Martin Luther

We're learning about the Protestant Reformation right now in my religion class, and I never knew what an interesting person Martin Luther was. According to my book he was "a bright, earthy, energetic, sincerely religious, and bigoted person of enormous complexity." He was passionately anit-semetic and apparently "delight[ed] in making fun of his opponents," calling them things like "stupid ass," and even once referred to the pope as a "maggot bag." That's hilarious. I chuckled when I read that in my book, and I don't usually like to chuckle while I'm reading--I feel it makes me appear crazy. And in response to the threat of excommunication from the Catholic Church, Luther wrote a tract entitled Against the Execrable Bull of the Antichrist. So basically he was calling the pope the anti-christ. Pretty awesome. Except the whole anti-semetic thing. "Luther once wrote that synagogues should be burned, and that Christians were guilty for not killing Jews in response to their having killed Christ." That's pretty harsh, and yes, "bigoted." That goes to show that no matter how brilliant or wise we are, we're still human, we still get stuff wrong. But that doesn't mean we can't used in incredible, revolutionary ways. Like ol' Martin.

And I don't have English today, that's why I'm here in the SUB writing in my blog rather than . . .being in English.

edit:
I was just reading through some of my previous posts and noticed that last Tuesday I also mentioned a pope being referred to as the anti-Christ. I thought that was of note--so I'm noting it. Right now. Note done.

Oh, I would also like to note that niether times was I calling the pope the anti-Christ, both times I was quoting an outside source--my Religion textbook. I just thought it was funny, not to disrespect the pope, just because . . .well, I don't think I need to explain the funniness. And I don't really feel like explaining it, because then it becomes less funny. Ok. Second note done.

 

0 comments: