Humor and History: Engaging with Luther

This is the only protest where you get to drink in a church 500 years later.

That's right, this is the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and to celebrate, we're live from Cary, North Carolina at Christ the King Lutheran Church with Pastors Daniel Pugh and Wolfgang Herz-Lane. They talk about why, 500 years later, they decide to continue the protest and be on team Luther, the significance of the real presence in the Eucharist, how to deal with negative attention for being active in social and racial justice, and the timelessness of the gospel.

Then, Glen Jonas and Adam English, professors of church history and theology at Campbell University (they were also Tripp's professors in undergrad) are up to get nerdy and play some theological games. Tripp first pretends that he's a 19 year old in an intro to Christianity course, then he gives both Dr. Jonas and Dr. English 5 propositions in the nerdiest language he can muster, forcing one to defend and the other to argue against (dedicated listeners will recognize this as au contraire mon frère), and finally Dr. Jonas and Dr. English give us they questions they think we should be losing sleep over:

• why should I read Luther when he was an anti-Semite?
• what's the big deal with all this sinner and grace stuff?
• was the printing press really responsible for the success of the Reformation?
• did the Reformation set in motion secularization?
• what is the future of Protestant Christianity?
• would Luther think Tripp is too much like Erasmus?

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