Word: luthers
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Even after the break with Rome, church historians agree, Luther wanted only to reform the one true church-and not to found a new Lutheran de nomination. With that in mind, many contemporary theologians agree that he could hardly fail to be displeased by much of the present condition of the churches...
...object of Luther's wrath might well be the bureaucratization of the churches. Although one target of the Reformation was the overweening power of the Roman Curia, hardly a U.S. church exists without a frightening quota of red tape and organizational concern. "The Law of Moses may have been abrogated," glooms Yale Historian Pelikan, "but not Parkinson's." Bureaucratic business goes hand in hand with clerical direction of the churches. "It is one of the great ironies of history," says Dean F. Thomas Trotter of California's Claremont School of Theology, "that whereas Protestantism began...
Brownie Points. An even graver charge is that in much of Protestantism -including many of the churches that bear Luther's name-his central insight into the primacy of faith has been lost in a bog of building campaigns, service agencies, relief programs and other church-instigated "good works." American Christianity, charges Lutheran Theologian Martin Marty, has fallen back on precisely the kind of spiritual error that the Reformation was designed to combat. The typical parishioner, adds Marty's colleague at the University of Chicago, Theologian Brian Gerrish, feels that he has "done something that puts...
While the time may have arrived for another Luther, few Christian leaders expect one. For one thing, many Protestant thinkers are convinced that denominationalism is an obsolescent evil-the answer to Christian failings is not a revolt that creates still another new church. For another, a Christian distraught at the situation of the churches no longer needs to create a new spiritual community. Says Father Dino Bellucci of Rome's Gregorian University: "Today, it is possible for a man to leave the organized church and try to remain a Christian outside organized Christianity"-the path chosen by English Theologian...
...Luther would almost certainly be as much of an unpredictable surprise to Christianity as the original was. There are Protestants as well as Catholics who believe that a modern reformer has already appeared, in the person of Pope John XXIII. "If we think functionally of someone who opened up the church to reform," contends Claremont's Dean Trotter, "the closest to Martin Luther has been Pope John." Catholic Philosopher Michael Novak of Stanford suggests that Luther's spirit of reform is most likely to be embodied, if at all, by someone totally outside Christianity. "The Luthers today...