Martin Luther (November 1483 – February 1546) was a German professor of theology, priest, monk and a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation. Luther came to reject many of the teachings and practices of the Medieval Catholic Church. Many evangelicals today see him as a great Spirit-filled Christian and sure guide to the gospel truth. 

However he had a dark side. Wikipedia comments:

Luther denounced the Jewish people and urged for their harsh persecution and destruction. In a paragraph from his On the Jews and Their Lies he deplores Christendom’s failure to expel them.^[1] Moreover, he proposed “What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews”:^[1]

• “First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools … This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians …”
• “Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed.”
• “Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them.”
• “Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb …”
• “Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside …”
• “Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them …”
• “Seventh, I recommend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow … But if we are afraid that they might harm us or our wives, children, servants, cattle, etc., … then let us emulate the common sense of other nations such as France, Spain, Bohemia, etc., … then eject them forever from the country …”

On the Jews and Their Lies

In 1543 Luther published On the Jews and Their Lies in which he says that the Jews are a “base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth.”^[13] They are full of the “devil’s faeces … which they wallow in like swine.”^[14] The synagogue was a “defiled bride, yes, an incorrigible whore and an evil slut …”^[15] He argues that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or kindness,^[16] afforded no legal protection,^[17] and these “poisonous envenomed worms” should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time.^[18] He also seems to advocate their murder, writing “[w]e are at fault in not slaying them”.^[19] Luther calls prophet Jeremiah a heretic: “Jeremiah, you wretched heretic, you seducer and false prophet”. He claims that Jewish history was “assailed by much heresy”, and that Christ the logos swept away the Jewish heresy and goes on to do so, “as it still does daily before our eyes.” He stigmatizes Jewish Prayer as being “blasphemous” (sic) and a lie, and vilifies Jews in general as being spiritually “blind” and “surely possessed by all devils.” Luther has a special spiritual problem with Jewish circumcision.^[20][21]

The prevailing view^[30] among historians is that Luther’s anti-Jewish rhetoric contributed significantly to the development of antisemitism in Germany,^[31] and in the 1930s and 1940s provided an ideal foundation for the Nazi Party‘s attacks on Jews.^[32] Reinhold Lewin writes that “whoever wrote against the Jews for whatever reason believed he had the right to justify himself by triumphantly referring to Luther.” According to Michael, just about every anti-Jewish book printed in the Third Reich contained references to and quotations from Luther. Diarmaid MacCulloch argues that Luther’s 1543 pamphlet On the Jews and Their Lies was a “blueprint” for the Kristallnacht.^[33]Shortly after the Kristallnacht, Martin Sasse, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia, published a compendium of Martin Luther‘s writings ; Sasse “applauded the burning of the synagogues” and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, “On November 10, 1938, on Luther’s birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany.” The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words “of the greatest anti-Semite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.”^[34]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemitism

Categories: Christian extremism, Judaism