Luther? How do we commemorate or even celebrate publicly an inherently spiritual event 500 years later in a secular environment where “a symbiosis of capitalism and consumerism … more than anything else [is] the cultural glue that holds together the heterogeneity of Western hyperpluralism”?4 As an example of how this tension has been tackled in the past, I would like to describe how the East Germany communist state, the German Democratic Republic, or GDR,5 handled the 450th anniversary of the Reformation in 1967. I claim that, in essence, what the GDR did— reducing or completely removing the religious, the theological aspect of the Reformation—has been the dominant approach to dealing with this event in the public sphere and wasn’t specifically communistic.

What the GDR did—reducing or completely removing the religious, the theological aspect of the Reformation—has been the dominant approach to dealing with this event in the public sphere and wasn’t specifically communistic.

But first we have to remind ourselves that the remembrance of an historical event and the event itself are two different things and that it is necessary for “one to distinguish sharply between the past itself and the remembered past.”6 It is the difference between the questions “What has happened?” and “What does it mean to us?”; between Fall 2017/Agora

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While the “actual past […] places boundaries on what can and cannot be remembered and how,”7 and while the actual past—ultimately—is responsible for, and has caused the present, it is powerless against the way we remember as “memory is not simply the storage of ‘facts’ but the ongoing work of reconstructive imagination.

In other words, the past cannot be stored but always has to be ‘processed’ and mediated. This mediation depends on the semantic frames and needs of a given individual or society within a given present.”8 There is a need to remember, but not a need and capacity to remember everything. Thus, as remembering is a selection, it also has moral dimensions.

What is the duty to remember? And at what point is not remembering or not remembering correctly a moral offense not only against the past but also against the present? When is our selective perception of the past a necessary evil, and when it is an evil by choice?

Which brings us back to Martin Luther and the 500th anniversary of the reformation.

Early in 2014, the question was raised how Luther College should celebrate the anniversary in 2017. Ultimately it was decided that the two main events should be a conference in Spring 2017 and a symposium in Fall. For that, the faculty of the college voted on December 8, 2015, to suspend classes “to hold a symposium, beginning with an outside convocation speaker, and then continue with Luther community members contributing presentations, displays, performances, anything relevant and interesting that is somehow related to the reformation and its continued impact.”9 In their proposal for this event, the Academic Planning Committee and the Committee for the Commemoration of the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation argued that by “virtue of our name, history, and heritage, Luther 36

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College is uniquely connected to the central figure of the broad historical movement we call the Reformation” and that there “is an expectation among certain core stakeholders in the college that we observe this anniversary in a significant way: this includes students, faculty, regents, alumnae, donors, and friends.”10

East German stamp commemorating the 500th anniversary in 1983 of Luther’s birth, from a painting by Lucas Cranach.

One might think that at a “college of the church” that bears the name of the German reformer, a proposal like this would have been no-brainer, but the faculty had to vote four times before the motion ultimately passed. The main argument brought up against suspending classes had been that this would interfere with classes, mostly labs, and that it would be very difficult to change the curriculum.11 But one can be certain that there were other concerns as well, some of which have to do with the role and place of spirituality in our lives and the way we see the Reformation today.

My argument is that the reluctance to celebrate and the issues that we have today with this anniversary are very similar to those the GDR faced when it came to the question of how to commemorate the 450th anniversary of

the reformation in 1967 (and the 500th birthday of Luther in 1983), and that these two commemorations both were shaped by the question of whether it matters that Christ died for our sins and that we are saved by the grace of God alone.

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PHOTO CREDIT: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

“What are the facts?” and “How do we remember them?”; between “What do we remember?” and “Why do we remember?”

For the GDR, the East German communist state, founded in 1949 with the help and protection of the Soviet Union, Martin Luther came with a lot of ideological baggage. Marx and Engels had seen the reformer as part of the bourgeoisie12 and mostly on the side of capitalism. The Nazis had made Luther into a predecessor of Hitler (or Hitler into a Luther-like figure), citing Luther’s hatred of the Jews, his eloquence, his rebellious attitude, and his overall “German-ness” as character traits der Führer also possessed.13 Finally, there was the religious aspect: While the GDR constitution granted the freedom of religion,14 there was never a doubt that the state and its leaders considered any religion at least as irrational and pointless, but quite often also as dangerous and subversive.

But Luther could also not simply be ignored. First, because he had been established as one of THE most important Germans who had influenced history like very few others, and who had a reputation far beyond the borders of Germany. And second, most of the places Luther had lived and worked were in GDR territory: Eisleben, Wittenberg, Eisenach, the Wartburg, just to name a few. Because of its geographical location, the GDR had become—inadvertently—the safe-keeper of buildings and artifacts that were considered central to modern European history and to Protestantism.

And as the GDR described itself as humanistic, cultured, and enlightened (other than the Third Reich or even West Germany), it had to prove to the world that it was able to fill this role.

Keep in mind that for historians with a Marxist-Leninist mindset the course of history is ultimately already known; history unavoidably brings forth the socialist society. Everything that happened is seen and interpreted through this lens. Therefore, Luther had

The argument used in the GDR was that Luther’s belief that people were saved by the grace of God alone rejected the role of the church as necessary mediator between God and believers.

This function of the church, however, was seen as the ideological foundation of the entire feudal system and Luther therefore “emancipated the people […] from the feudal-ecclesiastical hierarchy.”16 But while he was described as anti-feudal, he also was seen as anti-plebeian. In materials prepared for distance education for history teachers by the Deutsches Pädagogisches Zentralinstitut, Luther was described in this way: “On one side, he wanted to cleanse the Christian religion of the feudal elements, on the other hand he still considered the Bible to be holy and he wanted to reform [the church] only as far as this understanding of scripture, which was limited by his propertyowning, bourgeois mindset, would allow.”17 Still, the fact that Luther’s first major public protest was aimed against the selling of indulgences, which even Catholic historians today describe as mostly an exploitative practice, helped to include Luther into the Marxist worldview of economic class warfare and earned him some socialist credit.

Engels wrote in 1850 that the posting of the 95 Theses had hit “like a bolt of lightning.”18 The GDR journalist Ursula Tintemann described it this

PHOTO CREDIT: (FOTO: (C) ADN-ZB-LÖWE HEN-SCHÄ)

to be explained within the framework of Marxist-Leninist theory as one who at least could be tolerated. This meant that it was necessary to show that Luther—in one way or the other—had contributed to political and societal progress as defined by Marxism, either by personally and actively acting towards the progress of society, or by inspiring others through his writings (which did not require that he was fully aware of his contribution to progress).

As one Luther scholar has written, “It would have been enough to claim that Luther had reflected the necessity [for societal transformation] without immediately recognizing it. This could have been explained by the classbased limitations of his understanding.

Luther’s contribution would have been that others ‘correctly’ applied and understood his teachings.”15

During the air raids of Dresden in Feburary 1945, the Frauenkirche und the Luther statue had been destroyed or damaged. The statue was later re-erected, while the Frauenkirche remained in ruins until 2005. way in 1967: “With his resolute step [the nailing of the 95 Theses] against the existing ecclesiastical and social conditions, this earnest criticism of the doctrine and the practice of the Church, he introduced the Reformation of rigid Catholicism. It was equivalent to an early bourgeois revolution.”19 Luther also was praised for his translation of the Bible—not so much for bringing the Word of God to the people, but as a major milestone in the development of the German language.

In the early days of the GDR, however, this is as far as it would go. Luther was described as selling out to the territorial princes even before the Diet of Worms.20 The socialist historians alleged that he ignored the socioeconomic situation of the peasants and instead focused on questions of theology, putting spiritual freedom above freedom from oppression and exploitation, which reduced his political influence and historical importance.21 The rebellious masses turned their back on Luther and soon found a new leader: Thomas Müntzer. It was Müntzer whom GDR historiography (following Engels, who saw in Müntzer’s teachings a “glimpse of communism”22) and the political leadership stylized to be the first true German revolutionist. And as they declared the Peasants’ War to be the first German revolution, the

Reformation (up to 1521/22) basically was only its prelude.23 Müntzer was also chosen because he was not really claimed by any church. Outside the GDR, however, Müntzer remained a secondary character of the Reformation, to a certain degree simply because the Peasants’ War had failed so quickly and miserably, and Müntzer was captured by the princes’ troops, tortured, and executed in 1525.

333 The first public test for the GDR and its relationship with Luther came in 1967, when the 450th anniversary of the Reformation, the 150th anniversary of the Wartburgfest and the 900th anniversary of the Wartburg itself coincided.24 At the founding meeting of the GDR committee for the events commemorating the 450th anniversary of the reformation, Gerald Götting, the Deputy Chairman of the GDR State Council, said: The citizens of the first German Workers’ and Peasants’ State have accepted the heritage of the great humanists and freedom fighters, of the great mass of the people who strove for peace and justice in the past. The clear and creative policy of peace and social justice Fall 2017/Agora

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The Socialist Unity Party (SED),26 the governing party in the GDR, wanted to claim the locations associated with the Reformation, specifically the Wartburg, as national symbols and monuments.27 They wanted to expand the historical tradition of the state that had been founded only 18 years before. The “Political-ideological concept for the preparation and implementation of the anniversary celebration” stated: The Lutheran Reformation […] is part of the progressive historical heritage. […] Luther’s Reformation and the celebration of its 450th anniversary therefore cannot be predominantly the responsibility of the church; rather, the German Democratic Republic as the heir of all progressive traditions that are tied to the early bourgeois revolution must take over the responsibility to commemorate this important period of German national history adequately.28 This was in line with the way the GDR leadership dealt with German history in general: All that was seen as good ultimately belonged to the GDR, and all that was bad (including the Third Reich), ultimately to the FRG (West Germany).

The restoration of the Wartburg was described not only as showing respect for Germany’s past, but also to show the moral superiority of the GDR in comparison to the Third Reich. In the GDR Review, a state-issued magazine that was published in various languages, one could read: “Under the Nazi regime all repair and maintenance was grossly neglected. This is not surprising considering the Nazi policy of war with its denial of all humanist values in the past history of the nation—a policy which was incompatible with efforts to perpetuate the humanist heritage 38

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PHOTO CREDIT: WWW.BRIEFMARKEN-VERSAND-WELT.DE

followed by the Government of the GDR fulfills not only the demands of our era but is also in keeping with the best traditions of the German people. Thus, these three commemorative festivals are the concern of our whole population.25

East German stamps commemorating the 900th anniversary of the Wartburg castle in Eisenach, where Luther translated the New Testament into German. and to restore architectural monuments and works of art.”29 The Wartburg was declared a “Castle of Peace”: Wartburg Castle is one of the few castles whose fame of past centuries is not associated with deeds of war but with outstanding events of a peaceful character. This reputation of the Wartburg as a castle of peace and understanding has been proved anew in our times thanks to the consistent peace policy of the Government of our sovereign, socialist German Democratic Republic.30 This all fit into the SED strategy to establish an alternate interpretation of German history as a whole. The concept as the Peasants’ War as an “early bourgeois revolution,”31 which had been coined by the historian Alfred Meusel and popularized by Max Steinmetz,32 created the opportunity to shift the Reformation’s focus on faith to what Walter Ulbricht, the party leader at the time, called “the largest revolutionary uprising of the masses before the November revolution.”33 If the Peasants’ War, in retrospect, was what it all was about, the entire Reformation had to be seen as “the expression of the revolutionary willingness of the oppressed and exploited masses, especially of the peasants, to free themselves of the economic, social and intellectual chains.”34 This legitimized the state, putting itself in charge of the celebrations and delegating the church

and its institutions to a supporting role. It also opened the opportunity to further separate the Protestant church in the GDR from the West German Protestant Church (EKD).35 This was done, for example, by denying most West German church dignitaries a visa.36 This and other conflicts finally caused the representatives of the Protestant church in the GDR to resign from the organizing committee for the commemorations.37 The State Office for Matters of the Church38 therefore, almost triumphantly, declared in January 1968: “The celebrations of the Reformation have been a secular event, not one of the church.”39

The socialist historians alleged that he ignored the socioeconomic situation of the peasants and instead focused on questions of theology, putting spiritual freedom above freedom from oppression and exploitation, which reduced his political influence and historical importance.

333

While one might shrug this off as antireligious communist behavior, one has

This becomes very clear when we look at a GDR history textbook for 6th grade, published in 1987, the last edition of this book.43 Luther was still praised for starting the Reformation as a mass movement, providing an ideological foundation with the 95 Theses. But neither his steadfastness at Worms nor his role in the development of the German language through his translation of the Bible were seen as redeeming accomplishments for his siding with the territorial princes.

When he returned from the Wartburg to Wittenberg in the middle of an iconoclastic riot, he preached against it: “A true Christian should not start a revolt, he said. Thus Luther slowly

CREDIT: HTTP://IMG.MA-SHOPS.AT/LOEBBERS/ PIC/140724014BZ.JPG

to remember that in the West, too, the Reformation was also mostly seen by historians as an event of political and national historical importance. And that is not just since 1945. Therefore, the West could criticize that the East wanted to make Luther into something he wasn’t—a political revolutionist of Marxist persuasion—but they could not rightfully claim that they alone knew the true Luther, because they also had continued to de-emphasize the spiritual dimensions of the Reformation.40 Thus, while Howard claimed that “Luther’s official image in the GDR [from 1946 to 1983] underwent a remarkable metamorphosis” and that “Luther’s treatment in the East contrasted strikingly with the treatment in the West,”41 I would dispute this observation. My first reason would be that once the SED had decided how to classify Luther, there was very little change. In 1980 at the founding of the Martin-Luther-Committee which was responsible for the organization of the “Luther Year”, Erich Honecker, the party leader of the SED and chairperson of the committee, called Luther “one of the greatest sons of the German people” because of his influence on the progressive development of history and because he was a humanist, determined to make the world more just.42 Honecker praised Luther’s opposition to the pope and the emperor as well as the importance of the Bible translation. And everything Luther did led to the Peasant’s War. All this echoes the statements we heard before.

A commemorative silver coin of the 500th anniversary of Luther’s birth. The image on the right shows Luther defending his teachings in 1521 at the Diet of Worms. turned against the fight of the masses.

He believed in the legitimacy of the princes and that all authority was set into place by God.”44 In the narrative of this textbook, after the failed Peasants’ War, the Reformation no longer was a people’s movement, but turned into a Princes’ Reformation (“Fürstenreformation”),45 with Luther as a complicit supporter. His importance for history, i.e. for the development of the socialist state, basically had ended at Worms—some would say already after he posted the 95 Theses.

His importance for history, i.e. for the development of the socialist state, basically had ended at Worms—some would say already after he posted the 95 Theses.

It is true that the GDR historians over time developed a more nuanced picture of Luther, but the official interpretation remained: He was a great German, because of his translation of the Bible, and because he dared to stand up against oppression and exploitation.

But he did it for the wrong—mostly theological—reasons and with the wrong—a bourgeois—mindset. He was only important as an (almost accidental) initiator of social change, while his own obsession with spiritual questions was the reason for his downfall. He saw the

exploitation, but did not want to solve the problem through revolution and class warfare, rather only by turning inward and by keeping the established power structure (as long as it did not include the pope).

But here is the most remarkable aspect of the whole story: Although Luther, in the official judgement of the GDR, was such a failure as a revolutionist, so unable to see the true suffering of the people, so willing to side with the feudal lords and to betray the peasants, and so tangled up in religious irrationalism, he still could not simply be ignored.

And as always in these situations, when reality did not want to yield to theory and ideology, the GDR resolved the issue with pragmatism. There were no changes in the fundamental ideological convictions, only minor adjustments and the principle of picking whatever was useful at the moment and ignoring the rest. “The rest” in this case was everything spiritual.

And this is what has generally happened to Luther over the last 500 years. At every anniversary, the present looks at the past with its own needs. Within the boundaries that the past sets, interpretations and aspirations compete.

And the way we commemorate or even celebrate says more about us in the here and now than about the past itself.

If Luther therefore looks less spiritual than before, if we have a problem with what he said and did, if we feel that he is no longer relevant, or that we have outgrown him … it might not be him. It might be us.

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Notes 1. Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society, Cambridge (USA): Harvard Belnap, 2012, 1 2. Gregory, 6.

3. Gregory, 5.

4. Gregory, 23.

5. Die Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR. 6. Thomas Howard, Remembering the Reformation: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Protestantism, Oxford (UK): Oxford UP, 2016, 4.

7. Howard, 4

8. Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism, Cambridge (MA): Harvard UP, 1997, 14.

9. Luther College Meeting minutes for December 12, 2015.

10. Symposium Proposal, November 30, 2015.

11. See: Luther College Meeting minutes for December 12, 2015.

12. See: MEW vol. 1 p. 386, vol. 7 p.

347-349, vol. 21 p. 402f.

13. This had an influence in the 1930s and 1940s on how some in the AngloAmerican world saw Luther. See for example: William McGovern, From Luther to Hitler: The History of Fascist-Nazi Philosophy, 1941; Peter Wiener, Martin Luther: Hitler’s Spiritual Ancestor, 1945; and Howard, pp.

105-07.

14. Constitution of the GDR, 1949: Artikel 41, and Constitution of the GDR, 1968 (also 1974): Artikel 39.

15. Martin Roy, Luther in der DDR: Zum Wandel des Lutherbildes in der DDR-Geschichtsschreibung, Bochum: Winkler, 2000, 69.

16. Deutsches Pädagogisches Zentralinstitut (ed.): Fernstudium der Lehrer: Geschichte – 9. Lehrbrief, Berlin, Volk und Wissen, 1951, 547 17. Geschichte Lehrbrief 9, 547.

18. „…wie ein Blitz in ein Pulverfaß“ MEW Bd. 7, S.372. See: Engels‘ essay on the Peasants‘ War, MEW vol. 7, p- 329-413.

19. Ursula Tintemann, “In the Footsteps of Martin Luther”, GDR Review 9/67, 12-16, 12.

20. See for example Friedrich Engels‘ 1850 statement about how Luther sided with the political establishment, MEW, Bd. 7, S. 348.

21. Geschichte Lehrbrief 9, 549.

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22. “Vorahnung des Kommunismus”.

See: MEW, Bd. 7, p. 329.

23. Roy, 145. Also see: Thomas Nipperdey, Reformation, Revolution, Utopie, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975, 22f.

24. It was also the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

25. In Günther Wolf, “Castle of Peace: Wartburg Castle - Ninth Centenary”, GDR Review 3/67, 2-4, 4.

26. Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands.

27. Roy, 152

28. SAPMO-BA, DY20/IV A 2/9.04/88, document 1 (Politisch-ideologische Konzeption zur Vorbereitung und Durchführung des 450).

29. “More Beautiful Than Ever” (no name), GDR Review 8/67 pages 48-51, 49f.

30. in: Günther Wolf, “Castle of Peace: Wartburg Castle - Ninth Centenary”, GDR Review 3/67, 2-4, 4.

31. Frühbürgerliche Revolution. In the West, this term and concept never caught on.

32. See: Max Steinmetz, Deutschland 1476-1648: Von der frühbürgerlichen Revolution zum Westfälischen Frieden, Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1965.

33. February 1966, quoted in: Jan Scheunemann, Luther und Müntzer: Deutsch-deutsche Rezeptionsgeschichte, Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2015,, 160.

34. “Zur politisch-ideologischen Konzeption der 450-Jahr-Feier der Reformation“ (1966); quoted in: Scheunemann, Luther und Müntzer, 180.

35. Evangelische Kirche Deutschlands.

203.

204.

36. Scheunemann, Luther und Müntzer, 37. Scheunemann, Luther und Müntzer, 38. Staatssekretariat für Kirchenfragen.

39. Scheunemann, Luther und Müntzer, 204, “Die Reformationsfeiern waren ein säkularen Ereignis, kein kirchliches.“ 40. Volker Leppin, “Reformationsgeschichtsschreibung in der DDR und der Bundesrepublik“, in: Jan Scheunemann (ed.), Reformation und Bauernkrieg: Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik im geteilten Deutschland, Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2010, 33-48, 35.

41. Howard, 111.

42. Erich Honecker: “Unsere Zeit verlangt Parteinahme für Fortschritt, Vernunft und Menschlichkeit,“ in: Martin Luther und unsere Zeit: Konstituierung des

Martin-Luther-Komitees der DDR, Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1980, 11-18, 11.

43. Geschichte: Lehrbuch für Klasse 6, Berlin: Volk und Wissen, 1987.

44. Geschichte 6, 190.

45. Geschichte 6, 203.

The Other Wittenberg: Lutheranism, Luther College, and an Indian Mission School

by JOSEPH BREITENSTEIN, Associate Professor of Psychology

Morality binds and blinds. xel Jacobson (Luther College class of 1885) grew up in Story County, Iowa. It was storied country for young Axel as he heard again and again how his paternal uncle, “whose namesake I am,” was killed “in cold blood by the Sioux Indians” in Dakota “while teaming for the government.” Axel’s father was J. A. Jacobson, a member of the Dakota Territory Convention. Axel wrote that his father never told the story “in a vengeful mood—he closed by saying, ‘Poor folks, they fought for their homes and knew nothing about Christ and His Word.’” The father told his son that “He always hoped someone would bring them the Gospel of Christ.” For young Axel Jacobson, “This created in me a longing to do just that” (Bethany Indian Mission, 1938, p. 2).

The Jacobsons moved to Willmar, Minnesota while Axel was still in grade school. After graduating from high school there, he attended two years at St. Olaf College and then two more at Luther College, graduating from the Normal Department.1 After teaching for a couple of years at public and parochial schools, Axel Jacobson “accepted a call to serve as teacher and assistant superintendent of the Bethany Indian Mission, obeying the inner call of Christ: ‘Feed my Lambs’” (Bethany Indian Mission, 1938, p. 2).

The school was in Wittenberg in Shawano County, east of Wausau in north-central Wisconsin, named for Wittenberg, Germany by Lutherans honoring Martin Luther and the Reformation. Luther, of course, risked his life fighting against various forms of subjugation by the Catholic Church and fighting for higher forms of conscience.

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A

Jonathan Haidt (2012)

Students and staff pose in front of Bethany Indian Mission School, Wittenberg, Wisconsin (date unknown) He viewed education as essential to his work: I am much afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, and engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which means are not unceasingly occupied with the Word of God must be corrupt (qtd. in D’aubigne 3:109.)

The ideas emanating from Wittenberg, Germany, found their way evangelically to Wittenberg, Wisconsin in the 1880s where it was assumed: The heathen Indians like other Gentiles know not God without the Gospel. They will then seek to have their own man-made

teachings about God and the state of man and their own weird worship. In this condition, they are without God and without hope (Peterson & Houghum, ca.

1952, p.2).

