[lit-ideas] Luther
- From: Andy Amago <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2007 11:34:56 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Saw the movie last night. I liked it. It was done by a Lutheran organization
so it probably was a bit prejudiced. It was also a bit sanitized (mercifully).
Even so, it brought to light how Luther kicked off a major, major religious
war. The body count number given in the movie is 50,000 to 100,000 dead at one
point early into the reformation, which needs to be seen in the context of the
overall population of the early 1500's. Most importantly, what shines through
in the movie is how utterly earthly, which is to say, political, religion is.
Rome relied on indulgences for income (paraphrased, they were saying "last
chance, folks, sale ends today ", among other things). The fear of hell was
basically a control mechanism and the church in general was about power and
control. Luther was fortunate in that he had the protection of Prince
Frederick or he too would have been burned at the stake as a heretic, the way
his companion and fellow proselytizer Ulrich was on the border on his way to
Holland to promote the new religion. Luther also battles with the devil in his
mind, chastises God for creating sinners and then condemning them to hell for
eternity. In a post-Carl Sagan era, it seemed a bit quaint, but obviously not
to most people today.
In these New Middle Ages the mystery of our unimaginably vast universe is still
unknown except by a few in the scientific community. I was watching a show
(saw half of it) last night on the History Channel on comets and asteroids.
It’s thought that one-third of the water on planet Earth came from asteroids
and comets hitting the planet while it was forming. That means, they said,
that up to 30% of the water in our bodies is from extraterrestrial sources. We
are all star dust, yet we negate ourselves and each other with our religious
divisions and religious wars…
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