“Here I stand!” Martin Luther risked his life to defy a church establishment that wanted no challenge to papal authority. Five centuries later, Republicans in Congress abandoned all principle to bolster their own party establishment and their personal interests. Voting for the tax bill in December, Senator Bob Corker and his colleagues followed the advice of Luther’s contemporary, Niccolò Machiavelli, to a Prince: remember that the end justifies the means. A Prince should avoid dreams of justice, mercy, and temperance and instead use tools of violence, deception, and fear to maximize his power.
Initially Luther sought to save the Catholic church—not destroy it. Starting with his Ninety-five Theses in 1517 in Wittenberg, the young monk (age 24) warned that the papacy was abandoning God’s word in Holy Scripture by selling indulgences to finance the art and architecture of Rome. Indulgences, boasted the preacher-salesman Johannes,Tetzel, opened the gates of heaven for the deceased (with half the loot secretly pledged to the local archbishop).
Contrary to Luther’s expectations, recently invented printing presses quickly spread his writings–mostly in Latin–in German and other vernaculars. A reformation if not a revolution was brewing. Summoned to Augsburg in 1518, a twelve-day hike from Wittenberg, the road- weary monk met there the pope’s representative, Cardinal Cajetan, who demanded that Luther recant. The monk agreed–provided someone…