Wittenberg had a draw beyond the name, for it was heavily populated with several Native American Tribes, including Brothertown, Mohawk, Ojibwe, Oneida, Stockbridge-Munsee, and Ho-Chunk, or as they were known at the time, the Winnebago. According to local historians of the time, Stella Peterson and P. P. Houghum (ca. 1952), the area was referred to by Norwegian pioneers and settlers as “Indi landet,” which in American-English meant The Indian Land.

They called that part of our country so, because there were so many Indians who liked to live in a wooded land, where the Fall 2017/Agora

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The dates of the timeline of the missionary efforts around Wittenberg vary from source to source. Reverend E. J. Homme appeared to be the primary impetus for founding the school.

Homme attended Luther College from 1862-1864 and then Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, graduating in 1867. In addition to the Bethany Indian Mission School, he also founded an orphanage and a home for the elderly in Wittenberg, the latter of which is still in operation and bears his name. Several years after the establishment of Bethany with local resources, Homme was finally able to secure ongoing funding from the Norwegian Lutheran Synod, whose Vice-President was also the President of Luther College, Laur Laursen (Peterson & Houghum, ca. 1952). Wittenberg was one of several missionary efforts directed from Laursen’s office, including far-flung efforts in China, where the practice of foot binding flourished (Norlie, 1924; & Malmin, Norlie, & Tingelstad, 1928).

Reverend Erik Olsen Morestad (attended Luther College, 1879-1881) was the first to actively attend to Native Americans in the Wittenberg area with a formal declaration of support from the Norwegian Synod: The work should be seriously undertaken at once, since all mission history proves that the concern for the furtherance of God’s Kingdom among the heathens has had a beneficial effect on the church.

Furthermore, it is right to begin a mission among the Indians since we occupy the land which was once their land, and that we are obligated to them. (NorwegianAmerican Historical Association, Erik Morstad’s Missionary Work) At the same time, the Synod was apparently also struggling with which 42

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ties would bind their organization together, concluding its rationale for supporting the mission: “Finally, it would be well to forget some of our abominable church strife by serious participation in such a mission.”

Morestad only stayed at Wittenberg a year or two before attaining Girls preparing food at Bethany Indian Mission School (date more education unknown). The curriculum emphasized Western domestic, and venturing agricultural, and occupational skill, and students were employed for even further into cranberry and cherry harvests the Wisconsin wilderness the government, with law enforcement to continue his work with Native officials often involved in taking the Americans. children. During World War I, the Professor Axel Jacobson arrived in Wittenberg in March, 1888, and started his work of teaching the Indians about the Bible truths, “about the Triune God and what He has done for our salvation” (Peterson & Houghum, ca.

1952, p. 7). But, “It was no easy task to get a foothold among these people, as they seemed contented in the immense woods. There were plenty of wild animals for food and clothing, and they saw no need for changing” (Rykken, ca.

1921, p. 6).

Coincidentally, the Dawes Act, passed in 1887, enforced severalty, or individual allotment of small plots of land to Native Americans, ending longstanding communal traditions, as well as bringing Native Americans more under the laws of the United States (Wisconsin Historical Society, 2014). This legislated disintegration of Native American societies likely made them more dependent upon religious and secular assistance to survive, including schools.

The various iterations of schools at Wittenberg were typical of other schools across the nation as they shifted from parochial to government control, or some combination of the two. Residential education was typically compulsory when schools were run by

government simply stopped funding the schools, with religious organizations trying hard to pick up the slack.

Funding was a constant concern, and schools like Wittenberg were rarely if ever fully provisioned or staffed (Adams, 1995; Archuleta, Child, & Lomawaima, 2000; Child, 1998; Churchill, 2004; & Coleman, 1993). Jacobson seemed to be reminding the President of the Synod of this ongoing need when he wrote, “Since the Synod accepted the Indian Mission as its true Infidel Mission, the congregation is encouraged to still support this mission with their prayers and gifts” (Jacobson, 1893, p. 2).

One source of funding for Wittenberg was the purchase of brochures sold during presentations to various audiences, typically Lutherans, that described the success of mission work: “To refute the assertion often made, even by educated people, that it is an impossibility to fully civilize and Christianize a heathen in the first generation” (Rykken, ca. 1921, p. 10).

Religious instruction typically continued while the schools were nominally under government administration and this was the case at Wittenberg. The curriculum also emphasized Western domestic, agricultural, and occupational skills.

Wittenberg students were employed

VESTERHEIM NORWEGIAN AMERICAN MUSEUM, DECORAH, IA

trees ranged large and thickly, and where there were also copious streams, rivers and lakes abounding with fish, and a place where deer hunting, and other game were plentiful, and could so easily be gotten (Peterson & Houghum, ca. 1952, p. 1).

for cranberry and cherry harvests, one of many indications of impoverishment and growing dependence upon the new economy.

Another constant was the involvement of Axel Jacobson as teacher or administrator for over fifty years.

“I served as Superintendent of the Mission, Superintendent of the Government School, Indian Agent, and at the same time held offices as President of the Wittenberg Academy, Member of the Church Council, and Director of the Village School Board” (Bethany Indian Mission, 1938, p. 3).

The annual census ranged from several students in the beginning to close to 170. The School taught children as young as four and adults in their twenties. Ultimately, the school closed in 1933 and educational efforts were taken over by the State of Wisconsin.

Lutheran missionary efforts, like summer school, otherwise continued in the Wittenberg area until the mid-50s under the direction of Pastor E. W. Sihler, (class of 1921) the son of longtime Luther College Professor W. P. Sihler. The last building was razed in 1962. (Wisconsin Historical Society, 2014). Wittenberg-Birnamwood Public Schools now occupy the primary site of the Mission School.

There were varying degrees of willful participation among the Indian Nations.

Jacobson noted in particular: It was next to impossible to get the Winnebagoes to send their children to our school. I took regular trips out to the different camps, pleading with the old folks to send their children to our school. Old man Bear, a typical, full-blooded Indian, had a good looking boy named Tom, who was about nine years old. After pleading at intervals, whenever occasion permitted, during almost a year, we succeeded at last in getting the boy into our school. I recollect as if it were today that stalworth (sic) Indian appearing at the school, with this bright, black cue, nicely braided, hanging down from the back of his head. (All these Indians, men

and boys, wore the cue. The old superstition was still in force that a man who had lost his cue, in other words had been scalped, would never enter heaven, the happy hunting grounds). Now came the crucial test. All our boys must bathe, change clothes, and have their hair clipped on the day of admittance. I personally took Tom, after the father left, down beneath the maple trees, and clipped his head close, cue and all. After this I had him remove his buckskin clothes and don others. I carefully wrapped the buckskin suit in a bundle to have it ready for the father when he should call for it. The next morning Mr. Bear came. Tom was getting his first start, and in came Mr. Bear. One sharp glance at the boy and another at me, and I felt as tho I were pierced thru by it. I shall never forget that look. Coming closer to me, he made signs by pointing to Tom’s head and clothing. I understood what he wanted, and made signs for him to sit down until I let the pupils out for recess. Recess came, and I beckoned to Mr. Bear to come with me, and I would get the Buckskin clothing.

When the bundle was handed to him, he made me understand that he was pleased with that, but yet he pointed to his head. Then I thought of the cue. We proceeded down the side hill to the maples.

He carefully picked up the cue, wrapped it in the bundle with the clothes, and departed.

The taking of the cue is described quite differently in the classic text describing Native American boarding schools, Kill The Indian, Save the Man, by Ward Churchill (2004): For boys, the next step was to undergo the humiliating experience of having their heads shorn, military-style. Although the shearing was/is usually passed off as more “hygiene,” it was not typically done to girls except as punishment, and must therefore be considered to have served a

different purpose: “At the heart of the policy was the belief that the [boys’] long hair was symbolic of savagism; removing it was central” to destroying their sense of themselves as Indians.

The same was true of their clothing and other personal items, all of which were taken from them. In exchange, they were issued uniforms expressly intended to separate them from the “excessive individualism” of their own traditions by reducing them “to sameness, to regularity, to order.” Then came their names. Those with “savage” or “unpronounceable” identifiers like Chesegesbega or Sitahpetale, which included the great majority of the new arrivals, quickly found themselves saddled with Anglicized replacements like “Smith” and “Miller” (renaming the children after U.S. presidents and literary figures like Henry Ward Beecher or Julius Caesar also seems to have been a source of amusement for many school staffers). A consistent theme running through autobiographical material written by former students is how this procedure in particular engendered an abiding sense that they’d “lost” themselves and were thus “stranger[s] with no possibilities” for the future (Churchill, 2004, p. 19).

Churchill’s book takes its title from the philosophy that guided inculcation efforts in America and Canada. The phrase was coined in 1879 by an Army officer named Richard H. Pratt who opened a highly-regimented boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, that attempted to “civilize” Native Americans by eradicating any expression of nativity.

The Carlisle School became a model for institutions across North America that had varying degrees of government and religious administration, depending upon the school and the time.

Churchill (2004) and other scholars (Adams, 1995; Archuleta, Child, & Lomawaima, 2000; Child, 1998; & Coleman, 1993) site voluminous Fall 2017/Agora

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represented on school census reports, including one child listed in the 1921 census as “Earnest DeCorah” (Rykken, ca. 1921, p. 22).

Like most tribes of the time, they were deceived There is no evidence that Jacobson or by the American The Lutheran Church had genocidal government and intentions. He is described by lost title to all of supporters as a “Christian gentleman” their native lands and recognized for “his long life of in Wisconsin. untiring labor for the Indian Mission The Dawes Act of the Norwegian Church of America” alone resulted in (Rykken, ca. 1921, p. 3). However, no the Ho-Chunk formal accounting of disease, deaths, losing 2,329 runaways, etc., could be found that acres of prime might place Wittenberg in the context land in Shawano of other boarding schools.

Girls and young women learn sewing at Bethany Indian County to E. J. Bost, and not Axel Jacobson, was Mission School (date unknown).

European settlers superintendent of the Wittenberg (Wisconsin institutional documents and other Indian Mission School in 1908 Historical Society, 2014). For a time, accounts such as diaries that not only when it was more formally run by the Ho-Chunk were exiled to Northeast describe the punishment for native the government. Bost wrote the Iowa to so-called Neutral Ground cultural expressions, but also describe Commissioner of Indian Affairs about where they were caught in the crossfire rampant emotional, physical, and sexual a “Winnebago” pupil that had run away of Sauk and Sioux, only to be relocated abuse, along with high disease and “no less than six times” in approximately again to Minnesota and Nebraska (Hodeath rates from vulnerability associated three months: chunk Nation of Wisconsin, n.d.). with diseases from a lack of natural I have gone after him myself resistance, inadequate diet, separation Waukon Decorah was a Ho-Chunk several times and talked to him. from family, and confinement in close leader. He and his people were exiled We have been good to him, did quarters that were often poorly kept. to the present-day area of Decorah not punish him at all for running Some schools had disease and death where one of his daughters was killed away several times, not until his rates comparable to concentration

by Sauk and Meskwaki raiders after people told me that I had better camps. Many children even died while marrying a Dakota man. Waukon chain him or punish him in attempting to run away back home. For Decorah was talked out of an avenging some way, that they were afraid a Churchill, the schools were, in perhaps attack by United States authorities. storm would come up some time varying degrees, simply exercises in Another chance for revenge came when when he was on the road and he cultural genocide (Churchill, 2004).

Decorah led a band of Ho-Chunk in would perish with the cold as fighting Blackhawk The “Winnebagoes” were indeed as Blackhawk led the known for the fierce protection of their Sauks and Meskwakis identity. They resisted trading with the in an attempt to French in the 1600s and fought against regain land taken from America in the War of 1812. On two them. After the war, separate occasions, hundreds of warriors Meskwaki raiders were lost in storms while aggressively killed ten women protecting their resources, once while and children from crossing Lake Michigan and again Decorah’s family in while crossing Lake Winnebago. They retaliation, including also eventually formally resisted the his wife. (Waukon name given to them by their neighbors Decorah, n.d.) the Potowatami, “Ouinepego,” which referred to the earthy smell of the The Ho-Chunk kept waterways where they dwelled. The returning back to French identified them as Puan or Wisconsin and were Puant, that translates to “Stinkard” in among the Native English. The proud tribe eventually Americans living at reverted back to their original name “Indi landet” when The student body and faculty of Bethany Indian Mission School of Ho-Chunk, which translates to, Jacobson arrived. Ho- pose for a group photo in front of a large American flag. (Date among other terms, “sacred voice” (HoChunk children are unknown) 44

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VESTERHEIM NORWEGIAN AMERICAN MUSEUM, DECORAH, IA

VESTERHEIM NORWEGIAN AMERICAN MUSEUM, DECORAH, IA

chunk Nation of Wisconsin, n.d.).

Yet remaining at the school was also no guarantee of safety. In his correspondence back to the Synod, Axel Jacobson described health concerns among his charges, some of which likely occurred in contemporary public schools as well, with outbreaks of tuberculosis and influenza common regardless of setting: We have had some sickness this year, like eye sickness, wounds, and scabies, which the Indian children have a lot of, but most of them are well now. One boy has been without medical attention for ½ year for a wound on his calf, and it is still doubtful whether it can be healed without a large operation ( Jacobson, 1893, p. 2).

And:

A death has also occurred this year. A little boy of 8 years died quickly. The doctor was not certain whether it was encephalitis or a heart disease.

He was a little bit crazy [literally “strange in the head”], when he came here, but he was getting better—he participated in school and was together with the others when eating; in the evening he went to bed without any sign of sickness; but in the middle of the night he went out of bed— the young man who is looking after the young boys was able to get him back in bed again and notified me. The doctor was brought immediately, but by the time he arrived the boy was already dead. He died on the 14th of October and was buried on the 16th, in our pretty little cemetery, next to another little Indian boy, that died 2 years ago. Both of them were from [indecipherable Nation] and were baptized ( Jacobson, 1893, p. 2).

Despite the school’s closure almost 80 years ago, some people know of Bethany Indian Mission School from stories told to them by their elders. Ms. Angelina “Doli” Hopinka Big John graduated from Luther College in 1953 with degrees in English and Physical Education.

She was encouraged Pencil drawing on paper by Ida Doxtator, 8th grade Oneida to attend Luther by girl at Bethany Indian Mission, Wittenberg, Wisconsin (date Pastor E. W. Sihler.

After graduation she unknown) taught public school course, the ELCA mission statement no for 30 years in DeSoto, Wisconsin, longer speaks of “infidels” or “heathens,” close to where her grandfather had and instead: fought alongside Waukon Decorah in the Blackhawk War two generations … seek(s) to accompany our before. After retirement, Ms. Big John companions. Accompaniment returned to Wittenberg, noting, “I was is defined as walking together born here and I will die here.” Now in a solidarity that practices 86, Ms. Big John has seemingly had interdependence and mutuality. a foot in both Native American and The ELCA lives out European worlds all of her life. Her accompaniment in relationships father and other close relatives told with global companions, her of attending the Indian Mission striving to share God’s love and School at Wittenberg. She summarized participate in God’s mission their time in the schools as, “Survival together (Evangelical Lutheran of the fittest. You did what you needed Church of America, n.d.). to do.” When politely probed further, It is uncertain from the ELCA mission she recalled their stories included cue statement where the nexus is between cutting and receiving “straps and boards” support of native cultures versus for expressions of nativism (A. Hopinka conversion. A specific portion of the Big John, personal communication, ELCA mission statement is entitled, October 27, 2017).

“Empowering,” which is defined as Ms. Big John identifies as Ho-Chunk. follows: “We seek to identify and correct When asked about the Ho-Chunk imbalances of power, which may mean reputation for fierce resistance, she recognizing and letting go of our own” responded as she did throughout the (Evangelical Lutheran Church of interview in what appeared to be a America, n.d.). confident, yet diplomatic way, calmly At a celebration of his fifty years of stating, “We are fierce.” Ms. Big service at Wittenberg, Jacobsen noted: John has returned back to her Native American spiritual traditions, “You have My high purpose under all has to. That’s who you are. The Ho-Chunk been to recompense our Indians already believed in a supreme being” for the beautiful lands we (ibid.). received. I often told them that we of the Norwegian Lutheran Currently the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America have Church of America (ELCA) something a thousand times more collaborates with some eighty Lutheran valuable than all their possessions, congregations on several continents. Of namely, the unadulterated Word Fall 2017/Agora

LUTHER COLLEGE ANTHROPOLOGY COLLECTIONS

two Menominee children had recently. I had the disciplinarian keep him chained about a week one time and just as soon as he had a chance he ran away again (Coleman, 1993, p. 164-165).

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of God, which we are anxious to deliver to them and their chieftains (Bethany Indian Mission, 1938, p. 2).

The Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin has steadily bought back its native land through gambling profits, primarily from descendants of European immigrants, and have started their own schools that teach linguistic, cultural, and historical aspects of their identity (Ho-chunk Nation of Wisconsin, n.d.).

When asked what advice she would have for all those examining how different individuals and cultures should interact, Ms. Big John immediately and simply responded: “To show respect” (A. Hopinka Big John).

There is no record of any attempt by Lutherans at recognition or reparation for the attendees of boarding schools at Wittenberg or their descendants, some of whom may still be affected by associated intergenerational trauma. The Ho-Chunk identity of fierce resistance is aspirational, but even that may have had potentially adverse consequences at times, blinding rather than binding.

It appears as if missions and identities of any kind, personal or professional, benefit from an ongoing and earnest reformation that lies in a continual examination of chains that bind and blind to truly empower ourselves and accompany others; for any sacred voice that binds can range largely and thickly and blind us as if in a wooded land.

Notes 1. The Normal Department was at the time a department within the college, along with the traditional “College Department” and “Preparatory Department.” According to Luther College Through Sixty Years, 18611921, it was founded in 1865 by professor and campus pastor Nils O. Brandt as a way of training men who wanted to take up parochial teaching. It was disbanded in 1886 and re-established in 1889 as the Lutheran Normal School in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which evolved into Augustana College.

References Adams, D. W. (1995). Education for extinction: American Indians and the boarding school experience 1875-1928. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.

Archuleta, M. L., Child, B. J., & Lomawaima, K. T. (Eds.). (2000). Away from home: American Indian boarding school experiences, 1879-2000. Phoenix, AZ: The Heard Museum.

Bethany Indian Mission. (1938). Annual Christian summer school festival and program in honor of Prof. Axel Jacobson, 1888-1938. Archives of the Wittenberg Area Historical Society.

Child, B. J. (1998). Boarding school seasons: American Indian families, 1900-1940.

Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Churchill, W. (2004). Kill the Indian, save the man: The genocidal impact of American Indian residential schools. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books.

Coleman, M. C. (1993). American Indian children at school, 1850-1930. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.

D’aubigne, Jean Henri Merle. History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century.

Andesite Press (reprint), 2015.

Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (n.d.). Global Mission. Retrieved from: https://www.elca.org/Our-Work/Global-Church/Global-Mission

Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion, New York: Random House.

Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin (n.d.).

In Wikipedia. Retrieved from: https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho-Chunk_Nation_of_Wisconsin

Jacobson, A. O. (1893). Norwegian Synod and Founding Congregations: Topical Correspondence, Box 3, Record Group B, Series 1, Subseries 3, 90-281-1. Luther College Archives, Decorah, IA. Malmin, R., Norlie, O. M., & Tingelstad, O. A. (Eds.). (1928). Who’s who among pastors in all the Norwegian Lutheran Synods of America, 1843-1927. (3rd ed.).

Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House.

Norlie, O. M. (Ed.). (1924). School Calendar 1824-1924: A who’s who among teachers in the Norwegian Lutheran Synods of America. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House.

Norwegian-American Historical Association (n.d.). Erik Morstad’s Missionary Work Among Wisconsin Indians by A. E. Morestad (Volume 27, Page 111).

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Retrieved from: https://www.naha. stolaf.edu/pubs/nas/volume27/vol27_7. htm

Peterson, S. & Houghum, P. P. (ca. 1952).

Short history of the Bethany Lutheran Church and the Bethany Lutheran Indian Mission at Wittenberg, Wisconsin, 18801952. Archives of the Wittenberg Area Historical Society.

Rykken, T. M. (ca. 1921). Souvenir of the Bethany Indian Mission. Archives of the Wittenberg Area Historical Society.

Waukon Decorah (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Waukon_Decorah Wisconsin Historical Society (2014). The Bethany Indian Mission & School.

Retrieved from: http://www.wisconsinhistoricalmarkers.com/2014/08/ bethany-indian-mission-school.html

The Reformation of Medical Care

by JAYME NELSON, Associate Professor of Nursing

Formalized medical education of the physician occurred at one of the universities and would have started with the seven ‘liberal arts’ of grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music and with additional studies in philosophy

SOURCE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

D

uring Martin Luther’s lifetime, from his birth in 1483 until his death from heart failure in 1546, sudden death from infectious disease was an omnipresent reality for all age groups. Great scourges of epidemic diseases, the most formidable of which were plague and syphilis, ravaged European humanity during Luther’s lifetime with devastating results. This devastation wasn’t an obscure reality for Martin Luther— but personally devastating, as Luther lost two brothers during plague outbreaks (Whitford, n.d.), as well as his daughter, Magdalena, from a prolonged unnamed illness. As the population tried to grapple with the seemingly capricious and unrelenting nature of epidemic disease, prescientific medical knowledge of the early 16th century was characterized by a mixture of superstition, secondarily sourced knowledge from ancient Greek physicians, beliefs in astral influences as well as humoral theory— the belief that disease was caused by miasma or “corrupt vapors.” Medical practices of the time included bloodletting (to balance the humors) as well as inspection of pulse and urine (Garrison, 1929, p. 181). Disease was also perceived to be caused by the influence of comets or other astrological occurrences as well as many other potential causes. Sixteenth century medicine was relatively powerless in the face of the great epidemics—leading the population to turn towards God as ultimate healer and Church as the ultimate salvation (Garrison, 1929).

Hans Holbein (1497-1543) “Danse Macabre” (including logic). Natural philosophy was included and based on the writings of Aristotle. Elmer (2004) has described natural philosophy as dealing with “issues of causation in the heavens and on earth, as well as the relationship between the body and the soul, and was regarded as fundamental to prospective students of medicine”

(Elmer, 2004, p.12). Concluding the typical curriculum of the time was the study of medicine, based primarily on the writings of Galen.

The Medical curriculum also included theories of astrology and astronomy— and while these theories were often attributed to Galen or Hippocrates, Fall 2017/Agora

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they were infused by the theories and beliefs of those translating the ancient texts (Elmer, 2004, p.13).

Pre-reformation medical education was dominated by the work of Galen, the great Greek physician, who “had an answer ready for every problem, a reason to assign for every phenomenon.

