From the Continent: Needed: A Crusade

Although Germany is the cradle of the Reformation, Catholics now outnumber members of the German Evangelical Church (EKD) in West Germany. This is due less to different birthrates than to a substantial leakage: Evangelicals are leaving their church in droves not so much from lack of faith but for political reasons. Some are flocking to conservative Protestant churches, which are known in Germany as “free churches.”

To understand today’s crisis one must look back to Martin Luther’s “conservative revolution.” After his visit to Rome (1510-11), Luther became convinced that, under the papacy, Christianity had become pagan. Contrary to the muddled view many have of him today, Luther was a man of law and order; he preached absolute obedience to state authority and had little respect for the common man; he did not believe in private interpretation of the faith. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment turned what the Reformers had set out to preach on its head.

EK

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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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Although Germany is the cradle of the Reformation, Catholics now outnumber members of the German Evangelical Church (EKD) in West Germany. This is due less to different birthrates than to a substantial leakage: Evangelicals are leaving their church in droves not so much from lack of faith but for political reasons. Some are flocking to conservative Protestant churches, which are known in Germany as “free churches.”

To understand today’s crisis one must look back to Martin Luther’s “conservative revolution.” After his visit to Rome (1510-11), Luther became convinced that, under the papacy, Christianity had become pagan. Contrary to the muddled view many have of him today, Luther was a man of law and order; he preached absolute obedience to state authority and had little respect for the common man; he did not believe in private interpretation of the faith. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment turned what the Reformers had set out to preach on its head.