50 Fun Facts About Lutheranism

Reformation Day, marking Luther's Ninety-five Theses of 1517, shares its date with which popular holiday?

Halloween and Reformation Day both fall on 31 October. Some historians argue Luther picked All Hallows' Eve on purpose to catch the attention of ordinary people, though that has never been proven.

By his own account, what frightening event on a ride in 1505 made Martin Luther vow to become a monk?

A thunderstorm, with a lightning bolt striking close by, left Luther so terrified of death that he cried out his vow. He sold his books and entered an Erfurt monastery fifteen days later.

Under which first name was Martin Luther King Jr. born, before his father renamed them both in 1934?

Born Michael King, he was five when his father, an Atlanta pastor, came home from a church congress in Berlin and renamed them both after the German reformer.

Which carol, long printed as "Luther's Cradle Song", was wrongly credited to Martin Luther?

Away in a Manger surfaced in American periodicals in the 1880s, billed as a lullaby Luther composed for his own children and still sung by German mothers.

Which German toy brand made a Martin Luther figure whose first edition of 34,000 sold out in just three days?

Playmobil's little Martin Luther went on to become the company's fastest-selling figurine.

In a famous legend, what did Martin Luther throw at the Devil for distracting him in a castle hideout?

An inkwell is the missile in the legend, set in the castle where Luther turned the New Testament from Greek into German in under three months.

Which former nun, smuggled out of her convent in a herring merchant's wagon, married Martin Luther in 1525?

Katharina von Bora escaped in 1523 with other nuns, hidden among the fish barrels. As Luther's wife she bred cattle and ran a brewery to feed the family and their student boarders.

Which holiday decoration, a long-standing custom among German Lutherans, is Luther said to have first lit with candles?

The Christmas tree, long a custom in German Lutheran homes, is tied to Luther by a legend that he first set candles on an evergreen. The Vatican did not put one up until 1982.

Which fictional Minnesota town did Garrison Keillor fill with Norwegian Lutherans on A Prairie Home Companion?

Lake Wobegon splits neatly in two: descendants of Norwegian and Swedish immigrants attend Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church, while the German families are Catholic.

Which composer became Thomaskantor in Leipzig in 1723, directing music for the city's Lutheran churches?

Johann Sebastian Bach got the post only after Georg Philipp Telemann and another composer turned it down. In his second year he wrote a cycle of cantatas, each built on one Lutheran hymn.

Martin Luther taught theology in which German town, where he reputedly nailed his Ninety-five Theses to a church door?

Wittenberg kept Luther as a professor from 1512 for the rest of his career. The original wooden door burned during the Seven Years' War, and bronze doors inscribed with his theses now hang in its place.

Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses protested the sale of what, preached across Germany by the friar Johann Tetzel?

Indulgences were sold as relief from punishment for sin. Luther objected to a saying attributed to Tetzel: once the coin rang in the coffer, the soul sprang from purgatory.

In which castle near Eisenach did Martin Luther hide for ten months from 1521, disguised as a knight?

Wartburg Castle sheltered Luther from May 1521 to March 1522 under the alias Junker Jörg. Masked horsemen posing as highway robbers had seized him on his own prince's orders.

Martin Luther refused to recant his writings before the emperor at an imperial diet held in 1521 in which German city?

Worms hosted the hearing in April 1521, where Luther said it was neither safe nor right to go against conscience. The edict that followed branded him a notorious heretic.

Which flower sits at the center of Martin Luther's personal seal, now a widely recognized symbol of Lutheranism?

A rose, white to show that faith gives joy, comfort and peace, surrounds the heart of the seal. It was designed for Luther in 1530 at the request of a Saxon prince.

Which hymn by Martin Luther, based on Psalm 46, has been called the "Battle Hymn of the Reformation"?

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God dates from around 1529, with words and melody both by Luther. The poet Heinrich Heine called it the Marseillaise of the Reformation.

Which seasonal countdown did Lutheran pastor Johann Hinrich Wichern build from a cartwheel and candles in 1839?

The Advent wreath began as an old cartwheel set with 24 small candles and four large ones, made for impatient children at Wichern's Hamburg mission school. Churches later shrank it to four or five candles.

