The 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation reminds me of my visit to Sudan in the mid-1990s. One of my hosts was a Sudanese Anglican priest. He took me to three Lutheran churches in the large Sudanese refugee areas in Khartoum. The refugee areas were the result of the Sudanese Civil War. It was there that he shared how he had been called to become a Lutheran. He said Martin Luther’s teachings on the communal life as an approach to mission work attracted him to Lutheranism. Michal Valco identifies this teaching by Luther this way: “United in faith to Christ, believers are moved by the Holy Spirit away from religious schemes of merit to a theocentric, communal vision of life in true devotion, which not merely produces new obedience but entails it.”
Martin Luther (1483-1546) was an Augustinian friar and Biblicist who was inspired by church leaders like St. Augustine of Hippo Regis. St. Augustine was North African and lived from 354 to 430 A.D. He was also a Roman Catholic bishop of North Africa. St. Augustine is viewed as one of the most important church fathers and theologians in Western Christianity. He emphasized the primacy of the Bible over church officials and developed the concept of the Church as a spiritual City of God, distinct from the material Earthly City. Martin Luther, like Augustine, also believed that humans could not reach salvation by their own acts, but that only God could bestow salvation by his divine grace.
These historic Christian perspectives remind us that we are called to live together graciously with a vision of community inside and outside of churches. Luther looked again to Africa as a historic source for thinking about and engaging this vision. Recently the Rev. Dr. David Daniels of McCormick Theological Seminary, a Bishop with the Church of God in Christ, argued for this. He stated that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, established in 333 A.D., was an important contributor to this.
Daniels makes four claims about Luther’s encounter in 1534 with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. One of the claims is that Luther had a theological conversation with an Ethiopian cleric named Michael the Deacon. A second claim is Martin Luther extended “full communion” to Michael the Deacon and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. In his third claim, Daniels states that Luther held Ethiopian Christianity in high esteem. More specifically, Daniels points to Luther’s alignment with certain claims of the church.
In sum, Martin Luther embraced certain perspectives of church leaders in Africa and invited a new community of church relationships outside of the familiar Eurocentric church communities he primarily associated with. These lessons of advancing community in African refugee areas and among diverse racial-ethnic churches in Africa and Europe should inspire us anew to do likewise. In so doing we advance a world that can help us end hunger and poverty. May this season of the 500th anniversary inspire us anew.
Angelique Walker-Smith is senior associate for Pan-African and Orthodox Church engagement at Bread for the World in Washington, D.C.