He elaborated a system of pathology, which combined the humoral ideas of Hippocrates with the Pythagorean theory of the four elements and his own conception of a spirit or ‘pneuma’ penetrating all the parts” (Garrison, 1929, p.113). The physicians’ expertise was by virtue of text-based learning and their prowess in prognosis as based on astrological training. Medical students used astrology to predict the course of illness, select treatment, and develop a prognosis.

While health care was also provided by lay healers, midwives, “cunning women” (and some charlatans), it was generally agreed that lay medical providers, while often effective, would have relied on trial and error rather than rational understandings of the cause and effect of their cures (Elmer, 2004, p.12).

The Church also played a critical role in the provision of medical services.

Monasteries established some of the first hospitals to provide medical care, not only to the ill members of their order, but eventually to lay people too. While medical care was provided, the focus still remained primarily on the salvation of the soul (Elmer, 2004, p. 86).

An important feature of medical education at the university level was the use of secondary sourced material to access Galen’s works. Instead of reading Galen and Hippocrates’ work for themselves, students relied on Arabic summaries and commentaries that were written by scholars and physicians and subsequently translated into Latin.

These Arabic authors systematized, organized and clarified the teachings of their Greek predecessors. Translations were typically based on the ideas and principles of Galen and Hippocrates as filtered through centuries of studies

by Arab scholars: “The Arabian commentators of Galen, and the medieval Arabists who copied them were obsessed with the idea, peculiar 48

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to Oriental religions, that it is unclean or unholy to touch the human body with the hands” (Garrison, 1929, p. 144). Anatomical study was not routinely taught by the dissection of human bodies, but rather through animal dissection as well as text-based translations of Galen’s work. Prereformation medical students didn’t “do” anatomy, rather, they read about it. This highlights a fundamental error of late medieval medical science of a “divorce of medicine from surgery” (Garrison, 1929, p. 143). The practice of surgery was not that of an educated clinician, but rather fell within the realm of “barbers, bath keepers, sowgelders and wayfaring mountebanks” (Garrison,1920, p. 144).

Death from epidemic disease characterized life in the 16th century.

Few illnesses struck as much terror as Bubonic plague, the “Black Death.”

With plague came panic and confusion as well as the breakdown of morality, of decency, of humanity. The social fabric strained under the fear and terror that plague evoked as people tried to flee the plague and its subsequent gruesome end marked by hemorrhage and by pulmonary destruction. Plague spared no one. One plague scholar wrote: “Then there was no faithfulness, no trust. No neighbor would lend a helping hand to another. One brother had forsaken the other, husbands had forsaken their wives, wives their husbands, parents their children, children their parents. The people died not only of the plague, but from all kinds of wants and privation” (Nohl, 1926, p. 30).

Outbreaks of the plague occurred periodically during Luther’s lifetime, with outbreaks occurring in Germany in 1527, 1535, and 1539. Between the years of 1500 and 1568, plague was particularly severe in Germany.

Wittenberg and other cities addressed the different epidemics by producing special coins, or “pest-dollars.” Pest dollars and arsenic paste were worn over the heart to protect against the plague (Miles, 2005 & Nohl, 1926). It was Luther who heroically stayed the course at Wittenberg. As the plague prevailed at Wittenberg, Luther remained at the

University along with the rector of the town. “‘My place is here’, he declared, ‘and discipline forbids me to flee until such time when the same discipline may command’” (Nohl, 1926, p.135). It was here that some scholars believe Luther wrote his hymn—“A Mighty Fortress is our God” (Nohl, 1926, p.135). If true, the third verse is particularly poignant: And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us; The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure, One little word shall fell him.

The other great epidemic of Luther’s day was syphilis. Syphilis has been mentioned in writings since 1495 with a variety of possible causes including astrologic factors, torrential rains, intercourse of a leper with a menstruating prostitute, accidental cannibalism, or as a punishment by God for sin. Its sexual infectivity was not understood until after it became pandemic (Garrison, 1929, p.

191. Whatever the perceived cause, the horror and agony of syphilis was indisputable. Those who could afford care also bought silence, and the beginnings of patient-doctor confidentiality are rooted in the care of the syphilitic patient. Although syphilis was less lethal than the plague, the symptoms were painful, disfiguring and horrific as the initial genital lesions gave way to painful abscesses that ended with severe disability, insanity or death.

It was the final phase of syphilis that struck terror in the 16th century heart as abscesses ate away flesh, leaving severe disfigurement and leading to ostracism (Sandassie, 2014). The old adage “a night with Venus; a lifetime with Mercury” reveals all manner of horrors, from men suffocating in overheated steam baths to quacks who peddled chocolate drinks laced with mercury so that infected husbands could treat their wives and families without them knowing.” (A Cultural History of Syphilis). Mercury was the only

It can be surmised from Luther’s writings that he viewed medicine and religion as closely connected (Luther & Hazlett, n.d.). Luther believed that God was the source of all healing and that the physician acted on God’s behalf to heal (Grell & Cunningham, 1993). He believed that the devil was at the root of all serious illnesses and that physicians acted on God’s behalf (Elmer, 2004, p. 88). Luther suffered from labyrinthitis (inflammation of the inner ear, characterized by dizziness, nausea, and visual disturbances) and a constant ringing in his ears, which he interpreted as the roaring of the devil.

“Is that thou, devil?” was supposedly his earnest cry (Robison, 1931, p.

239). In addition, Luther suffered from “constipation, diarrhea, frequent headaches, dizziness, an open ulcer on his leg, severe and recurring uric acid stone attacks, probable arthritis, and severe angina, among other afflictions …

Finally, it has been argued by some that Luther, especially the older Luther, was mentally ill, a manic-depressive. That Luther suffered from severe illnesses and depression.…” (Edwards, 1984, p.128).

Previously, anatomy and physiology had been taught primarily from reading translated classical texts, mainly Galen, followed by animal dissection by a barber-surgeon whose work was directed by a lecturer. No attempt was made to confirm Galen’s claims, which were considered unassailable. Vesalius, in contrast, performed dissection as a primary teaching tool, not only performing the dissections himself, but also urging his students to participate in dissections (Garrison, 1929, p.218).

Hands-on direct observation eventually was considered the only reliable resource—a huge break with medieval practices, which generally emphasized text-based learning (Elmer, 2004, p.14).

Melanchthon was an early adopter of Vesalius’ work and promoted this to a central place in the Wittenberg curriculum (Grell & Cunningham, 1993, p.11). In 1526, the University of Wittenberg initiated public anatomical dissection in order to provide students with an opportunity to participate (Grell & Cunningham, 1993, p.14).

In some ways, it can be argued that the Reformation had little effect on the transformation of medicine as disease and death during Luther’s time was truly the great equalizer—striking Protestants and Catholics with equal magnanimity. The texts used for medical curriculums were consistently the same no matter the denomination of the University. However, in many ways, it can be argued that the Reformation changed everything regarding medical education as well as beliefs about the body and healing.

It was at Wittenberg, where Luther was a professor of theology, that Greek scholar and dear friend, Phillip Melanchthon took a new and very positive interest in an anatomy of the arts course. Melanchthon adopted new anatomical work by Vesalius and initiated the printing of anatomical figures for use with the Wittenberg students (Grell & Cunningham, 1993, p.17).

“De humani”, plate of muscles. Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564).

The Wittenberg perspective on Christian intellectualism employed a specifically religious context.

Melanchthon believed that the health of the body was essential to the health

of the soul (Grell & Cunningham, 1993, p.12). Anatomical study revealed not only the physical structure of the body but also “the ways in which the activities of the Christian soul were mediated in thought, imagination or will” (Grell & Cunningham, 1993, p.12). Luther and the reformers (particularly Melanchthon) believed that anatomical study revealed the beauty of God’s creation and provided insights into the “Christian soul” (Grell & Cunningham, 1993, p.12). Medical education at Wittenberg was grounded in the theological understanding that the body is a purposeful, beautiful joyful work of a divine and wondrous Creator (Grell & Cunningham, 1993, p.19).

Anatomical dissection demonstrated the fragility of the human condition and the transitory nature of life, but also the inner workings of the soul: “In this, so Melanchthon argued, anatomy was almost as important as religion for imparting morality, a sentiment he associated with Luther, who had encouraged his son Paul to study medicine” (Grell & Cunningham, 1993, p. 20).

SOURCE: WELLCOME COLLECTION

treatment available in the treatment of syphilis, and as such was employed in a variety of preparations.

Melanchthon, playing a central role in the Wittenberg medical curriculum, believed and taught the strong linkage between body and soul. Not only could the body be destroyed by physical wounds, so too the soul could be destroyed by the physical effects of sin: “Lust, greed, pride, ‘human wounds’, could not only obscure the ways of God and impeded one’s understanding of the mind of the creator but also block and damage in some way the ‘cells’ of the brain. In other words, sin had a physical effect, corrupting both soul and brain and preventing them from functioning as well as they ought” (Grell & Cunningham, 1993, p. 21).

While life continued to be full of travails in ways in which we simply cannot imagine 500 years later, the reformation created a cataclysmic movement that transformed our understandings of health and illness.

The call of the reformers to return to original texts, the integration of the craft of medicine with the intellectual study of medicine, and the understanding of God’s goodness Fall 2017/Agora

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References A Cultural History of Syphilis (n.d.)

Retrieved from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ programmes/b01slkwz A Mighty Fortress Is Our God (n.d.) in Timeless Truths Free Online Library.

Retrieved from: http://library.timelesstruths.org/music/A_Mighty_Fortress_Is_Our_God/

Edwards, M. (1984). Luther’s Last Battles.

Concordia Theological Quarterly 48 (2 & 3).

Elmer. P. (2004). The Healing Arts: Health, Disease, and Society in Europe, 15001800.

Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Garrison, F. (1929). History of Medicine.

Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders.

SOURCE: WELLCOME COLLECTION, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Grell, O. & Cunningham, A. (ed.) (1993).

Medicine and the Reformation. Oxon: Routledge.

Wound man, Pseudo-Galen, Anathomia; WMS 290. The ‘Wound man’ from an English anatomical treatise is a figure found in a number of printed books produced in the 15th and 16th centuries. The figure presumably served as a reminder of the injuries to which the human body is prone and is remarkable for its concentration of wounds inflicted by violent assault. as conveyed in his physical creations eventually transformed medical education and the practice of medicine.

Anatomical dissection left the realm of textbook study only and became the way that providers learned the art and science of medicine. Hands were used for more than turning textbook pages.

Five hundred years later, students in the sciences and students more specifically interested in medicine and nursing learn about anatomy and physiology not only from their textbooks, but also from hands-on work in the science labs. Several years ago, just shy of 50

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500 years since Martin Luther began the Reformation, I spent a cold and blustery January term with Luther College anatomist Wendy Stevens.

A student called my name, and as I turned, she held in her hands a freshly dissected human eye. As she stared with absolute wonder and amazement, she said, “Professor Nelson—look at the beauty of a human eye.” I can think of no better tribute, no better acknowledgement to Luther’s reforming education and the Reformer’s beliefs regarding a purposeful, beautiful, joyful work of a divine and wondrous Creator.

Luther, M., & Hazlitt, W. (n.d). The Tabletalk of Martin Luther. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Generic NL Freebook Publisher.

Miles, M. (2005). Martin Luther and Childhood Disability in 16th Century Germany: What did he write? What did he say?

Retrieved from: https://www.independentliving.org/docs7/miles2005b. html#plague Nohl, J. (1926). The Black Death: A Chronical of the Plague. Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing Company.

Robinson, Vicror. The Story of Medicine (1931). New York: J.J. Little & Ives Co.

Sandassie, S. (2014). The Pox: Syphilis, Stigma & Shame. Retrieved from: http:// jmvh.org/article/syphilis-its-earlyhistory-and-treatment-until-penicillinand-the-debate-on-its-origins/ Whitford, D. (n.d.). Martin Luther. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from http://www.iep.utm.edu/luther/

Reforming Spirit: The Luther College Mission Statement

by DAVID FALDET, Professor of English

S

tephen Covey, the mission statement guru, says, “Your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life.” Luther College has not always had a mission statement, but beginning in the mid-1960s the list of objectives in the “Introducing Luther” section at the front of the college catalog was condensed and focused to a statement half its previous length. In the decades since that time, the mission statement has increasingly become what Covey says: the criterion against which the Luther community and the world measure the college in its work. The mission serves as the college’s operating instructions. Although a student could graduate and never become aware of the mission, those taking an active hand in the operation of the college, at pressure points, will look to the mission for guidance about what to do next.

In discussions about the work of the college and the future of the college, especially at moments of contention and disagreement, the mission gets quoted by students, faculty, and administration alike. As the agreed-upon and succinct statement of the college’s “vision and values” the mission statement matters. In the context of the 500year anniversary of the Reformation, it is therefore worthwhile to consider the degree to which Luther College’s namesake, Martin Luther, figured in the discussion that surrounded the last redrafting of the college’s current mission.

In fall 2005 President Rick Torgerson announced that Luther College would be doing strategic planning in 2007-8 and that the North Central Association would be making a re-accrediting visit in 2009. Luther had not revisited its

mission statement in 17 years. One third of the faculty had arrived since that time, new all-college requirements had been put in place, the college was seeking to become more diverse, and the administration had changed. Torgerson also said, in his originating memo, that “There is a renewed and growing commitment to stewardship of place.”

Asked if strategic planning should begin by re-examining the mission statement, the College Council which advised the president at that time said “yes.”

In his initial memo Torgerson laid out his own reasons for re-thinking the mission statement. Pre-eminent in his mind was that the college was now carrying out “an integrated marketing and communication strategy … providing clear, consistent, and compelling themes to describe the place, people, and programs at Luther.” A mission statement, he explained, •Is short and sharply focused •Is a living statement reflecting daily practice •Defines why we do what we do; what’s truly important •Provides direction for doing the right things •Addresses our opportunities •Inspires our commitment •Says what we want to be remembered for.

Torgerson was anxious to work on the mission. He was particularly excited about a signature statement Luther had recently been using in marketing: “Luther College has a higher calling: to help students connect faith with learning, freedom with responsibility, and life’s work with service.” The college’s fundraising initiative which would eventually raise over $90 million

was called the “higher calling campaign” and the short signature statement was repeated in radio advertising and in other college branding. Torgerson wanted a mission statement that would be similarly to the point. His original memo suggested a “vision statement” that would elaborate a shorter mission statement in depth. Torgerson’s alma mater, Concordia College, was, in 2005, using a very succinct mission: “The mission of Concordia College is to influence the affairs of the world by sending into society thoughtful and informed men and women dedicated to the Christian life.” Torgerson liked the idea of a single sentence that could quickly be learned and repeated by anyone associated with the college.

Once the College Council gave its blessing to a review of the mission Torgerson laid out a plan that would have a final draft before the faculty and Board of Regents by October 2006: a one-year process. The committee called together to reconsider and redraft the mission was made up of Academic Vice President Bill Craft, Executive Assistant to the President Karen Martin-Schramm, and two members of the faculty: Judy Nye (from education), and me.

We began our work by considering the mission statement then in place.

Far from the signature statement Torgerson favored, it was 279 words long, over 300 words with its epigraph, and had been in much its current form since the mid-1960s. The two most recent additions suggested the tug our committee would face as we worked. One was an expansion, added in the 1980s, to pitch our expanded vocational programming: “The college joins programs in the fine arts, humanities, social and natural sciences with professional and preprofessional programs, and with cocurricular Fall 2017/Agora

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and residential activities, to prepare students to serve with distinction for the common good.” The other addition, introduced by Will Bunge when he served as college Registrar, balanced this marketing pitch with an epigraph. The epigraph came from Martin Luther’s 1520 The Freedom of a Christian: “A Christian is the perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” A new mission statement would, as these two recent changes suggested, need to balance a vision of the college as being, on the one hand a 21st-century institution, while on the other being a place with roots, a place that had been founded primarily to educate Norwegianspeaking pastors in the Lutheran tradition.

The committee that had last worked on the then-current mission statement, convened by president H. George Anderson, and headed by Prof. Will Bunge had, according to economics professor Mark Lund, who served on the committee, “concluded that there was little [that could be done] to improve it … [that] it [was] one of the finest philosophical and reflective statements on the role a Lutheran Church liberal arts college plays in the world.” The mission statement Lund described, which had existed in not-much-changed form since fall 1964, made it clear why we were called “Luther College.” If you included the epigraph, that mission statement used the word “Christian” five times, the word “faith” five times, the word “God” twice, and the word “Christian” twice. It asserted that Luther College’s mission “is anchored in its commitment to the Triune God … to be the church in higher education, calling and preparing people to serve.”

It asserted strongly the college’s roots in Christianity and faith.

The mission statement in 2005 also recorded a tension, inherited from Luther himself, but new to the condensed statement of 1964.

The list of objectives still used at the beginning of the 1960s stated “Luther College aims … to serve The American Lutheran Church by helping to supply 52

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consecrated and enlightened leadership, both ordained and lay.” A goal for students was to “Arrive at a mature comprehension and application of evangelical Lutheran doctrine.” The 1964 statement adopted more general and less sectarian language about faith and introduced a new dialectical charge to its description of college-level study at Luther, stressing the independence of critical intelligence cultivated by the liberal arts. The 2005 epigraph from Martin Luther stated a paradox: that Christians are at once lords and servants. The mission began by saying that Luther College “is at once a community of faith and a community of learning.” It reiterated this implied tension in the final paragraph: “Luther College is dedicated to faith and learning. This commitment places the response to God’s truth in dialogue with the human quest for truth: faith expands and gives direction to this quest and is challenged by it” (emphases mine).

The Martin Luther who stressed the simultaneity of inner and outer man, heavenly and earthly kingdoms, saint and sinner, was alive in such words. The college which carried his name was a place where truth should be expected to challenge faith.

While our drafting committee started by looking at the then-current mission, we also began by reading a chapter, “The Lutheran Tradition and the Liberal Arts College: How Are They Related?” contributed by Concordia College church historian Darrell Jodock to a 1999 volume about St. Olaf College.

Jodock laid out the dilemma we would face as we crafted a version of the mission for beginning of the twentyfirst century: “a steadily decreasing understanding of the theological outlook upon which … colleges [like Luther] were founded.” In addition, Jodock argued, “students and their parents see themselves as consumers.

In exchange for tuition payments they expect to receive training and access to a better job. They do not expect to be engaged, transformed, or set free” (13).

The newest changes to the mission had addressed those trends, quoting directly from Luther while also giving a nod to professional and pre-professional training.

How would a new mission statement keep alive a sense of the theological roots of the college in Martin Luther and the Reformation, while at the same time convey a convincing vision of the liberal arts in a time when neither Lutheran theology nor the concept of liberal learning could be assumed in the consciousness of parents, prospective students, and potential supporters of the college? Looking back from the perspective of a decade later, and reflecting upon what the drafting committee went through over the following months, I would now say we decided that to accomplish the living work of the college, its mission statement at the start of the twentyfirst century would need to educate as well as connect with its audience. In other words, the mission statement would need to play a very active part in carrying out the educational mission of the college going forward, deepening the idea of the college as much as it codified or repeated Luther College’s purpose.

For that reason, the committee did not choose to condense the college’s mission to a single sentence, as many colleges had, by then, done (Augsburg, Augustana [Rock Island], Bethany, Concordia [Moorhead], Dana, Finlandia, Midland, and Wartburg).

Karen Martin-Schramm put together a long collection, including those as well as others, for the committee to review. In opening discussions with the College Council, faculty voiced that while simplicity and universal adherence to a succinct mission might help in marketing or team building, it might in the long run sell the college short when it came to distinguishing it from other schools, or in articulating the richness of the tradition and ideas for which it stood. The drafting committee of four shared this feeling: that the educational function of the mission would be lost in such condensation. For a time, the signature marketing statement that the college was then using remained as an epigraph to the changing new mission statement (somewhat in keeping with Torgerson’s idea of a short mission with a longer vision statement). At the beginning of April, when a draft went out to the faculty and staff of the

college, the ideas and language of the signature statement had shifted from epigraph to the mission statement paragraph about religion. At that moment in the process, when the marketing statement disappeared, a new epigraph replaced it, a statement from Luther’s Letter to the City Councils: “A city’s best and greatest welfare, safety, and strength consist … in its having many able, learned, wise, honorable, and well-educated citizens” (356).

By the end of April, the Martin Luther epigraph was gone, and the marketing statement was back again as the epigraph when divisions discussed the most recent draft, and it remained there when the Board of Regents looked at the draft in May and again when the current draft appeared on the program for the 2006-7 dedication service in late August. After the May meeting of the Board, Craft reported back to the drafting committee that no one on the board objected to the marketing statement, and some spoke in its favor as replacing the current mission statement. Echoing Torgerson’s concern, one board member said the mission “should be succinct, as in ‘We make good pizza.’” The statement, “Luther College has a higher calling: to help students connect faith with learning, freedom with responsibility, and life’s work with service,” still had its supporters. Another member of the board said the key was, in short form, to say “how we do business” (“Board of Regents”).

In the end, for all the desire of the president and some board members to trim the core mission to a sentence, the marketing statement disappeared completely. The current mission statement, at 186 words, is not short enough for all constituents to memorize, but it is two-thirds the length of the previous statement. It quickly assumed a length of four paragraphs, which it maintained throughout the drafts. The final draft of four paragraphs contains five important parts, each rooted in the Reformation.

The first of the five parts is the opening sentence: “In the reforming spirit of Martin Luther, Luther College affirms the liberating power of faith and

learning.” If a short and memorable “vision statement” remains in the document, it is this. The marketing statement that in part propelled the revision of the mission asserted that the college’s calling was a “high” one: to connect faith and learning, freedom and responsibility, work and service. As Bill Craft explained to the regents in May 2006, however, there was nothing in that statement about Martin Luther, about the church, or about the liberal arts. The new first sentence, on the other hand, immediately invokes the Reformation: “In the reforming spirit of Martin Luther.” This is a very specific reminder of a key turning point in church history: Martin Luther half a millennium ago putting forward 95 assertions that challenged church authority and called for change. The next phrase does what Lutherans do, it confesses or affirms something axiomatic: “Luther College affirms.”

The minutes from the October 2006 faculty meeting where the current mission statement was approved report that I explained, in presenting the final draft, that “Luther’s doctrine of grace and freedom [is now] up front.” And so it is. To say the college affirms “the liberating power of faith and learning” is to say what is distinctive about us. To quote Darrell Jodock: Although liberal arts colleges in fact often do insist on some breadth of study and exposure to a variety of disciplines, the primary thrust of ‘the liberal arts’ has nothing directly to do with diversity or distribution requirements. The adjective liberal in the phrase, ‘the liberal arts,’ means ‘freeing.’ The liberal arts are those studies which set the student free—free from prejudice and misplaced loyalties and free for service, wise decision making, community leadership, and responsible living. (24) By affirming that education is liberating, Luther College places at the top of its mission a concept central to the piece from which the old epigraph was drawn, The Freedom of a Christian. The opening sentence affirms two ideas that might be foreign to modern ears: that faith is

liberating, and that the goal of college might be to make students more free.

