Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota Congressional candidate, belongs to the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, which is apparently the third-largest Lutheran group in the U.S., with over 300,000 communicants. My sense is that American Lutheranism is a relatively calm, polite religion, though perhaps that comes from hearing too much Garrison Keillor. Maybe the Wisconsin Evangelican Lutheran Synod is a departure from that — please let me know if that’s so — but I haven’t seen much evidence on that score.
Yet Luther, of course, was not calm or polite about religion, nor were the early Lutherans. And the Synod’s Statement on the Antichrist reflects this, reaffirming that “the Pope is the very Antichrist.” Not just bad or theologically wrong, mind you, but the very Antichrist.
Now on to modern political debates: FaithfulDemocrats.com has pointed out that Michele Bachmann, a Republican candidate for Congress in Minnesota, belongs to the Synod. Bachmann was asked in a televised debate whether the Synod regards the Pope as the Antichrist, and whether she agrees. Bachmann said the allegation about the Synod was “a false statement,” that her pastor agrees and “was absolutely appalled that someone would put that out,” that she loves Catholics, and that her “church does not believe that the Pope is the Antichrist.”
So what is a sensible voter, and especially a sensible Catholic voter to do? Here’s my guess, subject of course to revision if I hear more about Bachmann or about the Synod (and if I were living in her district, I’d probably have heard at least somewhat more about both). Bachmann probably does love Catholics no less than she loves fellow Lutherans. Her church probably does not believe that the Pope is the Antichrist in the sense that the majority of church members, and of church leaders, don’t really think much in Antichrist terms, especially about particular people who haven’t done anything tangibly bad (whether Popes, rabbis, or atheists).
Many church members probably aren’t even aware of the Pope-is-Antichrist teachings; perhaps they’ve heard of them at one point, but they likely haven’t thought about them in decades, and certainly haven’t really absorbed them as part of their lived sense of what the Church is about. They might well be shocked to hear that their church takes this view, though this shock might be less if they spent a little more thinking about the Lutheran-Luther connection. Lots of religions have musty articles of faith that are not actual present-days article of genuine, emotionally felt or even intellectually considered faith on the part of most of their members.
Yet Bachmann’s reaction to the question doesn’t speak that well of her — either she isn’t being candid, or her research has been quite weak. And it’s hardly irrational for Catholic voters to consider the possibility that hostility to Catholicism is indeed a live article of faith for Synod members rather than just a dead one.
My sense — again, tentative, and subject to change if one learns more about the actual current practices and attitudes of Bachmann or of the Synod — is that 500-year-old theological disagreements, even ones that a church feels obligated to stick with, shouldn’t be an important factor. Rightly or wrongly, people are pretty good at compartmentalizing their religion’s theological assertions from their day-to-day actions. Belief in the Virgin Birth doesn’t actually impair even most true believers’ abilities to be sensible, practical-minded obstetricians. Views about the Papacy and the anti-Christ, or for that matter about damnation of those who don’t believe as you do, in practice (at least among most Americans today) don’t much affect one’s behavior with regard to Catholics or non-believers.
A candidate’s lack of candor about such disagreements, even if there is lack of candor here, is a more serious matter, but probably not that serious by the standards of American political life. You’d probably be better off looking at how candid and how tolerant the candidate has actually been in the past, and how much you agree with them on substantive political issues, and ignoring theological disagreements.
Still, if I’m right about this, this is because people do separate theology from daily actions — and because modern Lutherans are indeed very far from Martin Luther in actual beliefs. I’m rather pleased by that, but I suspect Martin Luther wouldn’t be.