Five hundred years after Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation, the cold creep of atheism has frozen much of Europe—but the continent’s longest-serving and most powerful Western leader still holds a candle of faith. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor for the past 12 years and likely the next four as well, has said, “I believe in God, and religion is also my constant companion, and has been for the whole of my life. We as Christians should above all not be afraid of standing up for our beliefs.” Merkel, now 63, was a preacher’s kid: Her father was a Lutheran pastor. She does not attend church regularly but calls her Lutheran faith an “inner compass” and referred to Christian humanitarian ideals as a driving force in her decision to let into Germany a million Syrian refugees: “We feel bound to the Christian image of humanity—that is what defines us.” Merkel didn’t lead the charge to legalize abortion and same-sex marriage in Germany, but she ultimately chose not to fight on those issues. Her reluctant accommodation to political pressures suggests that although Lutheranism still has some influence on her thinking, it isn’t always decisive.

Theological shifts inevitably impact the temporal. Luther’s stance for a direct, Biblical understanding of the gospel influenced education and government in Germany, driving it into the modern age. His translation of the Bible into everyday German was transformative: A vast region of loosely connected principalities and city-states became linguistically unified, and the idea of a German state came into being. To this day Germans refer to the “Luthertext”—his translation—with the respect anglophones use for Shakespeare’s plays and the King James Version Bible. As the innovation of the printing press made the Luthertext available to ordinary citizens, desire for literacy increased.

Education became more accessible and widespread in the century after 1517, and the literacy rate in Germanic lands quadrupled. Meanwhile Luther’s theological teaching on the priesthood of all believers introduced a new, intrinsically egalitarian concept. The notion of equality before God’s law was a premise for equality before man’s law—an idea that fully worked itself out into society centuries later. Literacy and equality by themselves don’t make a democracy, but a democracy cannot be made or maintained without them: As Thomas Jefferson said, “The cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate.” For centuries, faith was the engine that drove German culture, politics, and art.

So what happened to Germany? Roughly 150 years after Luther posted the 95 Theses, pietism became the dominant force in the German Lutheran church. Because of its emphasis on personal transformation and individual devotion, some called it the logical continuation of the Reformation movement. Later, however, pietism emphasized a faith so internalized and individualistic it became possible to detach faith from daily life, and tangible care for neighbors became much less important. In the mid-1800s, Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck could be known as a devout pietist while at the same time espousing social Darwinism and plunging Europe into wars for German unification and dominance.  Continue reading…