Faith was, indeed, liberating to Martin Luther. As long as he saw God as a judge, eyeing sins and toting them up against him no matter how much he (Luther) worked to atone for them, Martin Luther resented God. Only when he learned to trust wholeheartedly that God had forgiven him through an unselfish act of atonement was Luther freed to be himself and to replace his previous resentment with love. And Luther came to this realization through his own liberal course of study, through reading Paul’s letters in the Greek New Testament. Martin Luther’s bold affirmation that faith is not a manacle, that learning does not threaten religion, and that each has a vital freeing power is the first idea affirmed in the mission.

This sense of liberation is distinctive in Lutheran higher education, and it goes right back to the very root of the Reformation itself.

The second of the five parts in the mission statement is an affirmation of who we are: a collective identity of our institution: “As people of all backgrounds, we embrace diversity and challenge one another to learn in community, to discern our callings, and to serve with distinction for the common good.” It is the first of the four such “As …” statements that make up the bulk of the mission. Several components of this affirmation are profoundly Lutheran. “We challenge one another to learn in community” is a twenty-first century echo of Martin Luther’s concept of priesthood.

Refusing, in particular, the medieval idea of a spiritual order in society, distinct from secular nobles and peasants, Martin Luther believed in a “priesthood of all believers.” Even though he was a professor of Bible at Wittenberg, one of his most important achievements was creating a German Bible, translated directly from the original Hebrew and the original Greek, and available to literate Germans to consult on their own without the intervention of priestly authority. As has already been said, in his To the Councilmen of All Cities, Luther argued, “welfare, safety, and strength consist rather in [a city] having many able, learned, wise honorable, Fall 2017/Agora

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and well-educated citizens” (356). To “Learn in community” and to “serve with distinction for the common good” as objects of the Luther College mission are therefore profoundly Lutheran ideals. Luther argued “to maintain its temporal estate outwardly, the world must have good and capable men and women” (368). The mission statement echoes this, as it also employs a favorite concept of Luther, the concept of vocation or calling. “Discern[ing] our calling” for Luther was more than finding a job or deciding on a career. As Jodock writes, “To have a vocation is to see one’s life and work as avenues of service to God, the community, and the world” (19).

Other elements of the collective identity affirmation, less traditionally Lutheran, proved challenging. One of the most protracted discussions about the current mission statement had to do with the opening of this second of the five parts: “As people of all backgrounds, we embrace diversity.” One of the goals, articulated

by Torgerson, was for a statement to “support the desire to become a more diverse community.” Saying that, and then finding the right language for doing so, was a challenge. There had been no such statement in the previous mission. The first drafts the committee created in February 2006 said “Luther College is a community that welcomes people from all backgrounds.” Diversity Center director Sheila Radford-Hill, religion department member Guy Nave, and others raised immediate objections to the sense of “we/they” that lurked behind this supposed articulation of “welcome.” The penultimate draft, in fall 2006, had revised this to “We are people of all backgrounds, challenging one another,” but the sense of “we” and “others” remained. Only the final October 2006 draft approved by the faculty got to a clearer statement: “As people of all backgrounds, we embrace diversity and challenge one another.” The collective “we” in the current mission, embraces diversity. Martin Luther’s own experience of religion was profoundly nationalistic. It developed into strong anti-Semitism and ultimately reflected venomous characterizations 54

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of Catholicism. So too, Luther College’s origins were deeply sectarian: a desire to produce a clergy in the church tradition of Norway to serve an immigrant population in America that was being evangelized to by other faiths. Even though Martin Luther’s priesthood of all believers concept legitimates “embrac[ing] diversity,” the history and self-identity of Lutherans stretching right back to the Reformation made getting to this part of the current mission statement difficult. Getting to a piece of the mission not clearly rooted in Luther’s Reformation proved a challenge for our Lutheran college.

The third part of the mission is the most thoroughly religious part: “As a college of the church, Luther is rooted in an understanding of grace and freedom that emboldens us in worship, study, and service to seek truth, examine our faith, and care for all God’s people.” When the draft of the new statement went before faculty and regents in spring 2006, this paragraph read: “As a community of faith, Luther College is committed to freedom strengthened by responsibility, engagement with life’s deepest questions, and to a Christian vision of service.”

Many found this early draft, drawing on the language of the marketing signature statement, alarming. The one use of the word “Christian,” emeritus professor of religion Brad Hanson observed, is connected in this draft with service: “the least theologically distinctive thing about Lutheranism” (Skoda, “More Feedback”). Many noted the lack of the word “church.” Most shocking was the lack of the word “God.” Craft reported that one board member pleaded “Please don’t take God out,” and another “called for a prayer vigil on campus to guide the revision.”

A number of respondents also lamented what development officer Doug Nelson called the “safety and security” of this spring 2006 draft language, the lack of commitment to “the struggle our students go through as they explore the tensions that exist between faith and learning.” In his essay, Jodock celebrates tension as part of the “freedom of inquiry” Luther championed. Within this tradition,

Jodock argues, “No inherited ideas or practices are exempt from critique and evaluation. Religion itself can be critiqued because it is capable of getting in the way of the gospel, indeed even becoming destructive of the very human dignity it was intended to preserve” (23). The final draft took these spring 2006 complaints into account, starting by affirming Luther as “a college of the church,” reaffirming the centrality of “grace and freedom,” and saying that these “embolden … us” to “seek truth” and “examine our faith.”

The process of redrafting the Luther College mission statement showed me that, although Martin Luther's theology means increasingly less in the culture at large, it was still alive and well in the minds of many faculty, alumni, and regents.

Even though the new statement signals that seeking truth and examining faith takes boldness, the committee left out the word “challenge” that had appeared in mission statements since 1964, in part because the religion faculty who responded to the new draft wanted to see this language go. Craft reported from a discussion in the Humanities and Fine Arts division which included religion department members “That ‘pursuit of God’s truth’ is not separate from or at odds with ‘rigorous academic study’” (9/12/06 memo). The religion department, in good Lutheran tradition, still taught Bible as one of its central functions to fulfill what remained, in the newest catalog, a core requirement for all students. But the faculty felt that the academic study of religion was not necessarily a matter of faith, and that to characterize it as such, did their intellectual profession a disservice.

The other word the committee left out, though several faculty complained, was “Christian.” To profess the college to

be a “Christian” college, to the ears of 18-year-olds in 2006, seemed too like the public display Luther questions in The Freedom of a Christian: “it does not help the soul if the body wears the sacred robes set apart for priests or … performs sacred duties or prays, fasts, abstains from certain foods” (491).

Colleges that, in 2006, called themselves “Christian” or that students would quickly identify as “Christian” tended to come from the Reformed tradition of Calvin, requiring that students sign a faith statement or adhere to a strict code of conduct. The committee decided that to use the word “Christian” in the new mission statement would be to mislead some into thinking that Luther College students were required to accept a single creed or that the college’s academic study of religion would lack the freedom of inquiry and critical mindset that are, in fact, a mark of Luther College’s Lutheran heritage.

In the hundreds of communications the committee received over the course of the year of drafting, concerns about the way the statement reflected the college’s religious identity made up the largest group. These came up immediately, and as the committee brought the final draft to the Board of Regents in October, the rumors we heard were that if there was a final chance that the new statement would be rejected, it would be due to the nature of its religious language. The committee was relieved when, at that meeting, board member Bishop April Ulring Larson, who had in May worried that the draft seemed “profoundly at risk” of shedding a Lutheran understanding of faith, now spoke in favor of the final draft. She said that after looking carefully at the new statement, she realized that it spoke to her with a clear sense of Lutheran mission. The community discussion around the redrafting had pushed the new mission statement to retain its Reformation identity.

The fourth of the five parts of the statement is an affirmation about the liberal arts mission of the college: “As a liberal arts college, Luther is committed to a way of learning that moves us beyond immediate interests and present knowledge into a larger world—an

education that disciplines minds and develops whole persons equipped to understand and confront a changing society.” This language of the third paragraph is very close to the language of the mission statement current in 2005/6. Bill Craft observed, after the campus and the Board had weighed in on the new draft in April and May 2006, “No one [has] offered any criticism of the third paragraph … [and this] tells us that the liberal arts character of the college is given in the minds of our constituents.” The “liberal arts character” of the current mission statement carries the corporate or altruistic stamp of Lutheran thinking already present in the previous mission, already affirmed by the campus at that time. As Jodock says, “When rooted in the Lutheran tradition, the liberal arts do not envision an association of isolated individuals each making up his or her mind, but a community in which humans grow into freedom by leaving prejudice behind and equipping them for service” (28). The idea of “moving beyond immediate interests” connects readily to Martin Luther’s idea of a Christian: “a completely dutiful servant of all, subject to all” (Freedom 488). Though this idea of the liberal arts may not be familiar to prospective students in the twenty-first century, the committee and, by assent, the whole Luther community, left it intact as an important articulation of, to quote Rick Torgerson, “why we do what we do; what’s truly important.”

staff are enlivened and transformed by encounters with one another, by the exchange of ideas, and by the life of faith and learning.”

If the third paragraph was the most accepted in the drafting process, the final, or fourth, paragraph was the most contested. Once again, this may be in part due to the lack of a long or central tradition of environmental ethics, and a certain scorn for earthly things in the writing of Luther himself. The final paragraph is an affirmation of the kind of place the college is, the conservation ethic that governs the college’s relationship to the environment, and the kind of social interactions we hope will take place here: “As a residential college, Luther is a place of intersection. Founded where river, woodland, and prairie meet, we practice joyful stewardship of the resources that surround us, and we strive to be a community where students, faculty, and

reconciliation with God and other human beings results also in a restored relationship with creation. As God’s gift, the natural world is to be stewarded and tended rather than exploited or abused … the basic metaphor remains interpersonal and communal, because stewarding and tending are undertaken in response to God and for the good of all. (20)

One of the sticking points for this paragraph came down to the ongoing national debates between science and religion. Until fall 2006, the final paragraph in each new draft used the word “creation.” The draft used in the service of dedication in August 2006 said “Luther College affirms a sense of joy in creation.” The word “creation” worried and antagonized many on the faculty, in particular, members of the biology department. Tex Sordahl commented: “Although I understand the intention, in these times where ‘creationism’ and ‘intelligent design’ have come to be associated with religious fundamentalism and lack of education (or lack of scientific literacy, at least), this reference does not present Luther in the most favorable way as an academic institution.”

Today, eco-theology and ecoreformation are developing ways to understand environmental consciousness and the practice of conservation as an outgrowth of Lutheran theology, in particular as a response, in kind, to God’s gift of grace to an unworthy humanity. If God graciously extends to us a beautiful world, how can we think to return it degraded and rendered uninhabitable?

As Jodock puts it:

Still, some objected that the new language about stewardship represented a narrow political agenda. Others felt the place description (“where river, woodland, and prairie meet”) trivialized and was incidental to an important statement of purpose. As one alumnus wrote Fall 2017/Agora

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in April: “this statement is too long and too poetic in nature. Did you only have English professors on the committee? … with just a little more work than it took to create the ‘Eastern woodlands meet the Western prairies’ phrase, you can work the short marketing slogans you gave into a concise hard hitting, and appropriate mission statement.” These elements, though, connected with the vision Rick Torgerson was developing for the college and its upcoming strategic plan, and over the course of discussion the new mission statement seemed to put into words something that many valued about Luther: its location, its rural sense of groundedness, and its remarkable sense of community.

The larger point of this, the fifth of five sections in the mission statement, is to deepen a sense of Luther College as a “place of intersection.” The final portion evokes the value of community, a particular gathering of people, a residential college in a valued and beautiful particular place, a commitment to take care of the earth. The final paragraph required lots of discussion and work because, as with the inclusion language, this was the least traditionally Lutheran piece of the mission. Yet it too, even without the word “creation” reflects what Jodock calls a “response to God … [and] the good of all.” Karen Martin-Schramm described it well when she encouraged fellow committee members, as we presented the first public draft, to point out that the last paragraph is a bookend: “The statement begins with where we are grounded theologically … and ends with where we are grounded physically (and morally in a sense).” By the end of the drafting process the word “creation” was gone, but a new mission element, that held up the value of our identity as a place, and as people committed to caring for the earth as well as each other, had gained strong consensus.

The process of redrafting the Luther College mission statement showed me that, although Martin Luther’s theology means increasingly less in the culture at large, it was still alive and well in the minds of many faculty, alumni, and regents of the college in 2005 and 2006. For all its new 56

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emphasis on inclusion, its lack of the word “Christian,” its de-emphasis on denomination, and its new emphasis on place and environment, if the new Luther College mission statement had not been perceived to reflect a fundamentally Lutheran approach to faith, education, and community, it would not have passed either the faculty or the Board of Regents. The changes between the current document and the one it replaced simply register that the Reformation is, to a certain degree, ongoing, changing with the changed times, that the spirit of Reformation keeps, true to its origins, reforming itself here at Luther College.

WORKS CITED Alumni council member, memo to Rick Torgerson, 24 April 2006.

Covey, Stephen. “The Community: Business Mission Statements.” Stephen R. Covey. www.stephencovey.com/missionstatements.php.

Craft, William. “Board of Regents Meeting Discussion of Revised Mission Draft” memo to drafting committee, 12 May 2006.

---. “Missionary work in HFA” memo to drafting committee, 12 September 2006.

Jodock, Darrell. “The Lutheran Tradition and the Liberal Arts College: How Are They Related?” Called to Serve: St. Olaf and the Vocation of a Church College, eds. Pamela Schwandt, Gary De Krey, Deane Lagerquist. St. Olaf College, 1999, pp. 13-36.

Lund, Mark. “Proposed/Re-Drafted Luther Mission Statement” memo to Torgerson, V.P.’s and committee member Judy Nye, 19 April 2006.

Luther, Martin. The Freedom of a Christian, 1520: The Annotated Luther Study Edition. edited by Timothy J. Wengert, Fortress, 2016.

---. “To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany that they Establish and Maintain Christian Schools.” from Luther’s Works, Vol. 45 Christian in Society II, Fortress, 1957, pp. 347-378.

Luther College Catalog, 1960-62, 1964-66, 2005-06.

Martin-Schramm, Karen. “Presenting redrafted mission statement next Tuesday” memo to drafting committee, 6 April 2006.

Minutes of the Luther College Faculty Meeting, 24 October 2006.

Nelson, Doug. Undated memo to the drafting committee.

Skoda, Linda. “More feedback on mission statement” notes of meeting between Torgerson and emeriti, sent as memo to College Council, 2 May 2006.

Sordahl, Tex. “Mission Statement Comments” memo to drafting committee, 12 April 2006.

Torgerson, Richard. “Creating Luther’s Mission and Vision Statements,” memo to College Council, 29 November 2005.

Did Women Have a Reformation?

by CAROL A. GILBERTSON, Professor Emerita of English

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any of the discussions during the 500th anniversary of the Reformation this year have concerned the theology and ethics of Martin Luther’s ideas and the contemporary church’s understanding of them. Though theology is crucial to my topic, I need also to talk about history, specifically social history—studying theology alone or exploring political and military history will not tell us details of women’s lives (or even of men’s personal and family lives). To study women in this period, we need to explore how Protestant theology trickled down into lives and bodies, through the changes in rules, laws, customs, education, beliefs, prescribed roles, all evidenced in such written works as letters, laws, and court records. Fortunately, we do have these kinds of sources—the last thirty years have been a bonanza for studying women’s lives. Social historians have delved into archives in Europe and the United Kingdom and discovered some clear patterns.

First, a caveat: I am not trained as a historian. I am a scholar of literature.

My doctoral dissertation focused on theology and gender in the work of the poet John Milton, a Protestant, but one who lived in an England still struggling with the Reformation a century after Luther. I have been interested in religious issues and the history of women’s lives throughout my career. For years, I taught in Luther’s first-year program, Paideia, where my lecture topics regularly included research into the social history of women’s lives, especially during the Classical Greek, late medieval, and early modern periods.

This presentation is a collection of what I found to be persuasive arguments by respected social historians, from whom I have borrowed freely without attribution.

Their names and the crucial works I have consulted are listed at this essay’s end.

In 1977, the American historian Joan Kelly, studying the Italian Renaissance, published an article titled, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” She argued that men’s lives did become richer and freer and more intellectual in that period, as almost all historians had argued, but that in fact women’s power and agency decreased during what is now most often called the “early modern period,” previously called the Renaissance and Reformation (1500-1700; somewhat earlier in Italy). This essay explores what we can know about women’s lives during and shortly after the Reformation.

I’ll be talking about the time period 1500-1555, mostly in German lands where Lutheran ideas had taken hold and eventually became law.

This is the epoch just after the Late Medieval Period (1300-1500), which we demarcate partly because of the invention of the movable-type printing press in about 1450—an invention that was crucially helpful in spreading Luther’s ideas through the inexpensive production of pamphlets. Though Protestantism has continued to the present day, the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 is a good place to end this study, since Luther himself had died in 1546, and that treaty settled that the prince of each German region would determine his princedom’s religion.

For centuries, dating back to the Classical period, the consistent view of woman was that she is weak, irrational, and lustful. In the early centuries of the Christian church, when celibacy gradually became a requisite for monks, nuns, and priests, a widespread fear of female sexuality developed, with women thought to have a sexual drive stronger than men’s. The ongoing debate about women in these centuries centered on their character. Men were considered spiritual and intellectual; women, material/physical and emotional/sexual:

are women therefore moral or immoral, good or bad, rational or irrational, sinful or saved?

In some ways, these views changed with the Reformation; in many ways, they did not. Protestant historians and theologians have traditionally presented the Reformation as a mostly positive societal change, but I will argue—following many historians of the period—that although many Protestants see the Reformation in positive terms, for women the Reformation had both good and bad effects—on their education and social expectations, their religious lives and understandings, and their sexuality, marriage and family life.

Women and Society Many of the social and economic changes of this period were happening independently of the Reformation movement, so though we cannot claim that the Reformation was the cause, we can see how these changes dovetailed with Reformation ideas to affect women’s lives. One major economic and social change from the medieval to the early modern period was the waning of the feudal system, which altered the way the household was viewed. In the feudal system, the household— which for aristocratic women was a castle—was seen as a public space.

The woman’s husband, the lord of the demesne, was granted land from his prince or king as that ruler’s vassal, and the prince in turn both expected and provided protection—a set number of days each year when the lord would serve as warrior in the prince’s battles.

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had public roles and considerable power, even though men held the official political and economic power. With the gradual decline of the feudal system in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, these women had less prominence.

Increasing urbanization meant that households were situated in towns and were thus smaller and less public.

Married women were more inclined to be limited to private domestic tasks.

Economics also changed women’s lives during this period. In the wool industry, for example, women had—for most of Western history—done the carding, spinning, weaving, and cloth production in the home. During the late medieval period, male artisans began forming guilds of weavers and cloth cutters and by the mid-fifteenth century increasingly barred women from being apprentices or guild members, or even setting up independently of a guild, even if craftswomen worked alongside their husbands in artisanal shops. If a woman in this situation became a widow, we find that, increasingly during this period, she was excluded from continuing in the craft after her husband’s death, even if it was her only livelihood. Social historians have unearthed court records that show women appearing again and again before the courts and begging in vain to be allowed to continue their craft.

Women’s education was also affected during this period. In the Middle Ages, boys were educated in Latin, the language of educated Europe and the Church, so that they would be prepared to enter public life. Girls were sent to small house schools or convent schools. Most study for females involved religious memorization and handwork, with the intention to build their moral character and prepare them for marriage.

The Renaissance brought renewed emphasis on education. In addition to the economic and social changes arising from the decline of feudalism, an intellectual movement called Renaissance Humanism emerged among the educated, who were predominantly males. Humanism was a turning away from the medieval religious emphasis on life as a vail of 58

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tears, with real life considered to be in Heaven after death. Humanists (many of them Christian) instead stressed this world—life as (male) citizens, the value of art and patronage, the power of languages, as well as scholarship and education. While medieval scholars had studied primarily religious works, the Humanists learned languages and went back to original sources, reading what had been considered pagan works, such as Greek and Roman classics, which celebrated human life. For some Humanists, the emphasis on education included girls’ education, though schools for girls did not become widespread.

Despite Luther’s respect for the capabilities of female Reformers, he argued that women should be silent in the church, as St. Paul had asserted.

The Reformation built on some of the Humanist values. Luther also went back to the sources, and he too cared deeply about human life in this world. His central tenets include the following: •Sola Scriptura: “the Scriptures alone”; the Bible, not the church, is the sole authority; •Sola fides, Sola gratia: “Faith alone,” a free gift of God’s “grace alone,” is the sole prerequisite for salvation, rather than the “good works” expected by the priest and the church, which included such practices as penance, prayers, rosaries, and the purchase of indulgences, which were written documents granting reprieve from years of suffering in Purgatory after death; •Priesthood of all believers: all the faithful are as qualified as priests to study and interpret scriptures, with no need for the intercession of the priest; •Vocatio: The new notion of “vocation”: rather than seeing

vocation as limited to the professed religious life of a priest or other cleric as in the Roman church, Luther stressed vocation as each believer’s way of living out God’s call in their daily work (or occupation) in society and also in their way of living a faithful life in relationship to others.

The problem for Luther’s notion that all believers can read and interpret Scripture was twofold: there was no Bible translated into the people’s daily language, the vernacular German; and, to make that more problematic, illiteracy was widespread. But Luther was not someone to give up easily.

Recognizing that illiterate people were easily controlled by civic and ecclesiastical authorities, he asked German leaders to provide compulsory civic education in vernacular German for both boys and girls. We don’t know how successful this was, but we do know that schooling was required in some German lands by 1600. Luther also considered the need for theological training for Christians to better prepare them for interpreting the Bible. He therefore wrote the Large and Small Catechisms to enable parents and teachers to explain the meaning of central elements of the faith, the creeds, and the Commandments.

Luther went further, translating the Old and New Testaments from Hebrew and Greek to make it possible for ordinary people to read and understand the Bible.

Luther was considerably democratic in his understanding of audience. In his work “An Open Letter on Translating” (1530), he writes: …we must ask the mother in the home, the children on the street, the common man in the marketplace. We must be guided by their language, by the way they speak, and do our translating accordingly. Then they will understand it and recognize that we are speaking German to them.

