Luther Is to Blame

William Ralph Inge, now 84 and ten years retired as Dean of London's St. Paul's, rarely breaks into public print nowadays. But when he does, the "Gloomy Dean" is as pungent and provocative as ever. In the Churchman last fortnight he wrote:

"If we wish to find a scapegoat on whose shoulders we may lay the miseries which Germany has brought upon the world . . . I am more and more convinced that the worst evil genius of that country is not Hitler or Bismarck or Frederick the Great, but Martin Luther. . . . Lutheranism is essentially German. ... It worships a God who is neither just nor merciful. . . . The Law of Nature, which ought to be the court of appeal against unjust authority, is identified with the existing order of society, to which absolute obedience is due. . . . We must hope that the next swing of the pendulum will put an end to Luther's influence in Germany."

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