Augsburg Confession

Reverent gayety at Augsburg, Bavarian city on the River Lech, last week celebrated the 400th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession. Martin Luther, who all his adult life suffered with nervous headaches and sometimes with hallucinations, in 1517 posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg. They were an effective protest against "abuses" of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther as a heretic. Emperor Charles V outlawed him. Had he been arrested and convicted for his heresies, he would have been burned at the stake. German princelings, many of their subjects and a few university scholars protested with Luther. There was division in the State as well as in the Church. To seek political and religious peace within his empire and cohesion against the Turks who were threatening him from Hungary, Charles V called the disputants to Augsburg.

Martin Luther, John Bugenhagen, Justus Jonas, Philip Melanchthon ("most learned man in Germany") collaborated on the brief of their case. Melanchthon wrote it out.

The afternoon of June 25, 1530 the document was read to Charles V as he sat with his court in the small palace chapel at Augsburg. Luther, discreet under the imminence of burning, remained away.

The Confession, a comparatively short document, would just fill nine pages of TIME. In 21 chapters it presented Protestant doctrines derived directly from Scriptures. In seven more articles the Confessors pointed out what Lutherans call "the dreadful abuses, the man-made doctrines, and the antichristian priest rule which through so many centuries had poisoned the Christian Church."

After three months deliberation Charles V made a momentous decision. He denounced Protestantism as a sect. He gave adherents six months to recant or be exterminated. Then he rode out of Augsburg, silent and gloomy, only 30 years old.

Not many of the Protestants did recant. June 25, 1530 gave them a creed. The creed was the real foundation of the Lutheran Church, first of the Protestant denominations to assume cohesion and form. Adherents have spread during the 400 years to every country--82,000,000 in the world, 16,000,000 in North America. Of the 44,382,189 members of the 212 religious sects in the U. S. in 1926, Lutherans formed the fifth largest body,* thus:

Roman Catholic 13,306,800

Baptist 7,859,626

Methodist 7,237,449

Jewish 2,930,332

Lutheran 2,826,658

Presbyterian 2,482,498

Episcopalian 1,366,262

Disciples 1,275,617

Congregational 859,901

Reformed 577,427

Minor Bodies (aggregate) 3,659,619

* Reported by Charles Luther Fry, in The U. S. Looks at its Churches, recently published by the Institute of Social & Religious Research ($2.50).

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