Welcome back to Lent Madness! We trust everyone survived early onset Lent Madness Withdrawal (LMW) over the weekend and is ready for another full week of voting. Thanks to Lent Madness more people than ever before now look forward to both Lent and Mondays. A Monday in Lent? Pure Nirvana.
In one of the most diabolical match-ups in the history of Lent Madness, we pit two heavyweights up against one another: Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, Jr. This ranks up there with last year's Great Oedipal Battle between St. Augustine and his mother Monnica (which mom won). If you're looking to blame someone for this, why not focus your attention on MLK's parents rather than on the SEC? We wouldn't have this problem if they'd named him Bob King or Gregory of Nyssa King.
You'll be glad to know that PBS evidently foresaw this match-up and posted a quiz titled "Who Said What?" Quotes are presented and participants then guess which one said it -- Martin Luther or Martin Luther King. Test your knowledge!
And finally, it's worth noting that at this point we are precisely halfway through the first round of Lent Madness. Four match-ups for the Round of the Saintly Sixteen have already been decided: Jonathan Daniels vs. Janani Luwum; Oscar Romero vs. Lucy; Ignatius of Antioch vs. Hilda of Whitby; and Luke vs. John Donne. Yowza!
Martin Luther
“In any century in which he was born, Luther would have guaranteed a richly memorable night out, whether hilariously entertaining or infuriatingly quarrelsome.” – Diarmaid MacCulloch
Martin Luther (1483-1546) didn’t need to worry about his career since his father had already decided it would be practicing law. But when he feared he might die in a severe thunderstorm, Luther the law student vowed to become Luther the monk. He entered Erfurt’s Augustinian monastery in 1505 and was ordained a priest in 1507.
Luther’s visit to Rome wasn’t the spiritual highlight he expected. He ascended the Santa Scala on his knees, saying the Lord’s Prayer on each step to release his grandfather from purgatory. Afterwards, he asked himself, “Who knows if it is really true?”
He began to question whether these things could indeed bring him closer to God. He started going to confession frequently (and anxiously). He tried to be the perfect monk, yet his conscience remained troubled. Finally, Luther was sent to the Augustinian monastery in Wittenberg in 1511 and earned his doctorate in 1512. At the newly established University of Wittenberg, he began to teach the Bible, going beyond the official Latin texts to study the Hebrew and Greek texts. Several years later he came to understand the “righteousness of God” in the Letter to the Romans to refer to a gift of God’s grace rather than a humanly impossible demand.
Pope Leo X issued an indulgence to shorten time in purgatory for faithful Catholics and, more practically, to finance an unfinished building project –- St. Peter's Basilica. Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar, was the salesman for these indulgences in Germany. Luther’s anger at Tetzel’s theology and business practices led to his nailing of 95 theses on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg on the eve of All Saints' Day, October 31, 1517 (or at the very least he sent a copy of them to his bishop – yes, there is a nailing vs. “mailing” only dispute). Here’s number 27: “They preach only human doctrines who say that as soon as the money clinks into the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory.” Words such as these made Luther into a bestselling author thanks to the newly invented Gutenberg printing press.
Several months after he was excommunicated in 1521, Luther appeared at the Diet of Worms before the Holy Roman Emperor. Luther refused to recant his writings. He was “abducted” on his return home and hidden in a remote castle, the Wartburg, for his own protection. Alone, he sank into a depression but began his greatest project – a translation of the Bible into the German language. The rest, as they say, is history (i.e., The Protestant Reformation).
Collect for Martin Luther
O God, our refuge and our strength: You raised up your servant Martin Luther to reform and renew your Church in the light of your word. Defend and purify the Church in our own day and grant that, through faith, we may boldly proclaim the riches of your grace which you have made known in Jesus Christ our Savior, who with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was, to quote the man who presented him with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, “the first person in the Western world to have shown us that a struggle can be waged without violence.”
Born Michael King, Jr., on January 15, 1929, his father, a Baptist minister, changed both their names to Martin Luther King in honor of the Protestant reformer.
At age 26 Martin, Jr., by then a Baptist minister himself, was chosen to lead the Montgomery (Alabama) bus boycott after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. King’s strategy for this and all of his continuing efforts in the struggle for civil rights for blacks in the segregated South was to meld the precepts of non-violent resistance he admired in Gandhi with the Gospel of love espoused by Jesus Christ and the tenets of the Christian social gospel of Rauschenbusch with the strategy of civil disobedience championed by Thoreau. The result was a twelve-year career leading non-violent social protest against racial inequality through boycotts, sit-ins, and marches -- which led to the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, ending legal segregation in America.
For his efforts, he was vilified from every side. White clergymen told him that Jesus had nothing to do with civil rights and ministers shouldn’t get involved in politics. The young Black Power and Black Nationalist leaders repudiated King’s dream of (and struggle for) a non-segregated, non-violent world and obedience to Jesus' command to love his enemies. A black woman stabbed him with a letter opener at a Harlem book signing, and a white man shot him in Memphis. His house was bombed, and he was arrested thirty times -- the first time for driving five miles-per-hour over the speed limit. The FBI wiretapped his phones.