In his intentional concern for the average person’s understanding— specifically naming the mother in her domestic space and the children outside playing, as well as the “common

man”—Luther was exceptional among sixteenth-century thinkers.

writer, and her husband was directed to control her. But Argula affirmed her public role, arguing that she felt empowered by “a school of women” who would emerge to write for her if she were forbidden to write: for “there are many who are able and better read than I am.” Her comment about a school of women suggests she knew a number of other women who were as committed to public action as she. Luther, for his part, was ambivalent about outspoken, public women thinkers. He met with and supported Argula in some ways, but argued that her insistence on her right to “discuss religious news, explain her beliefs in public and read the Bible in German” was against the writing of St. Paul. Argula counter-argued that she was writing about her own exegetical interpretation—based on Luther’s principle of the priesthood of all believers.

SOURCE: WIKICOMMONS

Some Reformation women felt empowered by Luther’s argument that all are priests and spiritual equals, and that all can thus interpret the Bible.

They studied Luther’s translation of the Old and New Testaments and began to argue with priests about biblical interpretation. Others took on even more public roles and began preaching, with some managing to publish their religious writing and develop an audience for their work. Despite Luther’s respect for the capabilities of these female Reformers, he argued that women should be silent in the church, as St. Paul had asserted. He opposed women attempting to lead, preach, and teach. Both Luther and John Calvin ultimately decided to formally prohibit women’s preaching in their Reform movements. Some women, in response, turned to prophesying, which required only their private visions and not their educated ideas. Some of these women were even tried and executed as witches.

Portrait medal of Argula von Grumbach, around 1520 by Hans Schwarz.

Most notable among public female Reformers was Argula von Grumbach (1492-c. 1554), an educated noblewoman from Bavaria. Argula most notably wrote to the faculty of the University of Ingolstadt protesting the arrest of a young Lutheran professor there who had been arrested for his beliefs. Her indignant letter was published without her knowledge, made her famous, and led to her writing more. She was ridiculed as a woman

At this point, we can argue that Luther’s Reformation, in general, at least intended to increase women’s literacy, knowledge, and understanding.

The problem is that there developed many more schools for boys than for girls, and young men were trained for public service while young women were trained for virtuous living and caring for children. Some historians argue that Protestants spoke against Latin education for women because they were afraid of secret Catholic loyalties, and Protestants feared that educated women might refuse to obey their husbands. So the disparity in education continued.

Luther’s emphasis on the priesthood of all and his notion of vocation for everyone led some women to attempt more public roles in the Reformation movement, including preaching and publishing. But by the middle of the sixteenth century, most of these efforts were either discouraged or forbidden by the Protestant authorities.

Women and Marriage Though women’s married state could be considered a social role, the issue of marriage in this period is complex and crucial enough for this subject to merit its own section. Marriage was the chief role for women throughout the medieval and Reformation periods. In

that era’s social world, women who did not marry were considered problematic because they were not under male control. Without male dominion, they were not conforming to God’s divinely imposed hierarchical order. And since women were thought to have a stronger sex drive than men, it was considered important for men to exert control over them. It was difficult to be an unmarried woman in any trade because of guild restrictions. Unaccompanied women could not travel; innkeepers were forbidden to board a woman traveling alone.

In reaction to the social requirement that women should become subservient wives, pre-Reformation women who chose not to marry typically joined a convent. Sometimes parents forced a daughter to join a convent if she wanted to marry an unacceptable man; sometimes the church urged a young girl to take up that vocation if she did not want to marry her parents’ choice for prospective husband. But women also joined convents in order to immerse themselves in prayer and devotion to God. Some women simply wanted to have a quiet communal life with other women, rather than a more restrictive life with dominating husbands, risky childbirth, and the unending care of children. A nun could also learn some management and leadership skills as part of convent life. But, perhaps most significantly, the convent was a way a woman could continue her education, and some nuns became quite learned.

The decision to close monasteries and convents in Protestant areas ended these options for women. This closure had perhaps the Reformation’s most visible early effect on women’s lives. Because Reformers held up marriage as a social and religious good—and because they considered celibacy unnecessary—they closed the convents, which shut off a crucial option for women. Some convents were eventually transformed into Protestant schools. But some nuns fought hard against closure. Though Protestants viewed convent closure as freeing women from a restrictive life of enclosure and forced celibacy and devotion, many nuns viewed life Fall 2017/Agora

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outside the convent as a different kind of restriction—in nearly inevitable marriage and subservience to a man.

Men who left the monastery or priesthood could become Protestant pastors and continue a life of study, devotion to God, and public leadership.

But for ex-nuns there was no comparable public religious role, unless they took on the less devotionallyfocused role of pastor’s wife. Perhaps most notable among nuns who resisted closure was Caritas Pirckheimer, the very learned abbess of a convent in Strasbourg. She wrote persuasive pieces about her objections and, through the intervention of Luther’s friend and collaborator Philip Melanchthon, was eventually successful in retaining her convent, albeit somewhat transformed.

When women did marry during this period, their choices were primarily arranged and controlled by their fathers, and this did not significantly change during the Reformation. Both Protestants and Catholics tried to retain patriarchal control of marriages.

Both Protestant and Catholic thinkers considered marriage a way to keep women under men’s control, and husbands’ rule was made easier by the fact that many brides were very young (in their early teens), while husbands were older. Both Protestant and Catholic leaders saw marriage as a way to “tame the beast” of sexuality that tainted the act of procreation as well as more generally to restrain female sexuality. Popular literature expressed a widespread fear of cuckoldry. The male was the clear head of the household and was expected to control his wife, who in turn was to be chaste, silent, and obedient. Some scholars think these expectations increased during the Reformation period.

Marriage laws also changed during the Reformation. The Lutheran territories passed laws that moved marriage jurisdiction from the church authorities to civic courts, which simplified marriage laws. Since marriage was a sacrament in the Roman church, divorce was not allowed. In Protestant areas, divorce was more possible but limited to rare circumstances: impotence, adultery, use of magic, desertion, and 60

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refusal to perform one’s marital duty.

Luther argued that if divorce was absolutely necessary, each spouse should subsequently remain unmarried for life in order not to cheapen the institution of marriage. For him, “marriage is a weighty matter in the sight of God.”

Though Protestants viewed convent closure as freeing women from a restrictive life of enclosure and forced celibacy and devotion, many nuns viewed life outside the convent as a different kind of restriction—in nearly inevitable marriage and subservience to a man.

Mixed marriages did occur, where one partner wanted to practice the Protestant faith while the other wanted to remain in the Roman church. Despite their strong sense of the rightness of their teachings, both Luther and the Swiss Reformer John Calvin said that in cases where the wife was Protestant and the husband Catholic, women should nevertheless stay in the marriage and obey the husband. Even in such a case, patriarchy trumped faith. In some cases, though, women converted their husbands; in other cases, they were active in Protestant churches even though their husbands remained staunchly Roman.

Luther wrote specifically about marriage. Early in his career, Luther said that females and males equally inherited God-given glory, yet the female was inferior. In his two early marriage treatises, both written before he himself married, Luther argued that the union of male and female was good; marriage, he said, was “as necessary as shoes.” He saw the wife as the husband’s partner, with a shared interest in managing the household property and children, but insisted that the woman was the moon, reflecting light from her husband, the sun.

But Luther’s view appears to have somewhat changed by the mid-twenties, especially after he married in 1525.

Luther probably knew that some Humanists had already argued for a more companionate marriage—one in which the husband and wife are closer to equal partners. In one piece, Luther argued that case: To get a wife is easy enough, but to love her with constancy is difficult, and he who can do that may well be grateful to our Lord God. Therefore if any one wants to marry a wife, let him take the matter seriously and pray to our Lord God: “O Lord, if it is thy divine will that I should live without a wife, then help me to do so! If not, bestow upon me a good, pious maid, with whom I can live my whole life long, one whom I love and who loves me.” For the mere union of the flesh is not sufficient. There must be congeniality of tastes and character.

Luther here saw companionship as crucial to a solid marriage. One historian argues that for him marriage was “a model of social harmony” and a “spiritual partnership, a microcosm of God’s love for humans.”

Luther still accepted his period’s hierarchical view of marriage, though he tempered that view by arguing for men’s gentler, more rational treatment of their wives, as in this “Sermon on Marriage” (1525), where his critique of some husbands’ behavior is rather alarming: Men should govern their wives not with great cudgels, flails, or drawn knives, but rather with friendly words and gestures and with all gentleness .… Thus, men should rule their wives with reason and not unreason, and honor the feminine sex as the weakest vessel and also coheir of the grace of life .…

Luther’s novel notion of vocation had the greatest effect on marriage by highlighting the calling of a married woman. In the Roman church, “vocation” was restricted to clergy and other religious. But Luther extended

his already widened view of vocation specifically to define married women.

His argument that marriage and motherhood constituted a woman’s vocation was a new slant on women’s lives. Marriage for him was “a school for teaching children,” with mothers as chief educators of children, especially in spiritual matters. Luther continually stressed both men’s and women’s crucial roles in raising children. In an early tract on marriage, he ended with an exhortation to raise children “properly”: Spare yourself no expense, neither trouble nor effort, for your children are the churches, the altar, the testament, the vigils and masses for the dead for which you make provisions in your will.

The home was to be “a seminary for the church”—that is, a place to teach children, especially about the Scriptures and the catechism. Luther’s elevation of motherhood articulated the social significance of mothers who cared for their children. Even though that also meant a continued emphasis on women’s domestic life, teaching children in spiritual matters did involve women’s intellect and faith as well as their compassionate care.

Luther viewed marital sex as necessary, but inherently sinful because the Fall had infected it with “wicked lust.”

Yet, married sex was still God’s gift, important for the couple’s harmony. He argued strongly against celibacy, which he thought was acceptable for those who could gracefully live such a life, or who did so for a time as a spiritual discipline. But he argued against putting little girls and boys into convents and monasteries and then forcing them to remain single and celibate for life.

Without the need for celibacy, marriage was compatible with priesthood for Luther, so he made the case for a married clergy. This enhanced some women’s roles even further, because it resulted in a new vocation and role for pastor’s wives. These women served the needs of their parishes, and their more public marriages served as models for lay couples’ relationships. Thus, as one historian argues, pastors’ wives were the

first non-aristocratic women to have a somewhat public role in the secular world.

For Luther marriage was “a model of social harmony” and a “spiritual partnership, a microcosm of God’s love for humans.”

One rarely-discussed change for women in Protestantism involves childbirth.

In the late medieval world, childbirth was associated with Mary’s miraculous conception of Christ—a model of “revered motherhood.” Women were encouraged to call to Mary or her mother, St. Anne, for help during their extremely perilous labor. Many pregnant women placed cloth fabric around the statues of female saints in their church, which they later placed over their pelvises during labor and delivery.

Some women borrowed sacred relics from their parishes as a way to preserve their lives throughout life-threatening labor. Sometimes child-bearing pain was compared to Christ’s pain at the Crucifixion. All these practices contributed to a sense of wonder and mystery in giving birth, which valued women as child-bearers.

The Reformation changed childbirth practice. In Reformed areas, statues, relics, and prayers to saints were prohibited. Midwives were supervised.

Women were told to pray to God alone, or to Jesus (as one historian points out, “a celibate male”) rather than to St. Anne (a “revered mother who had given birth”). Eventually, the focus turned from Jesus or Mary to Eve, the lustfully sinful first woman, because in the biblical creation story, childbirth pain is God’s curse for women as a result of their original sin. This period brought increased emphasis on women’s anatomy and biology, presented not with wonder but with disgust.

As in the closure of convents for unmarried women, Protestant churches also restricted what had been married women’s group activities and

celebrations in the Roman church. Lay women generally worked together to re-clothe the saint statues with each new church season, but since Lutherans mostly ended reverence for saints, this practice was discontinued. Women had elaborate roles in planning exuberant festivities surrounding weddings and baptisms in the Roman church, and they generally acted as mourners at funerals. Protestant churches changed things: weddings and baptisms were more limited, formal affairs, and women mourners were not allowed at funerals.

One historian argues that pastors’ wives were the first non-aristocratic women to have a somewhat public role in the secular world.

Luther’s own marriage inspired some Reformation changes. The story of how his marriage came about is dramatic. During the early years of the Reformation, many women in convents read Luther’s works, and while some resisted, as we’ve seen, some nuns wanted to leave their convents.

In 1523 Luther heard about twelve nuns who wished to escape their convent, so he persuaded a tradesman he knew to disguise his wagon, which was normally used to deliver barrels of herring to the convent, in order to instead spirit away the runaway nuns.

Luther managed to find housing for all of them, and some returned to their families. But this was not possible for Katharina von Bora, who was estranged from her family. Luther also sought marriage partners for the women who wished to be married, but Katharina remained unattached, after refusing some prospective husbands. Eventually, in 1525, Luther agreed to marry her in what was clearly not a love match.

But their correspondence and other records demonstrate that over time the pair became a loving couple in a companionate marriage.

For Luther, the best thing about marriage was children. According to Fall 2017/Agora

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And it has to be said that Luther was somewhat liberated about men’s role in household tasks. In “The Estate of Marriage” (1522), written before his own marriage, he denounced the mocking of men who shared in raising children: When a father … washes diapers or performs some other mean tasks for his child, and someone ridicules him as an effeminate fool—though that father is acting in the spirit … [of ] Christian faith— . … God, with all His angels and creatures, is smiling— not because that father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith.

This passage demonstrates Luther’s uniqueness as a sixteenth-century male.

He not only redefines the traditional male role in marriage, but also elevates traditionally female tasks into vocational acts of faith.

The wife who Luther married turned out to be an exceptional woman. A minor noble, Katharina had been convent-educated and had learned household management skills. The Luthers were given a huge, fortyroom former cloister as a home, and Katharina became household and grounds manager, as well as chief cook and gardener. She hosted a multitude of boarders (young nieces and nephews, orphans, students) as well as a steady stream of guests, including fellow Reformers. Often there were 30-40 mouths to feed. According to Luther’s letters, her brewed beer was exceptionally good. She bought land, raised animals, and handled the family money. Most former monks had no 62

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experience in these affairs, and Luther was particularly generous with money.

In order to make sure they had enough money to keep the household running, Katharina persuaded him to be more careful and to begin taking payments from publishers who printed and sold his books.

The marriage of religious leaders struck many Christians as problematic, even disgusting. For years people had critiqued the church when priests had mistresses and even children. So when Lutheran pastors started marrying, their wives were often compared to prostitutes or priests’ concubines. The marriage of the by-now-notorious former monk Martin Luther elicited a range of reactions, many of them quite violent. Katharina was compared to a priest’s concubine and called all sorts of obscene names. She was accused of being a beautiful seductress, or of being too ugly. She was called domineering, but also too meek. The great Catholic Humanist Erasmus declared that the couple would surely birth the AntiChrist. Still, many Lutherans viewed the Luther marriage as a model for all marriages, and especially for clergy marriage.

Luther’s marriage seems to have somewhat altered his view of women.

Katharina, at least, came to earn Luther’s high respect. In letters, he continually addressed her as “Mrs. Doctoress,” “Preacher,” and even “Herr Professor.” Surely some of this was teasing play, but Luther earnestly praised his wife to her and to others.

When someone asked Luther to teach him the German language, he replied with an ambivalence typical of Reformation attitudes: I will give you my wife as a teacher; she could teach you German very well, for she speaks very well and is so accomplished at it that she far surpasses me.

Nevertheless, when women speak well it is not praiseworthy. It befits them to stammer and not be able to speak well; that adorns the man better.

Sometimes Luther’s general comments on women, like his last two sentences

Katharina von Bora, Gemälde 1528 by Lucas Cranach the Elder. here, seem more formulaic than sincere; here he seems to be attempting to temper his praise of his wife’s talent by reasserting what would be considered a husband’s proper view of a wife’s role.

His letters affirm his deep affection for Katharina, whom he called his beloved, his “Morningstar,” and “your Holiness.”

Not many of Katharina’s letters still exist, and none to Luther, but we have letters she wrote to others in which she referred to her great love for him.

“When a father washes diapers or performs some other mean tasks for his child,” Luther wrote, “that father is acting in the spirit of Christian faith.”

In his will, Luther broke with tradition and insisted that Katharina become his main beneficiary and remain head of the family and the household—a radical request. But when he died in 1546, his wishes were not followed.

The authorities sent away the children except the youngest and seized most of her household wealth and land. After many appeals, she was allowed to keep

SOURCE: WIKICOMMONS

one report, Luther said that women were “made by God to bear children, to delight men, and to be merciful.”

The Luthers had six children but also boarded several nieces and nephews, as well as orphans. Luther was devoted to these children. When an infant daughter died, he was bereft: “I would not have believed,” he wrote, “that a father’s heart could have such tender feelings for his child.” He was even more grieved when his beloved daughter Magdalena died at age 13.

her children, but she lost agency and autonomy: Luther’s fellow Reformer Philip Melanchthon was appointed her guardian.

His letters affirm his deep affection for Katharina, whom he called his beloved, his “Morningstar,” and “your Holiness.”

One Lutheran minister’s wife, another Katharina, provides a contrast to Luther’s wife. Though Luther was public about his wife’s abilities, including her intellectual talents, Katharina did not assume a public role as a spokesperson on theological or ecclesial issues. Unlike Luther’s wife, Katharina Schütz Zell (1498-1562) of Strasbourg was not a former nun; in fact, she had trained to weave tapestries, and showed her independence before her marriage by her plan to support herself as a single woman weaver. As a young woman, she learned about Luther’s ideas from her young Lutheran pastor, Matthew Zell, and decided to marry him not out of love, but rather to have a public way to express her love for God and others. Since both of the Zells’ children died young, Katharina, as a childless married woman, had more freedom to work outside the home than Luther’s wife. Also unlike Katharina von Bora, she identified herself as her husband’s equal and his ministry partner, though she drew the line at preaching, claiming that Matthew called her only his curate. She took on a significant pastoral role in the parish, visiting and nursing the ill, including those suffering from the plague and from leprosy. She was highly active in the community and became one of the most published women of the period—a lay theologian who published a number of theological pamphlets.

She used a clearly accessible German language in the hymn book that she published, which she saw as a teaching tool for her parishioners. Even after Matthew’s death, Katharina kept up her work in the parish and in print.

Conclusions In this essay I have argued that the Reformation improved women’s lives in some limited ways. Luther’s central assertion that both men and women were priests in God’s sight and spiritually equal under God was an extraordinary boost in women’s status.

We have seen that women probably received some more opportunities for primary education in this period, which may have increased women’s limited literacy. And Luther’s vision of marriage, though patriarchal, did implicitly suggest marriage as a companionate partnership, with men involved in the care and education of children.

Protestants made divorce possible in some cases, giving women a bit more agency about their married lives. And Luther’s assertion of motherhood as a revered vocation raised married women’s profiles. Those women who were ministers’ wives could embrace an additional vocation.

We’ve also seen, however, that Reformation changes caused women to experience some serious social and personal restrictions. The convent closure crucially limited women’s choices. Losing the convent as a life choice, women lost a key avenue for learning. They could no longer spend their lives in unencumbered devotion to God. Without the convent, women lost the possibility of an unmarried life, free from the restrictions of dominating husbands, dangerous childbirth, and the onerous task of caring for children. They lost the possibility of living communally, only with women.

With the Protestant restrictions on women’s roles in churches, even women who were not nuns lost the regular company of other women actively working together in religious tasks.

Women could no longer rely on female intercessors or saints’ relics to help them through the challenges of childbirth labor. And women were increasingly compared not to the Virgin Mary but to sinful Eve. Those women who were educated enough to read, interpret, and talk about the Bible were squelched in Protestant circles. Misogynist language continued as before; some would even say it increased. And some historians

have even argued that the gender gap of literacy grew larger, rather than smaller, during the Reformation.

Although many Protestants see the Reformation in positive terms, for women the Reformation had both good and bad effects—on their education and social expectations, their religious lives and understandings, and their sexuality, marriage and family life.

That Martin Luther had a striking impact on Western Christian history is unchallenged. His theological arguments transformed people’s understanding of the relationship between God and humans. He both exposed and undermined the authority of a church that had governed people’s lives (and afterlives) for centuries.

Scholars can dispute whether the Reformation movement forever dissipated the longstanding potent unity of what was called “Christendom,” and whether it may have led to the fragmentation and extreme secularism of the modern world. In any case, Luther highlighted the role of women in society by stressing the priesthood of all women as well as men. He redefined Christian marriage and enhanced the role of motherhood as Christian vocation. For women living in sixteenth-century Germany—and, to a certain extent, women throughout Europe at the time—the social changes that occurred as a result of Luther’s ideas, many of them within his lifetime, profoundly altered women’s lives. But we have seen that the effects were not all positive for women’s relationships, literacy, and public life, as well as their self-images, their agency, and even their bodies.

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Chief Works Consulted: Classen, Albrecht and Tanya Amber Settle.

“Women in Martin Luther’s Life and Theology.” German Studies Review 14, 2 (May 1991): 231-60.

Fissell, Mary E. “The Politics of Reproduction in the English Reformation.”

Representations 87, 1 (Summer 2004): 43-81.

Fox, Sally, ed. The Medieval Woman: An Illuminated Book of Days. New York: Little Brown, 1985.

Fudge, Thomas A. “Incest and Lust in Luther’s Marriage: Theology and Morality in Reformation Polemics.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 34, 2 (Summer 2003): 319-45.

Green, Lowell. “The Education of Women in the Reformation.” History of Education Quarterly 19, 1 (Spring 1979): 93-116.

Holt, Mack P. “The Social History of the Reformation: Recent Trends and Future Agendas.” Journal of Social History 37, 1 (Autumn 2003): 133-44.

Karant-Nunn, Susan C. and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, ed. and trans. Luther on Women: A Sourcebook. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003.

Lull, Timothy, ed. Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989.

Matheson, Peter. “Breaking the Silence: Women, Censorship, and the Reformation.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 27, 1 (Spring 1996): 97-109.

Stjerna, Kirsi. Women and the Reformation.

Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009.

Wiesner, Merry E. “Beyond Women and the Family: Towards a Gender Analysis of the Reformation.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 18, 3 (Autumn 1987): 311-21. _____. “Nuns, Wives, and Mothers: Women and the Reformation in Germany.”

Women in Reformation and CounterReformation Europe: Public and Private Worlds. Ed. Sherrin Marshall. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1989. _____. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge UP, 1993.

_____. Working Women in Renaissance Germany. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1986.

Wilson, Katharina M., ed. Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1987.

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Grace, Boldness, and Freedom: Luther for Writers

by AMY WELDON, Associate Professor of English

W

hen you teach in our first-year common course, Paideia, you’re routinely teaching texts from fields outside your own: Darwin, Dawkins, Michelangelo, Galileo, Douglass, Jacobs, Capek, Toumani, and, yes, Martin Luther.