Which canned soup is nicknamed "Lutheran binder" for its place in the hotdish recipes of Midwestern church cookbooks?

Cream of mushroom soup holds together hotdish, the one-pan casserole of starch, meat and vegetables that turns up at Minnesota family reunions and church suppers.

Besides Holy Communion, which rite does Luther's Small Catechism call a sacrament?

Baptism and Holy Communion are the two sacraments Luther names at the start of his Large Catechism. Confirmation, ordination and matrimony are kept as rites rather than sacraments.

Which German Lutheran pastor, author of The Cost of Discipleship, was hanged by the Nazis in April 1945?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged at Flossenbürg concentration camp on 9 April 1945, as the Nazi regime collapsed. He had been a founding member of the Confessing Church.

Which document, presented to the emperor by German princes in 1530, became Lutheranism's chief doctrinal statement?

The Augsburg Confession was written in both German and Latin and presented by rulers and free cities rather than by theologians. Its Latin name gives it the nickname the Augustana.

Which colleague of Martin Luther, a professor of Greek, was the main author of the Lutheran statement of faith of 1530?

Philip Melanchthon did most of the drafting, and Luther made no secret that he found the tone too gentle. The surname is a Greek rendering of his family name Schwartzerdt, black earth.

Which 1580 volume gathers Luther's catechisms and other Lutheran doctrinal standards into one collection?

The Book of Concord was published in Dresden on 25 June 1580, fifty years to the day after Lutheran princes laid their beliefs before the emperor. It holds ten documents.

Which short question is repeated throughout Luther's Small Catechism, right before each of its explanations?

Luther's refrain "What does this mean?" turns each line into a lesson. After the opening words of the Lord's Prayer, the answer is that believers may ask as dear children ask their dear father.

Which ancient statement of faith does Luther's Small Catechism split into creation, redemption and sanctification?

The Apostles' Creed is the catechism's second chief part. Luther's note on its third section says nobody can come to faith by their own reason or strength, only by the Holy Spirit's call.

Which chief part opens Luther's Small Catechism, its explanations beginning "We should fear and love God"?

The Ten Commandments open the catechism, and Luther's preface tells preachers to dwell on whichever one their own people neglect most, such as the ban on stealing among merchants.

Which doctrine, Article IV of Lutheranism's 1530 statement of faith, is said to be where the church stands or falls?

Justification by faith mattered so much to Luther that he added the word alone to Romans 3:28 in his German Bible, a word the Greek text does not have.

Luther said that mastering the distinction between which two things makes someone a true doctor of Holy Scripture?

Law and Gospel, command and promise, must be kept apart with great diligence, the Lutheran standards of 1580 insist. A 19th-century Missouri Synod president gave 39 evening lectures on the skill.

Which paired description did Martin Luther say fits every Christian at the same time, throughout this life?

Saint and sinner at the same time is how Lutherans describe a Christian: holy in God's eyes for Christ's sake, yet still sinning until death. The Latin tag is simul justus et peccator.

Which pope, a son of Lorenzo de' Medici, excommunicated Martin Luther in January 1521?

Leo X had warned Luther in 1520 with the bull Exsurge Domine, which condemned forty-one propositions drawn from his teachings. The final break came on 3 January 1521.

Which Elector of Saxony shielded Martin Luther from pope and emperor yet owned a collection of 17,443 relics?

Frederick the Wise shielded Luther less from religious conviction than from belief in a fair trial for his subjects. His relics included a thumb of St. Anne and milk from the Virgin Mary.

Which Holy Roman Emperor, also ruler of Spain, heard Luther refuse to recant in 1521 and then declared him an outlaw?

Charles V signed the edict against Luther on 25 May 1521, banning his ideas across the empire. The same emperor received the Lutheran princes' statement of faith nine years later.

Martin Luther was a friar in which religious order, named for a bishop of Hippo, before he broke with Rome?

Augustinian discipline filled the young Luther's days with fasting, pilgrimage and long hours in prayer. His later opponent Johann Tetzel was a Dominican.

