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To: boatbums

How about a helpful site that actually quotes Luther’s words:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Luther_on_Jews.html

...First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom...

...Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies...

...we must drive them out like mad dogs, so that we do not become partakers of their abominable blasphemy and all their other vices and thus merit God’s wrath and be damned with them. I have done my duty. Now let everyone see to his. I am exonerated...


124 posted on 12/08/2012 4:56:04 PM PST by jjotto ("Ya could look it up!")
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To: jjotto
Thank you for that site. It had a very good introduction that I think should be displayed:

    At the beginning of his career, Luther was apparently sympathetic to Jewish resistance to the Catholic Church. He wrote, early in his career:

    The Jews are blood-relations of our Lord; if it were proper to boast of flesh and blood, the Jews belong more to Christ than we. I beg, therefore, my dear Papist, if you become tired of abusing me as a heretic, that you begin to revile me as a Jew.

    But Luther expected them to convert to his purified Christianity. When they did not, he turned violently against Jews.

    It is impossible for modern people to read the horrible passages below and not to think of the burning of synagogues in November 1938 on Kristallnacht. Nor would one wish to excuse Luther for this text.

    A number of points must, however, be made. The most important concerns the language used. Luther used violent and vulgar language throughout his career....We do not expect religious figures to use this sort of language in the modern world, but it was not uncommon in the early 16th century. Second, although Luther's comments seem to be proto-Nazi, they are better seen as part of tradition of Medieval Christian anti-Semitism. While there is little doubt that Christian anti-Semitism laid the social and cultural basis for modern anti-Semitism, modern anti-Semitism does differ in being based on pseudo-scientific notions of race. The Nazis imprisoned and killed Jews who had converted to Christianity: Luther would have welcomed them.

    None of this justifies what follows, but it may help to comprehend what is happening. In 1994, the Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America rejected Luther's anti-Semitic writings.

Luther was not a perfect man - none of us are. He was not anti-Jew even with some of the shocking things he said. I think anyone who takes Luther's writings as a whole, will understand the context of his statements. The site I gave has a link to ALL of Martin Luther's writings if anyone is interested in reading them. And let me say again, nobody follows Martin Luther, the man, and we reject his sentiments that are anti-Semitic. It is Jesus Christ who is our savior and good shepherd, and HE is the head of the church. No fallible, sinful human can take his place.

125 posted on 12/08/2012 9:14:33 PM PST by boatbums (God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to Him.)
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