As an English professor, I used to be nervous about this. Now I revel in it, because it helps me model for my students what the course is really about: developing an intellectual and emotional toolbox of skills for learning, and for life. Curiosity, investigativeness, self-motivation, linking back to what you already know and care about to figure out what’s in front of you— adulthood asks you to do this again and again. And it dramatizes for me a major reality of my own life: as a working writer, you routinely have to face a situation in which you know nothing and fear everything—the blank page.

Atlanta hip-hop duo OutKast famously advises that “you’re only funky as your last cut.” Even if your last cut was a published book (I’ve got two coming out in 2018), you still fear, down in the bottom of your heart, that maybe this work session, this facing of the page, today, will be the time the music stops.

Especially if you are writing fiction, which has a fiendish power to make you doubt your own ability to write a normal sentence or get a character through the ordinary motions of walking across a room, let alone get into her heart and mind with dialogue and insights not lifted from a Lifetime Original Movie. Deep in writing a novel about the early nineteenth-century in Europe, I’m feeling infinitely expansive variations on familiar questions—how do I do this? can I do this? can I fight down my own anxiety about whether I will be able to do this enough to keep going?—and on students’ familiar complaint on their first serious fiction-

writing attempts: “This is hard!” Not for nothing does How Not To Write A Novel, one of my favorite Creative Writing course texts, have a chapter called “Why Your Job Is Harder than God’s.” I try to remember that William Faulkner called The Sound and the Fury—one of my own favorite novels of all time—“my most splendid failure;” the great shimmering totality in our minds always loses some luster when it comes down to earth and onto the page. But none of this really helps.

This was a man who relied on writing, who counted on the constant daily reality of words on a page, to save his soul, and to save the world, in the face of overwhelming danger and fear and doubt.

Sure, there are normal vagaries and oddly funny turns of the process. Here’s my Facebook status from October 28, 2009: “[I am] on p. 124 [of my draft]. a little girl has just gotten a unicorn out of a toy machine (one of those with the claws, in bowling alleys & roller rinks.) and a woman is knocking on a man’s door: “i’m not leaving till you get your ass out of bed and let me in.”

Looking at that status eight years later, at first I didn’t recognize the images that had consumed me that day. What on earth was I talking about? What was that project, anyway? Oh, yeah. That was the “modern half ” of the novel otherwise set in the nineteenth century, which I thought was such a great idea at the time, set in a little town just like Decorah. There’s one character in the nineteenth century and one in the

twenty-first century in the same town!

And they will, like, speak to each other through time! An editor said, lose the modern half. She was right. Then, even after revisions, she declined to publish the nineteenth-century half. She may well have been right about that too.

At the time, it broke my heart. Now, apparently, I have trouble remembering what half that novel even is.

So what does all this have to do with Martin Luther, and what does Luther have to do with my students, and with me? As a Paideia faculty member, I’m always translating a text into multiple intellectual languages, helping students understand its meaning and its relevance to them. And looking at Luther’s life and times, and at 1520’s The Freedom of a Christian, which we’ve taught again in Paideia this semester, I come back to one main idea: this was a man who relied on writing, who counted on the constant daily reality of words on a page, to save his soul, and to save the world, in the face of overwhelming danger and fear and doubt. He was a would-be law student and apprentice monk who pushed himself toward perfection as hard as any AP-credit-accumulating, extracurricular-activity-box-checking, college-and-career-planning student, with even more at stake: a fear of hell, a fear of eternal damnation and pain, a fear of being judged and forever, forever, forever being found not good enough. In his case, writing was both the cure and the disease. Even as he unleashed the tidal wave of his inner conviction and voice onto paper, relieving the pressure (imagine being Martin Luther: that’s a lot of self to carry in one head), each new written provocation would have increased the price on his head, the pressure from the external world. The Pope wanted him dead. The peasants who revolted in Fall 2017/Agora

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1524 praised him for an inspiration he had never meant to give. But no matter what else was going on around him, one relationship—human self, and soul, to written page—was central. As seen in the new graphic biography Renegade: Martin Luther by Andrea Grosso Ciponte and Dacia Palmerino, his was a colorful life, driven at multiple levels by text: reading, writing, translating. And over time, writing helped him settle out and sort what was important from what was not, just like the novel-half I could afford to let go. Writers, like visual artists, work by the invocation of powerful images, so I’ve been delighted to share the trailer for Renegade with my students. Perhaps the image from that trailer that stays with me most is of a man walking, not entirely happily, through a world in which every surface shimmers with words, and every thing, in the words of poet Donald Revell, is “alive and languaging.” This is how the writer walks through the world. This is how the world presents itself to the person bound up in texts, whether she wants it to or not. (Again, imagine how loud Luther’s voice must have been in his own head, how often, just as it is for us. How loud the self-doubt, how loud the fear even for this most brash and confident-seeming of men.) And in its many languages, its many voices, the world speaks to her, and she can’t help but listen, and try to translate.

“Life presents itself at velocities beyond representation,” Revell writes in his book The Art of Attention, “but quick attentions can quicken our poems, and then oh how prolific all presences become.” You worry: Can I do justice to this? Will I hurt someone? Yet the very pressure of the world’s presence, asking to be seen and witnessed, tends to help blow away fear and anxiety, at least for me, because it helps the writer lose that fear in wonder at and responsibility to the thing beyond herself that needs to be told.

Theologically, too, a world of language is a world of significance. For our own salvation, it matters whether we read, and how. And Luther’s great conviction—so radically simple, so threatening to structures of authority— is that a single person, alone with God and a Bible in his or her own 66

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language—invokes that God to herself as surely as in the words of Matthew 18:20: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” You don’t need an official interpretive structure of earthly authority to make you into a Christian.

Nor do you necessarily need it to become a writer. You need a serious and willing and joyful mind, and a diligent engagement with words, as reader and writer and student of what other writers have put on the page you are trying to fill. You need to pay attention. And you need a community around you—fellow readers, writers, students, believers—to cheer you along.

Perhaps most of all, though, you need to learn to negotiate for yourself an emotional polarity Luther explores in The Freedom of a Christian—from a fear-driven focus on deeds (am I writing enough? am I procrastinating? Should I buy that one more book on writing?

Should I go to one more conference? Is “being a writer” something I should be better at doing?) to a joy-and-purposefueled focus on being which comes from a trust in oneself and in one’s art. As writers, we go back and forth between them, but learning to name and identify the emotion driving your attitude toward your work at any time can be the difference between writing or not writing at all.

Let me go to Luther’s text to show you what I mean. In The Freedom of a Christian, Luther famously writes that “the Christian individual is a completely free lord of all, subject to none. The Christian individual is a completely dutiful servant of all, subject to all” (488). Free is an important and deceptively simple word for him, because what it signals is his solution to the problem of anxiety that crippled him as a young monk: we don’t have to stress out over pushing ourselves through all the “good works” and rituals the Church tells us is necessary for our salvation, because we have been given a great good gift in which we can always trust: the grace of God. We can’t earn grace. It’s free. Therefore, all we have to do is accept it. And once we do, we will be filled with such overwhelming joy, love, and above all gratitude that,

in the words of my childhood Sunday school song, “you’ll share his love with all the world, you’ll want to pass it on.”

You will do the right thing because you want to, not because you have to—which means that your actions, and thus your whole life, will flow from an endlessly self-renewing source of joy, despite the inevitable disappointments, deprivations, risks, and vagaries that accompany life in the world. Once you key in to the fact you have been given this great good gift, no one can be the boss of you. You have, literally, nothing of any real (or spiritual) significance to fear. Your fear of never being good enough is gone. You are free.

You don’t need an official interpretive structure of earthly authority to make you into a Christian. Nor do you necessarily need it to become a writer.

At the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop almost a decade ago now, I realized a version of Luther’s thesis when I learned a self-assessment tool I still teach my students. The writers Steve Almond and Aimee Bender led an auditorium full of participants through an exercise they called “Writers on the Couch.” First, they said, think of a moment you really like in your work, when everything about it—the emotional energy, the pacing, the precision of language—is just recognizable as your best. That is your “more like this” passage. Now think about a passage that doesn’t work as well: blurry, sludgy, lazy, or any of the other seven dwarves of not-quiteright-ness. That is your “this stops me” passage. Here comes the big question: what was your state of mind when you wrote each of these, and how can you recreate those conditions in order to bring those qualities to more of your work? In other words, how can you make all of your writing “more like this” by renovating or reawakening the self you bring to the page?

I will never forget the stunned, excited feeling I had as I answered this question for myself. My “more like this” passage had been written on a morning when I had managed to get up early and was excited to explore an image I had jotted down the night before while my mind was clear: “I get to write now” was the driving mood. By contrast, the “this stops me” passage had been written around midmorning, during a break between student conferences, when I was driving myself out of a dutiful need to “use my time” and finish a scene that, I quickly realized, was dutiful too: the mood then became “I have to write now” out of a sense of obligation to myself, my career, and my writing, in the most oppressive and nebulous ways. In Lutheran terms, “more like this” is faith and “this stops me” is works, and, as we all know, one without the other is dead.

You do have to sit down and just crank the words out, even when you don’t feel like it; that’s called discipline, and Luther has some things to say about that too. But if you let the life and the fun be crushed out of your work by too much dutifulness, too much selfconsciousness, or too much premature focus on editors, agents, and other professional trappings, you’re stuck in the world of works, believing they will take you farther than they actually will.

My own research (aside from fiction writing) in the last few years has focused on observation of the living world as a practice that fuels writing, as you will, I hope, soon be able to see in my book The Writer’s Eye: Observation and Inspiration for Creative Writers. In this, too, we can learn from Luther, who, like many another great Christian teacher, has a way with an analogy, always helping our earthbound eyes compare what we can’t see with what we can. Long after I have forgotten many of the other points of “Address to the German Nobility,” I still remember his admonition against absentee landlordism, “The master’s footprints fertilize the soil best.” In The Freedom of a Christian, he hearkens back to a fable of Aesop, which he also translated: “Now if someone were so foolish as to presume to be made righteous, free, saved, and Christian through any good work, then such one would immediately

lose faith along with all other good things. This foolishness is beautifully illustrated in that fable where a dog runs along a stream holding a piece of real meat in his mouth. When, deceived by the reflection of the meat in the water, the dog tries to get it by opening its mouth and loses both the meat and the reflection” (507). My students laughed appreciatively at this and got the point instantly: “He’s chasing after what he already has,” said one. Or, chasing an illusion at the expense of reality. As I describe in my book, this is one reason not to push too hard or too early to write the novel before you’ve written a short story, or to push toward finding an agent before you have finished a draft of a novel you can believe in.

We can learn from Luther, who, like many another great Christian teacher, has a way with an analogy, always helping our earthbound eyes compare what we can’t see with what we can.

Like Luther, writers rely on a fragile but strong medium—words on a page, frail as breath, sturdy as the hearts of trees from which pages are spun—to carry our ideas into the world. Those pages can be burned in a town square, yet they can come to life in the mouths and minds of undergraduates 500 years later. Like Luther, we face the necessity of moving forward with our work in boldness, principle, and freedom despite anxiety, self-doubt, and fear. He shows us that even for someone who makes it look easy, writing is not easy, and never free from a certain kind of spiritual doubt. But we keep on doing it anyway, in faith that our works will get us somewhere after all.

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OCD, Martin, and Me

by PAUL GARDNER, Professor of Political Science

W

ho am I to give a talk like this? I am not a scholar of religion or a psychiatrist but I am someone who has seen OCD from the inside and it has been a companion for most of my life. In a sense I am speaking to you out of the livedexperience of this disorder. My OCD symptoms have been around since I was about 20 but I was not diagnosed with OCD until about a decade ago. Since that time I have read extensively about OCD and other anxiety disorders. A few years ago I came upon a book by Ian Osborn, a psychiatrist, with the title Can Christianity Cure ObsessiveCompulsive Disorder? In this book he makes a compelling argument that Martin Luther suffered from OCD and connects Luther’s suffering to his great insight about faith alone.

Here is a brief road map of my talk.

There will be four main parts.

First, I will explain each of the parts of OCD, the O, the C, and the D, with examples from my life and from Luther’s.

Second, I will describe a modern model of OCD and apply it to myself and Luther.

Third, I will describe a modern model of how OCD is treated and how applying these therapies helped reduce my OCD symptoms.

Fourth, I will say a little about how Luther’s faith alone insight helped reduce his OCD symptoms and how it fits with this modern model.

The O, the C, and the D First, a question: Have you ever left your house, gotten in your car and driven away when a thought pops in your head, “I left a burner on the stove on.” Have you ever doubled-back to check on 68

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that burner? How about doubling back again?

I would often double-back three or four times before my anxiety would be lowered enough to move on with my day.

One way to think about the difference between most of you and me is that we all have what are called intrusive thoughts. They come out of nowhere and seem to make no sense or are contrary to our values or are just plain weird. “I left the burner on.” We each have about 30,000 distinct thoughts a day. For some people one or more types of these thoughts become sticky or stuck. OCD sufferer David Adam says OCD “holds my thoughts captive.”

THIS IS THE ‘O’ IN OCD. The American Psychiatric Association defines obsessions as “recurrent and persistent thoughts, urges or images that are experienced as intrusive and unwanted” (American Psychiatric Association 2013).

Research on OCD suggests there are many different types of obsessions. The most common include obsessions about contamination, relationships, sexual thoughts, aggressive thoughts and the one I know best, responsibility for harm or mistakes, and the one Luther knew, about religious thoughts.

Psychologist Joan Davidson defines the responsibility for harm or mistakes obsession as “being responsible for something bad happening, either because of not doing enough to prevent it or due to making mistakes that cause it” ( Joan Davidson, p. 11).

What if I left the burner on and the house burns down killing my son who is sleeping upstairs?

Davidson defines the moral and religious thought obsession “as involving

thoughts about violating religious and moral codes. Blasphemous thoughts are especially disturbing to people with strong religious convictions. Unwanted thoughts about committing a sin can trigger agonizing distress … and with OCD, thoughts and images tend to stick in spite of desperate efforts not to have them” (p. 15).

Listen to the words of Luther: “When I was a monk I used to think my salvation was undone … I could not find peace but was constantly crucified by thoughts such as these; you have committed this or that sin, you are guilty of envy, impatience … all your good works are to no avail” (quoted in Osborn, p. 53).

Ian Osborn describes Luther’s thought process: “What happened then was something pathological: Luther’s mind gave the thought an extra salience that it shouldn’t have received. He felt overly responsible for it and it stuck in his mind when it should have been dismissed” (Osborn, p. 54).

Many OCD sufferers have distorted cognitive ideas. For example, I tend to give thoughts too much importance.

A thought pops into my head, “I left the burner on,” means to me I must have left the burner on, otherwise I would not have the thought. This is called thought-action fusion. To Luther, he has the thought that he sinned, therefore he must have sinned.

Another cognitive distortion is an inflated sense of responsibility. Notice the words of Osborn, that Luther felt overly responsible for his thoughts.

This is connected to another cognitive distortion, an intolerance of uncertainty.

Davidson says about uncertainty “Most people don’t like having doubts or feeling uncertain, but when you have OCD, alleviating doubts and finding certainty can feel like a life or death matter” (Davidson, p. 17).

When I think about the O in my OCD, I think about my cognitive distortions and my sensitivity to anxiety.

Both drove me to the C IN OCD, COMPULSIONS. The American Psychiatric Association defines compulsions as “repetitive behaviors or mental acts that are carried out in response to obsessions” (American Psychiatric Association 2013).

Checking is the common compulsion most relevant to my OCD. I would check and re-check and eventually my anxiety would go down.

Reassurance seeking is the compulsion most relevant to Luther’s OCD. He would spend hours and hours confessing his sins.

The problem with compulsions is they feed our OCD, they give our OCD what it needs. Technically we are training our brain to look for other things to torment us with. The next time I left the house, the stove thought would pop into my mind. Even if I had studied the knob before I left the house and formed an image of it in my mind, another thought would pop in: “Maybe I brushed another knob with my hand as I walked past.”

Luther could never be sure that he confessed all his sins. Neither of us could ever be certain. Neither of us could ever get beyond doubt. The French call OCD the doubting disease for a reason.

Here is a nice summary of the O & C of OCD from psychologist Joan Davidson: Obsessions are intrusive, unwanted, and recurrent thoughts, urges or images that cause high levels of anxiety and distress. Compulsions are repetitive behaviors … aimed at reducing anxiety and distress.

Unfortunately, compulsions …

is like pouring gasoline on a fire. The modern therapeutic approach to OCD obsessions is that they are “fleeting irrational thoughts that have no base at all in genuine desire” (Osborn, p. 11).

One of the best pieces of therapeutic advice I got about a decade ago is that OCD attacks exactly what matters most to us. For me, it was being responsible for things. For Luther, it was religion.

only provide temporary relief; they don’t provide the certainty and reassurance [we] seek.

(Davidson, p. 29) It is the high level of anxiety and distress that is the basis for the D OR THE DISORDER PART OF OCD. Osborn puts it this way: Obsessive-compulsive disorder occurs in degrees of severity: mild, moderate, and severe.

In mild cases, an individual is troubled by obsessions and compulsions, yet gets along satisfactorily in all aspects of life. In moderate cases, the symptoms are not only disturbing but disrupting. They interfere significantly with a person’s ability to function normally in work, family, or social life.

In severe cases, the ability to function normally may be lost. (p. 170)

Again listen to Osborn on Luther’s OCD disorder: On the basis of what Martin Luther himself tells us about his early monastery experiences, it can reasonably be concluded that he suffered from a textbook case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Not only did it cause him extraordinary torment and endanger his health, it prevented him from advancing in a monk’s most important task: advancing spiritually by growing closer to God.

LOUISVILLEOCDCLINIC.COM

Obsessions cause OCD sufferers distress, meaning anxiety, and so we naturally try to relieve the anxiety. We do this through compulsions.

There have been two times in my life when I would classify my OCD as moderate, in my early twenties and about the time I was 35. The circumstances of the mid-thirties OCD attack drove me to counseling that for the most part was ineffective.

OCD was not well understood in the mid-1980s and the most effective therapies were still a decade or so way.

The ineffective therapeutic approach mostly emphasized how my obsessive thoughts reflected unconscious urges that are genuine. For an OCD sufferer, this approach is worse than useless. It encourages us to take our thought even more seriously which

And here is what Luther says: “When I was a monk, I did nothing but waste my time … With all my masses, with prayers, fasts, vigils, and chastity, I never advanced to the point where I could say that my order and my austere life promoted me heavenward” (quoted in Osborn, p. 63).

What do we know about OCD today? The following is the consensus scientific model of how OCD works.

First, a normal anxiety producing thought enters the mind.

Me: What if I left the burner on and my house burns down?

Luther: What if I am unfit to go to heaven?

Second, the anxiety-producing thought is evaluated abnormally.

Me: Were the knobs really turned off ?

Luther: “My conscience could never achieve certainty, was always in doubt.”

Third, the sufferer fights to get the thought out of mind.

Fourth, the sufferer performs specific acts over and over to reduce the anxiety caused by the obsessions.

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Me: I go back and check, over and over.

Luther: He confesses, over and over (from Osborn, pp. 112 – 115).

Modern Treatment of OCD I will say a little about the therapy treatments that many consider the gold standards for OCD and the ones that worked for me.

One element is cognitive or reframing some of my cognitive distortions, such as the thought/action fusion. The other element is behavioral and its acronym is ERP—exposure, response prevention.

Joan Davidson describes ERP in this way: “The exposure part of ERP involves confronting one’s obsessions and the situations that trigger them.

The response prevention part means not engaging in one’s usual responses, like using compulsions, and instead accepting your thoughts and feelings” (Davidson, p. 52).

For me I had to work at reframing my cognitive distortions and then to stop my compulsions by learning to tolerate my anxiety. The basic idea is to expose myself in various ways to the actual thing I feared and that eventually my anxiety in the face of such fears would go down. Both the cognitive and behavior approaches are ways to re-train my mind. Both took time. The behavioral work—stopping my compulsions and learning to tolerate anxiety—was very hard. But the combination worked, for me as it does for a very high percentage of OCD sufferers. Today my OCD is a constant presence but it is like a relative that overstayed his welcome and so I built a little cottage out back where he lives. I see him every day but his presence doesn’t bother me. Some days I even invite him in just to remind myself I can send him back out when he gets too tiresome. In other words, I look for exposures to do. I welcome the anxiety that comes with these exposures. I can do this because I trust the science that produced these therapies.

We know today the best approach for reducing OCD symptoms is a combination cognitive and behavior approach, with the key being to stop compulsions.

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How Did Luther Stop His Compulsive Confessing?

Back to Osborn: Luther’s great insight in the tower of the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt was that he did not have to do anything to assure his salvation. God had imputed righteousness to him through a gratuitous act of mercy. Luther no longer had to obsessively examine his behaviors to see if they were good enough.

He no longer had to worry about confessing his sins. He needed only have faith in God’s goodness. (p. 147) What does Luther do? He reframes his world view—that is the cognitive element—by giving responsibility to God, thereby allowing him to stop his compulsions—that is the behavioral element. Apparently he does this immediately. Whereas I had faith in science, Luther has faith in God. “Faith alone” not only revolutionizes the world—it solves Luther’s OCD problem.

Works Cited Adam, David. The Man who couldn’t stop: OCD and the story of a life lost in thought.

Picador, 2013.

American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition: DSM-5 (2013).

Davidson, Joan. Daring to Challenge OCD: Overcome Your Fear of Treatment and Take Control of Your Life Using Exposure and Response Prevention. New Harbinger, 2014.

Osborn, Ian. Can Christianity Cure Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?: A Psychiatrist Explores the Role of Faith in Treatment. Brazo Press, 2008.

Further Resources on ObsessiveCompulsive Disorder Websites The OCD Stories: http://theocdstories. com/

International OCD Foundation: <https:// iocdf.org/>

Books Baer, Lee. The Imp of the Mind: Exploring the Silent Epidemic of Obsessive Bad Thoughts.

Free Press, 2001.

Bell, Jeff. When in Doubt, Make Belief: An OCD-Inspired Approach to Living with Uncertainty. New World Library, 2009.

Ciarrocchi, Joseph. The Doubting Disease: Help for Scrupulosity and Religious Compulsions. Paulist Press, 1995.

Grayson, Jonathan. Freedom from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: A Personalized Recovery Program for Living with Uncertainty. Berkley Publishing, 2004.

Harris, Russ. The Happiness Trap Pocketbook.

Robinson, 2014.

Hayes, Steven. Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. New Harbinger, 2005.

Hershfield, Jon and Shala Nicely. Everyday Mindfulness for OCD: Tips, Tricks, and Skills for Living Joyfully. New Harbinger, 2017.

Hershfield, Jon and Tom Corboy. The Mindfulness Workbook for OCD: A Guide to Overcoming Obsessions and Compulsions Using Mindfulness and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. New Harbinger, 2013.

Lejeune, Chad. The Worry Trap: How to Free Yourself from Worry and Anxiety Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.

New Harbinger, 2007.

Osborn, Ian. Tormenting Thoughts and Secret Rituals. Delacorte Press, 1999.

Schwartz, Jeffrey. Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior.

Harper Perennial, 2000.

Seif, Martin and Sally Winston. What Every Therapist Needs to Know About Anxiety Disorders: Key Concepts, Insights, and Interventions. Routledge, 2014.

Weg, Allen. OCD Treatment Through Storytelling: A Strategy for Successful Therapy. Oxford University Press, 2011.

Wilson, Reid. Stopping the Noise in Your Head. Health Communications, 2016.

Winston, Sally and Martin Seif. Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts: A CBTBased Guide to Getting Over Frightening, Obsessive, or Disturbing Thoughts. New Harbinger, 2017.

An Economics Teacher Confronts Sola Scriptura, Romans 12:2, and the Great Commandment

by WADE SHILTS, Associate Professor of Economics

If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron. Or else He’s the dumbest designer that ever lived.

G

iven the content and tenor of the argument I am about to make, the epigram of the unnamed main character in Spider Robinson’s 1979 short story about a man who finds and cares for a woman dying from her “wire” addiction (think stimulating your brain by plugging its pleasure center into an electrical outlet) may be especially appropriate given the content of my talk today.1 For the main character of Robinson’s story was neither concerned citizen combating the evil of virtual drugs nor a caring neighbor helping a drug victim. Rather, akin to an economist who has often appeared in his own story as an apologist for the evils of the real economy, Robinson’s protagonist embodied part of the cultural evil; he was a burglar who had broken into a complete stranger’s apartment with the intention of misappropriating her wealth.

There is definitely no little irony with me making the argument I am about to make. Most of my professional career I have taught economics and been a student of the economic past. I have spent decades teaching and advocating the quintessential world-centered philosophy, economics. I have made most of my life decisions in accordance with that world-centered philosophy.

Yet, even though a non-trivial subset of those life decisions have been morally questionable, I assert here an ethos sufficient to support making an extended theological argument against the world-centered values.

Deepening the irony further, I will make my argument in ways that draw very

little upon my experience and expertise in any modern academic discipline. I will not be operating from either the mainstream or fringe regions of my primary disciplines of economics and history. Nor will I be using the methods of the law for which I own a juris doctor degree or those of literary criticism in which I deeply dabbled during my dissertation and early career years.

Indeed, much of what I do here will suggest an active antagonism toward the core epistemology of most if not all modern and postmodern academic disciplines. The argument I make about sola scriptura may be two millennia old, but I will not be “doing history” when I make it. I will speak to some curricular and pedagogic needs for undergraduate economics, but not by using any of the “economic way of thinking” that I’ve taught for my entire Luther career.

I outright refuse to approach the subject of “reformation everywhere,” or of Reformation anywhere, from the perspective of a lawyer. And I am in recovery from post-modernism.

Instead, I am going to take the most important theological doctrine for the sixteenth-century Reformation, and I am going to use it both to determine what I say and to shape how I say it. I am intentionally taking an approach to the Bible that economists, historians, lawyers, literary critics, and, I suspect, many within academic theology, have been rejecting since the Enlightenment, and I am doing so even as in my day job I have required this semester’s economic history students to read a book emphasizing the value of Enlightenment mindsets.2 Irony? Here? Indeed.

Sola scriptura from 1519 to 33 C.E. Sola scriptura was the approach to Biblical interpretation advocated by

Luther, Calvin, and almost every other Protestant reformer of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The doctrine permeates virtually every word of the 1530 Augsburg Confession, with “Scripture” or Scriptures” used no less than 19 times. Indeed, the doctrine permeates everything in the Lutheran Book of Concord, revealed by each of the references to “Scripture” in the Small Catechism (1529, with 7 separate references), the Large Catechism (1529, with 4 references), Melanchthon’s Defense of the Augsburg Confession (1530, 157 references), the Smalcald Articles (1537, 11), and the Epitome and Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord (1577, 85).3 The key documents of other Protestant faiths reveal similar commitment to sola scriptura. The Canons of Dort (Dutch Reform, 1618-1619) grant ultimate authority to Scripture 26 times. The doctrine is stated without equivocation (and virtually identical language) across the Westminster Confession of 1646 (Presbyterians), the Savoy Declaration of 1658 (Congregationalists), and both First (1644) and Second (1689) London Confessions (Baptists).

Were I wearing my PhD robes, I’d probably look first at the historical uncertainty which surrounds whether Martin Luther included “Hier stehe ich” (“Here I stand”) when speaking in front of Charles V at the 1521 Diet of Worms.4 However, I write first here not as holder of degrees but as a believer, and since I always hear Luther speaking with the passionate, trembling, slightly crazed, voice of the film actor playing Luther, Niall McGinniss, I will simply quote Luther’s “1953” statement of the doctrine: You ask for a simple answer. Here it is. Unless you can convince me by Scripture, and not by Fall 2017/Agora

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popes or councils who have often contradicted each other, unless I am so convinced that I am wrong I am bound to my beliefs by the text of the Bible My conscience is captive to the Word of God. To go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Therefore, I cannot and I will not recant. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.5 Whether Luther ever spoke exactly thus, there is no question that he believed deeply in the supreme authority of Scripture. There is also no doubt that he considered going against the teaching of Scripture to be both theological error and soul-damning rebellion against the will of God. Luther spoke as a believer in front of other believers. So do I. While a non-believer can learn much from considering the implications of sola scriptura, most of the value for the non-believer will be derivative of whatever insight I might offer to any specific believers with which that nonbeliever wishes to associate. Obeying or following the principles of sola scriptura only comes into play once one is a believer and desires to move farther along the path of sanctification; unless and until one is a believer, sola scriptura has relevance if and only if someone you care about is a believer.

If you are a believer, however, the implications of sola scriptura become both profound and profoundly discomforting. They are profound because they are life-changing; and they are discomforting because they cannot be ignored or avoided. Sola scriptura demands of us radical re-assessment of our approach to authority in context after decisional context.

In every decisional context.

Luther at Worms highlights the nonnegotiable and irreducible core of the doctrine: only when a concern I have turns out to be a matter in which God has no interest, “what the Bible says” must always be given the win. The Bible must always have the last word, for God must have the last word, and the Bible is how we know what His word is.

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Sola scriptura gives no room to the believer for exceptions to Biblical authority unless the Bible itself allows the exception. Even if as a believer I had an option to limit sola scriptura to theological questions, an option which has no Scriptural authority, the limit would be trivial for all questions of importance are theological.

The English word “theology” combines two words from the Greek, θεοῦ (God) and λόγου (reason), and so means “of the reasons of God.” If God considers a matter of importance, it is by definition theological. And if God doesn’t consider something a matter of importance, we believers shouldn’t either. To quote the divinely inspired Apostle Paul in his second letter to his apprentice Timothy, “All Scripture is breathed out

by God (πᾶσα γραφὴ Θεόπνευστος6) and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).7 Scripture being what is breathed out from a perfect and all-knowing God, no good work can be absent from consideration within its pages.

A similar point is made by Peter: And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along (ὑπὸ φερόμενοι) by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:19-21).

Sola scriptura changes everything.

Biblical information is no longer merely one piece of a larger story; now, Biblical information is the story. My economic theory and my historical empirics may still have value, but only if and when Biblical meaning has been figured out sufficiently that I know the economic theory and historical empirics are not inconsistent with it.

Sola scriptura requires the believer to be completely unbalanced toward one source of authority. We are not balancing the authority to be split among ourselves and other various fallible human beings; we are giving all authority to a Triune Godhead incapable of error. The Word of God, being God’s word, is not thesis but Truth; not evidence but Proof; not possibility but certainty; not a claim about what might have been, might be, or might become, but a statement about what was, is, and will be.

But, Wade, if sola scriptura is to be the rule, how then do you rely upon Luther at Worms as your authority for the doctrine, much less use a movie that you have admitted is a dramatization?

It might seem a valid criticism, but it is not, for I am not claiming either Martin Luther or Niall McGinness or Lutheran Church Productions (the maker of the 1953 movie) as the authority.

Luther’s statement at Worms does not determine the interpretive authority of sola scriptura. Luther at Worms merely provides a particularly effective statement of the principle. Luther no more constitutes the authority for sola scriptura by virtue of his leadership in the 16th-century Reformation than I constitute its authority by virtue of this paper.

God, and God alone, through His own Scripture alone, provides the authority.

Even a cursory reading of the “red letter” portions of the New Testament reveals HIS belief, and thus HIS authority, that Scripture alone was His Word. God being incapable of error, the authority is absolute.

Consider how Jesus responds each time Satan tempts him in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11). Each of the three times, his response starts with the words “it is written.” When Satan suggests that Jesus turn stones into bread to break his 40-day fast, for example, Jesus, being God, could have opened in the first person active (“I say”) or even the royal plural (“We say”). Instead, he used the passive in the third person, “it is written” (γέγραπται), to quote Deuteronomy 8:3 and accented how authority rests in Scripture: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every

word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).

Similarly, how many times does Jesus deal with the legalism of the Pharisees by asking, “have you not read …?”

When they confront him about his disciples’ disobedience of Sabbath rules, it is, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry?” (Matthew 12:3, referring to 1 Samuel 21:3-6), and then, “Have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless” (Matthew 12:5) while the “Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath” (12:8). When asked whether divorce can be lawful, he says, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning them made them male and female” and then said that “the two shall become one flesh” (Matthew 19:4-5). (Mark’s version of the occasion has Jesus saying, “What did Moses command you?” (Mark 10:3)) When the priests and scribes became angry at his healing in the temple and children there proclaiming him to be the son of David (Matthew 21:15) he asked, “Have you never read” that praise would come “out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies [quoting Psalm 8:2].”

Similarly, he appealed to the authority of Scripture when it was the Sadducees confronting him. When they claimed that there was no resurrection of the dead, Jesus’ response was, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Matthew 22:29; see also, Mark 12:24).

When they tried to trip him up using a hypothetical case of a widow marrying seven brothers seriatim, he said, “Have you not read what was said to you by God: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?

He is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22:31-32; Mark 12:26-27).8 Throughout the New Testament, the incarnate Word, the Divine Son of God, is found speaking of the written Word, Scripture, in ways that show he saw Scripture as self-authorizing, as its own authority, as the last word even with respect to whether, when, and how it has the last word.

The completeness of Scriptural authority: the case of two imperatives To see the completeness and pervasiveness of Scripture’s authority, consider just two of the hundreds of divine imperatives found within the pages of Holy Scripture: first, the Great Commandment; and, second, the imperative against worldliness. God’s greatest Commandment, stated first in Deuteronomy 6:5, is quoted by Jesus in Mark 12:28-30, in Luke 10:27-28, and in Matthew 22:37-38: And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment (Matthew 22:37-38).9 The second imperative, against being captured by the values of the world, is most completely stated by Paul in chapter 12 of his letter to believers in Roman: I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:1-2).

The believer and the Great Commandment Compliance with sola scriptura requires more than finding Bible verses to quote. Answers can be found in the Bible, but NOT by treating it as the religious equivalent of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. One cannot know the requirements God imposes through the Great Commandment or through the injunction against worldliness, or through any Biblical imperative, unless one is willing to take a systematic journey through several of the 66 books

in the Bible, usually some from both New and Old Testaments.

The all-ness of love. With respect to the Great Commandment, for example, the journey starts with a little threeletter English word, “all.” The Great Commandment is a rule to love with “all” our heart, with “all our soul,” and “all our mind.” Start with that little three-letter word, “all.” “All” makes the Great Commandment into an imperative that allows zero exceptions.

We “believers” have zero opportunities to avoid it or limit it. None. Nada. We can only choose obedience to God’s command, or we can choose to be, yet again, in rebellion against His will. You can either love with all your heart, or you can … sin. You can either love with all your soul, or you can sin. You can either love with all your mind, or you can sin. Period.

If, despite the three “alls,” you still hope for an out, Jesus permanently slams that door shut when he uses “all” again just two verses later in Matthew 22:40, stating, “On these two commandments [a second great commandment, which is “just like” the first, orders the believer to “love your neighbor as yourself ” in vs. 39] depend all the Law and the Prophets.” If you wish to place your love somewhere, oh believer, if you wish to give your love to yourself or to someone/ something else, be sure that whatever choice you make will be a choice that God will count as loving Him. The Greek-ness of love. With respect to the second key word in the Great Commandment, “love,” looking to the Greek of the original helps us avoid one of the more common errors people make when they uncritically seek to reduce Jesus into “the God of love” or, worse, into merely a “good man and great teacher.” Yes, Jesus is the God of love. Yes, for his entire time on earth, Jesus was a good man and great teacher.

But the love reflected by “doing good,” the love that helps make a great teacher, is a tiny fraction of the love that was Jesus and a tiny fraction of the love the Great Commandment requires of us.

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available during the time of Jesus and the Apostles), used four different words for love. Only one of the four, ἀγάπη (pronounced ah-gă’-pā), appears in any of the Biblical statements of the Great Commandment. Ἀγάπη, though it almost never appears in extant nonBiblical ancient Greek, actually appears hundreds of times in the Greek Bible.

Agape-ing Jesus with all our heart, soul, and mind, means we cannot and must not reduce Jesus into that nice guy who loves “me.” To love in the way of ἀγάπη is, always, to love in a way that centers on someone other than the “me.” Ἀγάπη is never about me. Ἀγάπη is always taking a stance toward others which strives to be giving rather than receiving, a stance that is all about and only about making the other happy and not at all about making the me happy. The First Great Imperative of ἀγάπη demands I strive to make God happier with every action I take, with every think I make, and with every breath I take. (Similarly, the Second Great Imperative of ἀγάπη demands striving with all to make my neighbor happy.)

The use elsewhere in the Bible of two other Greek words for love and the total absence of use of a fourth, further accent the other-centeredness at the core of Biblical love.

Though neither appears in any Biblical statement of either Great Commandment, the Greek words φιλέω (phil-eh’-ō) and στοργή (stōr-gā) do appear repeatedly in other Biblical imperatives. Both φιλέω, the brotherly love we share with those we call friends, and στοργή, the quiet good feelings we extend toward our spouses, children, and dogs, have an element of otherfocusedness in them. However, while each has us considering the happiness of others, a good thing, both still have an inherent first-person orientation in a way that ἀγάπη never does. God likes us loving “we” (φιλέω, στοργή) more than he likes us loving “me,” but he likes us loving Him and neighbor (ἀγάπη) more still.

Economics education at Luther College has long emphasized an ethic of φιλέω, focusing as it does on what my former colleagues, Ed Kaschins and Mark 74

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Lund, called “economics for citizenship.”

At least since 1977 when I took my first economics class (from Kaschins), Luther has striven to prepare its students not only for careers in an economic world, but for lives as productive and ethical citizens. To my mind, our citizenship emphasis makes the Luther approach to economics education not only more useful but morally superior to the more technical approaches taken elsewhere. Our economics students may graduate with less skill at manipulating algebraic equations and less experience with econometric empirics; but they also graduate having had given more attention to the consideration of moral character. Some of us might follow the majority of the economics discipline in their embrace of “free market” practices. If we do, however, it is less likely that we do so because we believe with the fictional Gordon Gecko that “greed is good,” and more so because our belief that the “invisible hand” pulls self-interested individuals toward decisions that yield an improvement in society. “Economics for citizenship” is not the ἀγάπη required by the Great Commandment, but it is still a variety of Biblical love.10 The same, however, is not true of the love the Greeks labeled ἔρος (air’-ōς). Ἐρος, though it appears regularly in non-Biblical ancient Greek, appears not once in the Bible. While most commonly associated with sexual love, ἔρος is actually any love we center around our own individual pleasure. Ἐρος is the love I practice whenever I choose something that makes me happy. Ἐρος might lead me to direct my attentions toward someone, but I do so only because of what doing so does for me.

If you look carefully at some arguments reducing Jesus to the “God of love,” you can find a good deal of φιλέωthinking. Unfortunately, however, as you look more carefully, you see an awful lot of “God as love” that is no more about φιλέω than it is about ἀγάπη.

Far too much, across most Christian denominations and all ideologies, proves to be thinly-disguised ἔρος to the core. Sometimes the focus on self and individual arises because “sexual”

issues are implicated (e.g., both sides of debates on abortion, gender, and same-sex marriage); far more often, however, it arises where sex is nowhere in the story. Again and again, one sees Christian love reduced to little more than this “ἔρος without the sex.” One sees ἔρος without the sex coming from “liberal” Catholics and from even more “politically correct” mainline Protestants.

The most scary reduction of love to ἔρος, however, comes not from these, but from über-megachurch/television pulpits like those of Joel and Victoria Osteen, from evangelical “healers” like Benny Hinn, from the “Word-Faith” movement and its “prosperity gospel.”11 More mundanely, the differences among ἀγάπη, φιλέω, στοργή, and ἔρος highlight what might be the single biggest danger one’s economic beliefs offer any believer in Jesus Christ. They certainly accent something seriously flawed with much of how I have been practicing and teaching economics.

For example, sometime the first few weeks of Economics 130, students are taught to distinguish between “selfishness” and “self-interest.” Mother Theresa, for example, was not selfish, but altruistic; but she was altruistic out of self-interest: doing good for the lepers and the untouchables of India made her happy.

The distinction is useful and economically sound.12 However, ἀγάπη is consistent with neither selfishness nor self-interestedness. If everything Mother Theresa did was done out of her perceived self-interest, she was disobeying the Great Commandment no matter how deep her altruism went.13 If we go through our lives doing nothing besides follow our perceived self-interest, so too do we disobey.

Further, to the extent that my teaching about self-interest encouraged my students to consider the φιλέω of good citizenship as a quality alternative to ἀγάπη, and I fear it did so far too often, I have more than a little bit of false teaching for which I will need to answer to my Lord.

The imitativeness of ἀγάπη. Loving with all also requires me to strive to imitate Christ’s perfect example, as described by

Paul in his chapter on love: Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13: 4-7).

So must I strive even as my life continues to reveal me regularly neither patient nor kind, regularly envious and boastful and arrogant and rude, even as Scripture reminds me daily of the Christ-unlikeness of my pitiful attempts to love at all.

The ubiquity and consistency of Scriptural imperatives. Ultimately, any Scriptural imperative, even the Greatest one, is best interpreted under the light of others. Thus the second great imperative helps us understand the first: When Jesus tells me to love my neighbor as myself, he reveals to me that loving my neighbor is part of my loving Him. He also tells me that whenever I care more about my own happiness than about my neighbor’s, I am not loving him with all.

to the world”; and “be transformed by the renewal of your mind”) reveal the Divine belief that “loving God with all” requires at a minimum being a living sacrifice and not conforming to the world and renewing our minds.

I say “at a minimum” because adding the imperatives of Romans 12:1-2 does not end the search through Scripture for relevant details on the Greatest of Imperatives. Rather, the examples of Romans 12 and the other imperatives cited above highlight that interpreting just one imperative requires a lifetime of Scriptural study. Even though I have been justified by faith alone (sola fide) through God’s grace alone (sola gratia) by virtue of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross alone (solus Christus), I must spend the rest of my life striving to live my life for the glory of God alone (soli Deo gloria). I am saved, but salvation doesn’t allow my return to worldly criteria for success. I must until the end of days pursue holiness on the example of my Savior.

If we love the world, John says, the love of the Father is not in us (1 John 2:15).

In the words of Solomon, whatever we pursue of the world will never be anything more than “vanity and striving after the wind” (see, e.g., Ecclesiastes 1:14). If the treasures of the world never last, why should we ever love the world?

In the end, each believer is called to strive to identify each Scriptural imperative and then strive to interpret each in a way that it is inconsistent with none of the others. Scripture, like the “balancing of the clouds,” is the work “of him who is perfect in knowledge” ( Job 37:16). God can “do all things” ( Job 42:2) and “knows everything” (1 John 3:20). The God who “by His own authority” has fixed the times and seasons which are for none of us to know (Acts 1:7), who is the “good shepherd” ( John 10:14) who knows the secrets of every heart (Psalm 44:21), who can count and name every star (Psalm 44:21), is incapable of error or contradiction. Our Lord, who knows everything each of us is going to say before even a single word has occurred to us (Psalm 139:4), from whose sight nothing is hidden (Hebrews 4:13), and who cannot be taught a thing by any of us ( Job 21:22), is a God of perfect knowledge (1 Samuel 2:3). Scripture is the creation of Him who can no more order us to do both A and not-A than he can be unrighteous.

The three imperatives that open Romans 12 (“present your bodies as a living sacrifice”; “be not conformed

God’s perfection means that any interpretive guidance on how to follow the Great Commandment or any other

Further illumination comes through the Biblical imperatives about the accumulation of wealth: Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:19-21).

single Biblical imperative must for each of us lie somewhere within that area of possible meaning which is comprised of the logical intersection that satisfies all of them.

And Scripture has a lot of imperatives. According to www. biblicalresearchreports.com, there are 684 New Testament passages containing commands for the believer. Christian Assemblies International puts the number at 1,050. Saundra George of El Shaddai Ministries has listed 1,236.14 And then there are the 613 Mosaic commandments in the Pentateuch, or whatever fraction of them you think still remain, given Jesus’ statement that he did not come to replace the Law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17).

Wherever we might be in the Bible at a given moment, the example of the Great Commandment shows how sola scriptura requires us to stay in the Bible.

We must look to Scripture first and last to reveal God’s imperatives. We must look to Scripture first and last to interpret each of those imperatives; and we must look to Scripture first and last for to remind us of the myriad ways the world, the devil, and our own sinful nature will ever tempt us to disobey them.

Seriously?? I don’t know about anyone else, but the thought of trying to obey all those imperatives gives me a migraine-quality headache. Even if I could instantly memorize all of Scripture, channel the combined theological understanding of all its 40 or so authors as well as Luther, Calvin, John MacArthur, and R. C. Sproul the Elder, and organize everything according to the set theory I learned during my graduate student days, I still wouldn’t be able to describe that thousand-dimensional intersection.

No one save God can.

And that, ultimately, is the most important lesson to be learned through consideration of the Greatest Imperative of Matthew 22:37-38. We need to follow sola scriptura because we need the humility it’s practice instills in us. Without the grace of God, none of us could follow a single Biblical imperative through the light of the Fall 2017/Agora

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other 683 or 1,049 or 1,235 or 1,848.

God wants us to strive in everything according to His rule of sola scriptura because without Scripture we cannot know our need to surrender even our obedience to the wisdom of His will, and because without complete surrender to His will, we cannot move forward in sanctification that increases His glorification.