But he also inspired young blacks to occupy a segregated lunch counter and endure without retaliation white patrons putting out cigarettes on their necks, black citizens of all ages to walk everywhere for 381 days to protest segregated busses, and a white President Johnson to call out the brutality of the white response to Civil Rights efforts and push through the legislation that would end segregation.
And he did it all for the love of Jesus Christ and for the love of neighbor.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated on April 4, 1968. He was 39 years old.
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181 comments on “Martin Luther vs. Martin Luther King, Jr.”
My mother died suddenly only hours after the Rev. Dr. King was assassinated. I like to imagine them talking together on the Heavenly Transport. A Caucasian couple living in the southern U.S. in the days of segregation, my parents taught us to "respect the dignity of every human being" years before the phrase was written into the rite of Holy Baptism in the 1079 BCP. I think that Mother and Dr. King must have had a rich discussion and enjoyed each other's company.
I expect MLK to win; I voted for ML because of the insult generator :0 http://ergofabulous.org/luther/
This was very, very hard. Luther is responsible for a good deal of who I am as a Christian, but MLK is the person who forced me to take Christianity seriously in the first place. The "I Have a Dream" speech was a transformative moment for me. So MLK gets the vote.
Segregated "busses" made me laugh out loud. I realize that his passion for equality included the equality in all relationships, but perhaps segregated "buses" would be more appropriate to note in terms of his inspiration for black citizens walking everywhere for 361 days. Innocent typo, of course.
I voted for MLK, even though I spent yesterday morning teaching about the Protestant Reformation in Inquirers' Class, focusing much of the conversation around Martin Luther. Good stuff!
As a Star Trek fan, I know some stations in the South believed in segregated busses, too.
Either spelling for the plural of bus is correct: buses or busses.
I'm afraid I've always been a sucker for secondary spellings.
I voted for Martin Luther King because he presented to the world the stark evil of denying others human rights.
Martin Luther is an historical mistake. The reforms were needed and necessary but Protestantism has become a very big error in Christian life. Once a body begins to split there is no stopping further fracture. Had Luther sought to keep the Church, the Body of Christ, together the Church would likely be stronger today. Of course, the papal response to Luther did not help. However, some sort of method short of schism and ultimate bloody war could have been found. Luther remains the base case of the problem and does not deserve sainthood in the context of selecting people for special Christian recognition.
I think you are sadly mistaken, but God loves you and so do I.
Luther did not want to start another church--he wanted a discussion and reform within The Church. Unfortunately, that's not what the hierarchy wanted.
Another way to look at the "fracture" though: cell division. A body cannot grow if cells do not divide and multiply.
Agreed, Teri. People within the church had been attempting necessary reforms and corrections for literally hundreds of years before Luther, with little progress. God's Blunt Instrument was the church's reward for refusing to self-correct. And blunt he was...always know where you stand with ML...and where he stands.
It is too bad some of ML's more regrettable (understatement) heated statements are swaying people away from his corner. His fury at the peasants was because they were behaving violently and he felt they needed to be stopped. Both ML and MLK had government princes on side with military support for keeping order at times in their respective campaigns for reform.
Yes and that government support was so very effective in MLKing's case wasn't it. It was all those guards at the Lorraine that kept him from being killed.
MLK was faced with strong opposition from both sides in his final years...he clearly knew that his life was in danger but preached peace with strength and non violence with courage...I am too deeply marked by the memories of his witness during his last ten years to abandon him now.
Had to go with Martin Luther as we just 'did' him in our year 3 EFM lesson last week. Anyone surviving the 'Diet of Worms' has to be vote worthy.
All plays on words aside, Luther was lucky to be whisked away and have the charges against him 'forgotten'. Others were not so Lucky.
I'm surprised not to see a link above to 'The Ninety-Five Lent Madness Theses – Why vote for Luther?'
http://2pennyblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/23/the-ninety-five-lent-madness-theses-why-vote-for-luther/
This matchup has the potential to be a "bracker-buster" for those trying to plot the course to the "Golden Halo. My vote today has to go with Dr. King. Both men in today's matchup performed great works for humanity while at the same time having serious flaws in their personal lives. However I am deeply drawn to Dr. King's overall message of inclusion and that put him over the top in my book.
(I did vote for Dr. King, it turns out, although I really do admire Luther, and very much appreciate his taking on the hypocrisy of the church hierarchy of his day, and its manipulations and deceit. I'm very big on "Ecclesia semper reformanda est." He's top-tier in snark, too, of course....)
The Holy Fool has stated his disbelief with this matchup. However, the show must go on.
I am voting for Dr. Martin Luther King. Albeit, I am still playing this tournament under
protest. I am a contemporary of Dr. King, and studied, admired, and was in awe of his journey. "I have a dream" Dr King, and you inspired it.
No struggle with this one today. I've never been a fan of Martin Luther in college, seminary, or now. I'm voting for MLK Jr.
It was a tough decision, but I decided to go for MLK, Jr., by far the snazzier dresser of the two.
