Religion: Back to Luther!

Every summer U. S. Lutherans hold a “Luther Day” picked arbitrarily so that Lutherans may enjoy it in the mountains or at the seashore. Last week came a Luther Day which was notable because it preluded bigger celebrations, to be held Nov. 10 on the 450th anniversary of Martin Luther’s birth. Eastern Lutherans, gathered at Ocean Grove, a strict Methodist colony on the New Jersey coast, had the most eminent speaker—Dr. Walter Arthur Maier, editor of the Walther League Messenger (for the young), professor at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.

Cried Dr. Maier: “Without Luther there could have been no Washington. . . . While [Lincoln] dealt with bodies in bondage and minds coerced by mental slavery, Luther threw off the shackles of that damnable spiritual tyranny that pressed human souls of all colors and races into the strait jacket of abject terror that cringes before the distressing spectres of an outraged conscience and shudders before the thought of God and eternity. . . . All Protestantism, yea, Roman Catholicism itself, as its eminent scholars have admitted, not only owes him an everlasting debt of gratitude but also needs the restatement of many of his principles. … If, as the world pauses to celebrate his birth four and a half centuries ago, it would rear a shaft of reverent devotion to his living memory, although that monument might be built from flawless granite, faced with stainless alabaster, edged with the rarest of marbles and raised to the loftiest heights to which human skill can ever ascend, this monument would be incomplete unless, in recognition of Luther’s present day significance, there were emblazoned on its side in letters of imperishable gold, the challenge of this birthday anniversary, ‘BACK TO LUTHER!’

“Surveying the rampage of crime, the increase of atheism, the stolid indifference toward the stern requirements of purity and chastity, we insist ‘BACK TO LUTHER.’ And if this challenge means wide and repeated protests against the bribery and corruption of officials in the various departments of American administrative government; if it involves organized protests against the levities and discrimination of American courts, stick-to-the-finish campaigns against the debasing and enervating influences of commercial amusements as they are controlled by greedy, soul-less men, may God give us the courage and insistence to declare with undeniable finality, ‘BACK TO LUTHER.’

“. . . Picture the cancerous growth of modern infidelity as ego-complexed pulpiteers, disguising the breed of the wolf beneath silk cassocks and lacy chasubles, masquerade in imposing processions within high vaulted Gothic cathedrals, built with the superfluous millions of American plutocrats. . . . Think of the brilliant agnostics who read from the Scriptures with crossed thumbs, tongues in the cheek, and mental reservations, who place the Bible on the one level with heathen philosophies. . . . Think of the smooth, oily surrender of the deity of our Savior … I still repeat the cry, ‘BACK TO LUTHER.’ “