Which Dutch humanist edited the Greek New Testament that Luther translated, then clashed with him over free will?

Desiderius Erasmus issued the second edition of his Greek and Latin text in 1519, and Luther worked from it. His 1524 treatise On Free Will drew Luther's fierce reply, On the Bondage of the Will.

Which New Testament letter did Martin Luther call a straw-epistle and move to the back of his 1522 translation?

James earned the insult because Luther found nothing of Christ's good news in it, though he kept it in his Bible. Years later he joked that he would one day use it to fire his stove.

What did Martin Luther do in December 1520 with the papal bull that threatened him with excommunication?

Luther burned it in public at the Elster Gate on 10 December 1520, less than a month before Rome cut him off for good.

The fundraising that provoked Luther's Ninety-five Theses was paying to rebuild which church in Rome?

St. Peter's Basilica was being rebuilt, and the archbishop overseeing the German campaign, deep in debt from collecting church offices, owed ten thousand ducats toward the work.

Which Swiss reformer met Luther at Marburg in 1529 but could not agree with him on the Lord's Supper?

Ulrich Zwingli and Luther found consensus on fourteen of fifteen points and split on the last, the Real Presence of Christ in the meal. Their host had hoped for a united Protestant front.

Which Saxon court painter, a close friend of Luther, made the portraits by which the reformer is best known?

Lucas Cranach the Elder was a witness at Luther's wedding, supplied woodcut illustrations for his German Bible and let him use his printing presses.

Despite its name, the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod was organized in 1847 at a meeting in which city?

Chicago hosted the 1847 meeting, and the long original name listed Missouri, Ohio and other states after the places its founding congregations came from.

Which Saxon-born pastor in St. Louis became the first president of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod in 1847?

C. F. W. Walther had sailed for America in 1838 with some 800 Saxon emigrants seeking freedom to practice their faith. He also founded and edited the periodical Der Lutheraner.

Which German pastor, sent to Pennsylvania in 1742, is called the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in the United States?

Henry Muhlenberg organized scattered colonial congregations into the first Lutheran church body in North America. One of his sons became the first Speaker of the US House of Representatives.

The word Protestant comes from a 1529 protest by Lutheran princes and free cities at an imperial diet in which city?

Speyer's diet voted in April 1529 to end the toleration it had granted three years earlier. The six princes and fourteen free cities who objected were the first people to be called Protestants.

In which German town was Martin Luther born in 1483 and, on a visit 62 years later, also died?

Eisleben, now officially Lutherstadt Eisleben, heard Luther's last sermon on 15 February 1546, three days before he died there. His family had moved away when he was a baby.

Which Lutheran term for Christ's presence in the Lord's Supper is often wrongly equated with consubstantiation?

Sacramental union is the Lutheran phrase, usually glossed as Christ's body and blood present in, with and under the consecrated elements. The wording was chosen to reject transubstantiation.

Mekane Yesus, a Lutheran church of millions whose name translates as "Place of Jesus", is based in which country?

Ethiopia's Mekane Yesus church took its name from its first congregation in Addis Ababa when it became a national church in 1959. It reported 12 million members in 2023.

Which Lutheran monarch, hailed by Protestants as their defender in the Thirty Years' War, was killed at Lützen in 1632?

Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden won his most notable victory at Breitenfeld in 1631 and fell a year later. Churches and foundations across Protestant Europe still carry his name.

Which composer wrote a Reformation Symphony for the 300th anniversary of Lutheranism's 1530 statement of faith?

Felix Mendelssohn hoped to have it played at Berlin's anniversary festivities in June 1830. A Paris orchestra turned it down in 1832 as too learned, and his sister Fanny chose its nickname.

Which Midwestern state names the conservative Lutheran synod that German congregations founded in 1850?

Wisconsin gives the WELS its W: the synod began in 1850 as a ministerium of several churches in and around Milwaukee.

The name Lutheran began as an insult from Johann Eck in 1519; which term did Martin Luther prefer for his movement?

Evangelical, from a Greek word for good news, was the term Luther preferred. Eck first used the label Lutheran against him during the Leipzig Debate.