MLK,Jr all the way! This Atlanta girl was alive when he was asassinated. I remember being told that whites were not to leave their nieghborhoods or we would be killed for not honoring Dr. King the day of his funeral. From that time forward I experienced the turmoils of our society making strides toward racial equality. We sure aren't there yet butI am grateful for the struggle, no matter how painful.
God's grace was there with Martin Luther to give he and his followers the hunger for Reformation. God grant that we continue with even more graceful hunger, to not sit complacent and fight for what might not be what society want's but what all God's children deserves.
This was the most difficult choice so far in Lent Madness. One could make a case for either Martin Luther going to the finals. By a hair I had to go with MLK because as a result of his contribution, life here in the present day USA was changed for the better. If I lived in another country or at another time I would have voted for ML.
I do live in another country which was not greatly affected by the work of MLK and so I voted for ML.
Both, as was said int he into are "heavy weights", Martin Luther focused our eyes on the scriptures and what they mean and MLK lived them in a non-violent way.
My vote for the non-violence of MLK paired with the message of the scriptures.
Gotta go with Martin Luther. Whether it was right or wrong, Luther made more of an impact on the future of the Universal Church than has Martin Luther King (yet). I was a part of MLK's lobby back in the 60's and know the measure of his sanctity. The theology of the 16th century doesn't cut it for today, but ML's contribution to the freeing of Christianity from the domination of Rome has helped the message of Christ to be spread.
This was indeed a hard one, but since this excercise is designed to choose "The Saintly Sixteen" I decided to vote for ML. MLK's personal life was not always saintly and his fame was mostly in the secular world. That said, I won't be upset if the untlimate choice is MLK>
This is truly one of the most difficult choices in the first round. I believe the SEC did not accurately examine the ferret’s sayings. This should have been a match-up in the Saintly 16 or Elate 8 but who am I to question the wisdom of the ferrets and the SEC.
Martin Luther did more to spread the gospel to the common man than anyone. History has judged him and has placed him on the pantheon of saints already. I grew up in Mississippi and saw the ignorance and hatred of segregation. I also saw the passion and power of non-violence from Dr. King. While both men changed the world I have to go with my contemporary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
this was a hard one! But ultimately I had to go with ML1.0, the man who brought us the scripture in the vernacular, who used the printing press to his advantage, and who began the sea change in the church's understanding of itself and its mission. Always Being Reformed!
(and, as for his anti-many-things-ways, remember that a: he is a product of his time, like many others, and b: the idea of Always Being Reformed may very well have led him to change his mind about many of those things if he had lived through different times...the Protestant church certainly has, unlike those who stuck fast to the old ways...)
Anglicanism probably doesn't happen without Luther in some sort of roundabout way. Luther's theology of Grace personally freed me from a uberly conservative baptist understanding of Salvation to a deeper sense of Christ's compassion and Grace. That being said, I'm more of a faith by works guy than I am a Grace and Scripture along guy. I also find Luther's prejudice against Jews very difficult to comprehend. Dr. M.LK. Jr's life is also more than complicated but his reformations reside more closely to my personal experience. His non-violence and the willingness of his followers to suffer extraordinary levels of hatred and pain are far different from the techniques the German Princes of Luther's day used to bring reformation into being.
MLK gets my vote. Luther was obviously of monumental importance, but his whole deal about being terrified of God and constantly anxious about his own salvation just does not resonate with me like MLK's vision of non-violence and love.
I'm a Methodist and was a denominational minority at my Lutheran undergrad college. There's now a huge statue Luther in the plaza outside of the student union. I think that would have freaked me out if it had been there when I was in school. I'd yell at him about how I liked how John Wesley's theology was a corrective on his, i.e., it's because of our faith we do works, etc., or something like that. In my two years of theological studies of grad school, in my work as a research assistant, I read through a whole stack of Martin Luther King's sermons for one of my Old Testament professors and became more acquainted with him than I had before. Even after covering the local MLK service in the town where I wrote for the local newspaper for 3 years prior to my grad school experience. It's through MLK I am more familiar with Micah 6:8 and other Old Testament minor prophets.
I'm going to have to go with Martin Luther instead of Dr. King Jr on this one only because I grew up Lutheran, and I feel like he's the underdog in a contest against Dr. King Jr. Lol
I got 95 theses but the Pope ain't one. LOVEIT!
I love them both--waarts and all but MLK had such an enormous impact on our lives here in the US that I could not desert him.. Martyrdom was his lot.
I had to go with ML on this - if we still lived under the thumb of one great universal church hierarchy, would any of MLK's actions been possible?
Certainly MLK's broad acceptance is more appealing and, I suspect, more Christian, than ML's Antisemitism, but then I followed the link to http://ergofabulous.org/luther/? and was so taken by ML's turn of phrase that I had to vote for him anyway. Not really a good reason, but sometimes one needs a single straw to break a tie!
Very difficult choice. Having listened to all of MLK,s speeches, and hope that they are taught in every school, I have to go with Martin Luther. His actions created a much need reform in the church.
The uplifting spirit of I have a dream vs the insulting words of Luther (see http://ergofabulous.org/luther/) hmm...