Myth, Mascot, Mantle
In some ways, Luther was a mantle to be assumed, not just a hero to be adored. Even among evangelicals who were suspicious of Roman Catholic “superstition” and veneration of martyrs, Luther at times enjoyed an elevated status.
In the 1870s, when Robert Richardson chronicled a series of articles written by Alexander Campbell in the 1810s attacking the uneducated and rude behavior of local youths, Richardson concluded that “Alexander had, as has been well said of Luther, an ‘inflexible’ reliance on the conclusions of his own understanding and on the energy of his own will.” Even for denominations that rejected so many of the teachings of the magisterial reformers, Martin Luther was still a symbol of individualism, encouraging evangelicals to lean on their own understandings.
Yet in this version of Luther there is embodied a host of contradictions. Ironically, the man who wrote a treatise called On The Bondage of the Will (1525) inspired many evangelicals to look to the power of the will. He was a kind of Protestant saint for people who rejected sainthood. Luther was, in some sense, an American evangelical mascot, a German priest similar enough to American evangelicals to allow them to fashion themselves into his image and yet distant enough to be molded comfortably into theirs. Luther was also a hero in the more formalist denominations. In the late 19th century, Reformed Episcopalians hailed George David Cummins as “our Luther.”
In the early 20th century, when scholarly interest in Jonathan Edwards was at a low ebb, a so-called Luther renaissance was taking place, as German and some American universities “were determined to deepen the liberal notion of Luther as merely a pioneer of intellectual liberty.” Even among liberal theologians, Luther was useful for the life of the mind. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, another Luther renaissance occurred, but from conservative evangelicals in the “Young, Restless, and Reformed” movement who sought to recover the Reformed theology of their spiritual forebears.
After 300 years of American evangelicalism, Martin Luther offers to each generation an inspiring example of theological conviction and the potential for religious and spiritual change, as well as a somewhat misleading mirror by which evangelicals can see the very best of themselves.