Loving God with all is not about doing this list of X or not doing the other list of Y. All lists of X and Y are too long, and our sinfulness too deep for us to do/ not do everything on them. Loving God with all is about obeying and submitting and surrendering and striving for ever deeper faithfulness to His Holy Word.

It is about taking and maintaining a particular stance toward God and His Word, a stance from which we do everything and from which we think about everything and from which we interpret everything, a stance where all our doing and all our thinking and all our interpreting are driven by the pursuit of a single objective, namely the objective of “bringing joy to the Lord Jesus.”15

Hier stehe ich: sola scriptura and Romans 12 So what does this lesson have to do with the future of higher education in America or at Luther College? The answer, and the second-most important point I want to make, lies in deeper application of sola scriptura to Romans 12:2.

One does not have to spend much time with the New Testament to understand the imperative of not being conformed to the world. Scriptural examples abound on why the world should never be considered the believer’s friend.

James, the brother of Jesus, tells us that “friendship with the world is enmity with God,” and that one who “wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” ( James 4:4). John is equally blunt: “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 John 2:16).

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“transformed by the renewing of our minds,” is more difficult. If exegesis of the Great Commandment and its connection to hundreds of other Biblical imperatives leads to a headache and the pulling of hair, consideration of Romans 12:2 leads to wailing and the gnashing of teeth. With apologies to the worldly Wachowski brothers-nowtransgendered-sisters, who produced one of my favorite movies of all time, The Matrix, Romans 12:2 shows that sola scriptura is the ultimate red pill.

And it is a red pill that reveals skull plugs far more disturbing than the one Morpheus’s pill helped Neo discover at the back of his head.

To see why, I must digress briefly from scriptural exegesis for a bit of personal testimony.

Wade and the world of higher education, take one This paper on sola scriptura arose originally out of my need to stop procrastinating on the “religion chapters” of a book on which I’d been working on for over a decade.

When published, the book (current working title, Barriers of Faith: Higher Education and the Costs of Listening in an Anarchic World), would aim various rhetorical blunt instruments at the received wisdom that has been delaying reform for even longer. I expected some controversy upon publication, particularly given the shots I planned to take at “student-centered” pedagogy, student evaluations, and other sacred cows of undergraduate education today.

Not “run him out of town on a rail!” level controversy, for I was still playing by accepted standards of scholarship and discipline-based evidence and paying careful attention to the literature, but enough that I was glad to have a shield of tenure available if needed.

The religion sections within which this paper on sola scriptura would be slotted might temporarily provide a bit more problematic since they involved my latest venture into an entirely new discipline (hence the extended procrastination), but I fully expected to stay with scholarly methods I have refined in acquiring four degrees, completing peer-reviewed publications

in multiple disciplines, and presenting more conference papers than I want to count.

Ah, pride always comes before the fall!

Somewhere along the way, however, as I saw more and more of my heart, soul, and mind being transformed though more regular application of sola scriptura and increasing personal openness to the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit, I found myself beginning to question not only others’ educational sacred cows but also my own. Indeed, I began to question my lifelong commitment to the liberal arts values of John Henry Newman (1801-1890), Charles Eliot (1834-1926), and Robert Hutchins (1899-1977).16 I was, and am, still disenchanted with what I see here at my alma mater and elsewhere in higher education, with the profoundly unimaginative and non-entrepreneurial leadership that dominates higher education everywhere, with colleagues and now two consecutive administrations far too smug about the “Luther way” in their disregard of paradigmatic changes in recent decades to the demand for higher education, and with a world professoriate far too ignorant of the “flat world” and its “change compression.”17 But, the more of the red pill I have digested, the more apparent that the “superior” vision of Barriers of Faith was anything but. I doubt now that the book will ever be finished. While I still believe that today’s student-centered curricula and pedagogies need deep reformation, the big problems have far less to do with curricular choice or pedagogic choice, student-centered or otherwise.

The real problems lie in the underlying epistemologies of believers and the 21st century church, flawed epistemologies that are shared across pedagogies and curricula, student-centered and otherwise. The problem is that Christian education is far too captive of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and too little committed to the head of our church and His Word. And so am I.

Colleges of the Church?

Insofar as the higher education imperatives of the 21st century are

imperatives to be followed by Christians and/or within “colleges of the Church,” we Christians and colleges have all been worrying about the wrong problems.

Where we of God’s church should have been striving to avoid conformity with worldly values, we’ve bogged down in disputes between worldly needs none of which should control. As we’ve been worrying out solutions to declining enrollments and rising costs, to meeting demands for increasingly expensive education derived from the economic and cultural need for graduates with ever higher-order skills, we’ve forgotten that the church to which the cross offered us membership will never fall, not even to the gates of hell (Matthew 16:18).

We who would be part of a college of that church that Christ built upon the impregnable foundation of himself have forgotten that our only desired outcomes should be meeting his imperatives. Not only have we become perilously corrupted by the world, and so moved farther and farther away from the requirements of the Great Commandment, we have forgotten the Great Commission that ought to define and shape every part of the fellowship of the church of his believers: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

(Matthew 28:18-20).

We who believe in both Jesus and the necessities of liberal higher education have missed the most important part of Romans 12, the point that we as believers can be transformed by the renewing of our minds ONLY if we surrender all to God and His Word.

If we would use education and its institutions to aid transformation, we must switch all of our curricular and pedagogic thinking into accord with the mindset of sola scriptura. We must recognize that the correct red pill will take us not only to education places we have not before considered, but that we must travel to places our fallen but highly educated flesh has no desire to

go, places that neither student nor staff nor faculty want to go, places that our Savior and Lord want us to go, but that neither me nor thee wish to follow.

If we wish to be or be associated with a college of Jesus’s church, we must recognize that Jesus himself remains the head of both that church and its colleges. Neither faculties, nor student bodies, nor Presidents and administrations, nor even Boards of Regents, share His governance. Neither the foundations nor the cornerstone of our endeavors were built neither by any of us. The foundations were built by the apostles and the prophets, and Jesus Christ Himself provided the cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20).

As individuals we cannot and must not ignore His imperatives, and as members in the body of His church we cannot do so either. Were we non-believers, we could follow the best of some very good secular educational theory and practice. (I’d put my wealth back on Messrs. Newman, Eliot, and Hutchins.).

As believers with the imperative of the first Great Commandment, we can only follow that secular theory if it first can survive the testing of Scripture. Were we non-believers, we could surrender to constraints of marketing, information technology, and non-Christian culture.

As believers we can only do so insofar as surrender to those constraints is consistent with the imperatives of Holy Scripture.

The member of Christ’s Church however, must follow the Scriptural path. The believer’s curricular and pedagogic choices, not just for Sunday School, but even with respect to worldly disciplines such as economics, must look first and last to “the will of God,” to “that which is good, acceptable, and perfect.”

Our redemption on the cross changes —or should change—how we look at every detail of education and scholarship. A non-believer might be able to ignore one or more imperatives from Scripture. We believers cannot. We must not.

A believer seeking or providing education must be guided by sola scriptura in doing so, for two reasons.

First, as the above discussion of the Great Commandment highlights, the believer’s primary task is the pursuit of holiness. The cross provided the salvation we could not provide ourselves, but salvation does not remove our obligation to pursue our own sanctification.

Second, if our pursuit of holiness is to go anywhere, if we are to move any closer following Jesus’s own example than we were prior to the moment of our salvation, we must be transformed via the epistemology of sola scriptura or we will simply recast ever more damning chains of the world around our minds. As Paul points out repeatedly in his epistles, particularly in Chapter 2 of his letter to the Church at Ephesus, we cannot hope to avoid conformity to the world unless we at the same time use Scripture to resist the temptations of the flesh, unless we recognize just how radically strong are the hooks with which our own depravity continues to weld to the world’s chains and so rebind our hearts, minds, and souls: And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (Ephesians 2:1-3).

We can no more sanctify ourselves than we could save ourselves. The first four words of Ephesians 2:1 make it clear. We come “dead” to the transformation table. Not partly dead, not mostly dead, not almost dead, but totally dead. Any progress we make in following Jesus after the cross we will make solely by virtue of God’s grace just as our salvation on the cross only happened by virtue of Christ’s sacrifice there. As Voddie Bacham has eloquently put it, “we can no more born ourselves again than we could born ourselves the first time.”18 We can no more transform ourselves than we could save ourselves.

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We cannot be transformed unless we recognize that not only do the calls of the world against God remain a barrier to our sanctification; but because such anti-Godness is what our depraved and rebellious “flesh” still craves, our very nature is a barrier, too. Without the continued grace of God, we cannot bootstrap our own holiness. Even after Christ’s atonement for us on the cross, we remain bound by what Luther, in responding to Erasmus, labeled “the necessity of immutability.” Even after a man has been saved by the cross, Luther states, He goes on willing and desiring to do evil; and if external pressure forces him to act otherwise, nevertheless his will within remains averse to so doing and chafes under such constraint and opposition. But it would not thus chafe were it being changed, and were it yielding to constraint willingly.19 We can be transformed only if we surrender absolutely to the authority of the Son, only if we submit absolutely to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and only if we follow the example of David in Psalm 119 and delight in finding and striving to obey all of the Father’s imperatives. We can only be as passive in our receiving of our sanctifying transformation as Peter, James, and John could only be passive in their observation of our Lord’s transfiguration. (Indeed, the same Greek verb in the same passive voice (μεταμορφόω) that in its present tense translates to “be transformed” (μεταμορφοῦσθε) in Romans 12:2 was in its aorist tense translated into “was transfigured” (μετεμορφώθη) in Matthew 17:2.

If we would have a college of our association be “of the Church,” we must necessarily follow the example of the fellowship of believers formed on the first Pentecost: And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And all who believed were together and had all things in common.

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And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. (Acts 2:42, 44-47).

In what ways does life at Luther College match this description from the book of Acts? In what ways does it not? Does the economics major?

The rest of the Luther curriculum? The pedagogy in our classrooms? How are the ways we engage the values of the world consistent with God’s imperatives for His Church? How are they inconsistent?20 As a believer in Christ as Word incarnate, I have deep concerns with the path Luther College has traveled during my years as a faculty member, concerns that have deepened with every improvement in my understanding of the principle of sola scriptura. I fear that as an institution we follow a path profoundly at odds with the teachings of Scripture, a path deeply antagonistic toward the epistemology of sola scriptura, and a path ever-deepening in rebellion against Christ’s teachings as head of his Church. Indeed, we may have strayed perilously close to the path followed by the churches in Sardis and Laodicea (Revelation 3:1-6,14-22), and perilously far from the narrow way (Matthew 7:14) dictated for believers.

I fear that in our desire for serving and filling the needs of the world, we have forgotten the impossibility of serving two masters (Luke 16:12-13; Matthew 6:24). I fear that in our ecumenism and our desire to dialogue, we have forgotten the imperatives of the Great Commandment, Romans 12, and the Great Commission.

Still, Luther College is not yet either the “dead” church of Sardis to which Jesus promised to come against “like a thief ” (Revelation 3:1,3) or the “lukewarm” church of Laodicea whom he promised to “spit … out of my mouth” (3:16).

We still may have sufficient ears to “hear what the Spirit says to the

churches” (2:7,11,17,29; 3:6,13,22).

There is still a need for workers in the Great Commission in Decorah, in Winneshiek County, in Iowa, and in the United States, and there is no reason that the believers at Luther cannot help fulfill that commission.

Moreover, there is no Scriptural requirement that Luther College must remain a college of the Church. Save for institutional tradition, no curricular or pedagogic need of higher education requires Luther College to constitute itself according to a Biblical worldview any more than they require our faculty and students all be Christians. There is no worldly requirement that any college, named by historical accident or not after a giant of the Reformation, continue to define itself in terms of what it does for those who consider themselves members of the body of Christ. Even though I believe the Biblical imperative of sola scriptura is an imperative for any college that would profess to be of the Church, there is no imperative that this college profess to be such a college.

And beyond…

For me, alas, my faith in the cross, submission to sola scriptura, and commitment to sanctification means I must give up my position as a tenured teacher and so I have accepted the “voluntary separation” offer Luther College made to senior faculty in August. I must follow a different path for the rest of my life than the one we have traveled together for over twenty years.

Be clear, however, that I am not calling for any other believer to leave. While I believe that all believers need to be submit to God’s will, I have no basis to claim knowledge of anyone else’s commission. While I know that my path is leading away from 700 College Drive, I do not yet know where the Great Commission is leading me. If I don’t know my own destination, how can I prescribe anyone else’s? That level of hubris on my part would only repeat the judging errors (Matthew 7:1) that led me to where I am.

I do not yet know where my path on the other side of the “narrow gate”

(Matthew 7:13-14) will take me.

Yes, my fears about the insufficiency of Luther’s Christ-centeredness and the excess of its world-centeredness contributed to my decision to separate come May. But they were a small contributor. In the end, my decision to move on had very little to do with what the College has been doing in recent years, and everything to do with what I have been doing. I need to leave not because of what the college has become, but because of what my own mirror has shown me becoming. My need to leave arises not from how the College is at odds with God’s will, but from how much and how often I have been at odds with His will. My moving on has nothing to do with what God wants of Luther College and everything to do with God wants of me.

I must leave Luther because I must leave full-time teaching of economics, and I must leave full-time teaching of economics because my surrender to sola scriptura has made it ever more clear that among the Biblical imperatives I would disobey by staying is the one given to the rich young man: Jesus said to him, “if you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” (Matthew 19:21) My wealth is not in money, but it is no less conformed to the values of the world than that of he who “went away sorrowful (19:22). All the degrees and letters on my business card, all that human capital I have accumulated by collecting and reading thousands of books not counted among His Word, all that knowledge to which I have clung in my book projects, in the skills I have claimed and taught, and in my pontifications before fellow scribes and Pharisees, all of these have been pride and idolatry and have kept me a camel unable to thread the eye of a needle (19:24).

Just as some addicts to Internet porn might have to get rid of his computer to remove him from temptation, I must remove the right eye (Matthew 5:29) and right hand (5:30) of my life at Luther College because I

cannot resist the self-idolatries of epistemological stubbornness and intellectual pretension. I’ve graded tens of thousands of papers, but that means only that seeing and pointing out the twigs of error committed by colleagues and students has become too easy even as my ability to perceive the logs of my own has atrophied (Matthew 7:4-5).

333 Whatever authority any believer grants to Scripture must be an act of faith shaped by the acknowledgment of the perfection of God, gratitude for the sacrifice of Christ, and awareness of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. A fallible and depraved being has neither the skills nor the ability to develop the skills to “prove” the perfection of the Triune God’s authority; I can only take a stance of faith via Scripture whereby I strive to follow His perfection.21 In the end, my own example has relevance only as an illustration of how profound and how life-changing will be the acceptance of Scripture and God as absolute authority. If a believer is to use sola scriptura to identify and surrender to divine imperatives, it will mean resisting temptations to “balance” Biblical and worldly needs in every way, shape, manner, and form. Sola scriptura will demand complete unbalance.

My story as a redeemed believer offers none of the drama of Luther’s or Calvin’s, much less that of the heroes of Hebrews 11 or Fox’s Book of Martyrs.

I am but an ordinary, stubborn man of flesh and addict to the world that God in His amazing grace decided to save anyway. Though I can point to no roadto-Damascus experience, the Father, Son, and Spirit have “born me again.”

Despite spending almost every week of my entire life struggling to be a regular attendee on Sunday morning, despite a degree of non-attendance in the pews that makes clear that my flesh has joined the conspiracy of the world and the devil far more than I have ever resisted their blandishments to stay home, I find myself at 59 considering the pastorate and other personal alternatives for the Great Commission.

After a lifetime devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and the life of the mind,

Scripture now provides me nearly every day with new insight into how my pride in my intelligence and my learning has kept me in rebellion against my Lord and God. Even, no especially, when I have thought myself most countercultural, most aware of the distortions of others’ worldliness, I have simply been caught in the ἔρος of me, myself, and I. Though I have always been a Gentile and never a Jew, most all of my professional career has been shaped by my Pharisaical desires. Thankfully, I am still only 59 as I find myself chasing Biblical imperatives anew each day the way I used to chase the world, with as much of my heart, mind, and soul as I can manage. Here is where I am going, and here is where I must stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen. Amen.

And Amen.

NOTES 1. Robinson’s “God is an Iron” can be found in three places. It was first published in 1979’s Time Traveler’s Strictly Cash, then as chapter two in the 1982 novel, Mindkiller, both by Tor Books, and, more recently, as the title story in the collection, God Is An Iron and Other Stories (Five Star Speculative Fiction, 2002). I do not know Robinson’s faith; based upon the above story and general memories of being a Robinson fan since I first discovered him in the early 1980s, and one out-of-original-context self-quotation, “The only kind of church I’d want to belong to is the one where no one can quite remember who the hell the prophet was or what exactly it was he did and they wouldn’t recognize him if he showed up” (https:// www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/spiderrobinson4.html), I suspect Robinson would find my quotation of his work here either amusing or annoying.

2. Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1850 (Yale UP, 2009).

3. The Book of Concord, ed. Theodore Tappert (Muhlenburg Press, 1959). Alternatively, the Book of Concord can be found online at http://bookofconcord.org/index. php.

4. Luther was not speaking from a written text. Indeed, all written versions of what he said when Dr. Eck asked him to recant were prepared ex post. Were I bringing all of my historian’s expertise to bear, I would at a minimum spend a couple very long footnotes to detail variation within various reports of the speech.

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5. Excerpt from the movie, Martin Luther (1953, Lutheran Church Productions and Luther-Film-G.M.B.H.). https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=2xQsCtpcj_E,

6. My primary hobby these days is reading and listening to sermons, the longer the better. Over the last several years I have read or listened on YouTube to hundreds of sermons by Luther, R.C. Sproul, Sr. (Presbyterian), John Macarthur (Calvinist), R. Albert Mohler (Baptist), Voddie Baucham (Baptist), Derek Thomas (Scottish Presbyterian), Jonathan Edwards (American Puritan), and the Victorian “prince of preachers,” Charles Haddon Spurgeon. A need to check on the interpretation of the πᾶσα γραφὴ Θεόπνευστος as interpreted by several of these and others, was likely the proximate reason for my beginning the study of Greek last fall.

7. Unless noted otherwise, all Biblical quotations are taken from the English Standard Version. Greek phrases are taken from Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th revised edition (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012).

8. See, also, Luke 20:27-38.

9. See, also, Deuteronomy 6:5, Mark 12:28-30, Luke 10:27-28.

10. φιλέω is used, for example, when John distinguishes it from ἀγάπη ( John 21:15-17) in the passage where Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” (Twice Jesus asks after ἀγάπη, and the third time about φιλέω. All three times, Peter’s reply uses φιλέω. Στοργή is usually used when the writer wants to highlight its absence, as in Romans 1:31 (ἀστόργouς, translated as “heartless”) when he’s explaining what inspires God’s wrath.

11. I will never be confused with a theological liberal. However, while I wish many liberals, postmodern and otherwise, would spend more time thumping their Bibles in accordance with sola scriptura and less time with their social science books, the über-megachurches and television ministries ( Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn, the Word-Faith movement, et al.) are far worse. The latter folk, at the same time as they are being profoundly and scarily anti-Biblical in their “What the God of love can do for you” teaching, are treated within the public conversation, by followers and opponents alike, as the quintessential examples of a Biblical world view.

12. It also explains why those whose political philosophy descend more from Thomas Hobbes, whose Leviathan never really bought the distinction between selfishness and self-interestedness, are more likely to see a need for government intervention in market, than we whose philosophy descends more from Adam Smith (whose Theory of Moral Sentiments did).

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13. The Mother Theresa example can be found in many economics textbooks, including most of the editions of the text used in every Economics 130 section I have taught at Luther since 1997, Paul Heyne’s The Economic Way of Thinking (Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey). Tenth and later editions following Heyne’s death in 2000 have been co-authored by Peter Boettke and David Prychitko.

14. See, http://www.biblicalresearchreports.com/list-commands-new-testament/ ; http://www.elshaddaiministries.us/handouts/New_Testament_connected_with_ Old_Testament_scriptures.pdf ; and https:// www.cai.org/bible-studies/1050-new-testament-commands.

15. Sinclair Ferguson, “The Spirit of Holiness,” sermon given at Ligonier Ministries, 2001 National Conference, Holiness, March 17-19, 2001, Orlando, Florida. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Ipg6sF9Idh8.

16. John Henry Newman, The Idea of the University (1858), Charles William Eliot, “The New Education” (Atlantic Monthly, 1868), and Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Higher Learning in America (Yale University Press, 1936).

17. “Change compression” is the metaphor my management colleague, Tim Schweizer, coined to describe the fast and accelerating process of change that defines the Globalization 3.0 world that we live in.

“Globalization 3.0” and “flat world,” are of course terms coined by the economist and regular New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman. See, e.g., his The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005). Much of what Friedman wrote is already passé, just more evidence that Tim’s metaphor continues to be one of the most apt out there.

18. Voddie Baucham, “The World, the Flesh, and the Devil,” sermon given at Ligonier Ministries, 2014 National Conference, Overcoming the World, March 13-15, 2014, Orlando, Florida. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=Yaj7tBY2UGI. 19. Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, translated by J.I. Packer and O.R. Johnston (Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, 1957), p. 102.

20. To get a sense of the variety of ways in which colleges of the Church envision themselves, compare the following: (i) Luther’s current mission statement (http://www.luther.edu/about/mission/); (ii) what we say about being a “college of the Lutheran Church [ELCA]” (http://www. luther.edu/about/lutheran-college/), (iii) what the Concordia University System, ten colleges and universities affiliated with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS),

says about its purpose and mission (http:// www.cus.edu); (iv) the mission statement of one university in the Concordia System, Concordia University-St. Paul; (v) the original mission statement of Harvard College’s 1636 founding statement when it was a college of the church (quoted at http://www.albertmohler.com/2006/02/22/ harvard-universitys-founding-vision-andmission-a-timely-reminder/), (vi) Harvard College’s mission statement today when it is not (https://college.harvard.edu/about/ mission-and-vision; (vii) the mission statement of Master’s University and Seminary (http://www.masters.edu/about; and (viii) the homepage of Boyce College (http:// www.boycecollege.com).

21. Indeed, as Luther and Calvin both argued, our fallenness as the children of Adam means that we cannot even take our stance of faith without the intervention of divine grace.

Find the current issue and back issues of Agora online

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ou can read the current issue of Agora online and you can also find and search all back issues by first going to our webpage: search “Agora” on the Luther College homepage. The current issue can be viewed right on that page. For back issues, click on the link that takes you to the webpage titled “Luther College Publications Archive.” Enter and then “select publication,” to search either Agora or The College Chips—the complete files of both Agora and the campus newspaper are available. You can search using names, words or phrases, and dates. You can read online or download as a PDF.

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