Lutheran

The pastor of the local Lutheran Church is considered a pillar of the community.

Jai and I had a discussion about religion. He noted that I was being a Buddhist in a principally Christian family. He thinks that my funeral would be Christian, despite me being Buddhist. I said that it did not really matter what others thought. I knew that Jai liked Zen Buddhism, but was affected by his German wife Erika's Lutheran background. Jai's family in India was Hindu. I read that one of the ways a Buddhist monk could attain more enlightenment was if he lived in a cemetery. For me, having moved from Vancouver to Lulu Island was like moving to a cemetery. In fact, I am an Animist-Buddhist.

Lutheran doctrine abolished celibacy and the worship of images.

Some say that Lutheran Christianity has been modernized to a point of total dissociation from the original precepts of the Bible.

A Lutheran understanding of the Lord’s Supper is not the same as that of other denominations.

[I]f when Luther firſt began to teach new doctrine, the catholiks at that time had not vouchſafed to giue him the hering, but had auoided his prechings & preuy couenticles, ther had not bin now in the worlde, either Lutheran, Swinglian, Calueniſt, Puritan, Anabaptiſt, Trinetarie, Family of loue, Adamite, or the lyke: whereof now there are ſo many thouſands abroad, al ſpringing of that firſt ſecte, and troubling at this day the whole worlde, […]

On the borders of that river [the Volga] 104 colonies have ſettled, conſiſting of Germans, who emigrated to thoſe parts in the years of dearth and famine. Theſe colonies have already three Calviniſt, and four Lutheran ministers.

[A] number of Lutheran priests were involved in the activities of the EHS [Estonian Heritage Society]. The EELC [Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church] identified itself again as 'the people's church' and stressed the connection between the Lutheran Church and Estonian national identity, although the alleged connection with radical nationalism is an exaggeration.

The split between the Lutherans and the Roman Catholics began with the Edict of Worms in 1521.

[I]f you had bene but ſo conuerſante in Caluine [John Calvin] as your profeſsion requireth, you could not ſo far haue bene ouerſeene in this eaſie diſtinction knowen to Catholike, Lutheran and Zuinglian, although when Caluine wrote thus, perhaps he was more then halfe a Lutheran, and not ſo far gone in Zuinglianiſme as after.

[…] George of Mecklenburg, a younger brother of the reigning Duke, an active and ambitious Prince, collected a conſiderable number of thoſe ſoldiers of fortune who had accompanied Henry of Brunſwick in all his wild enterprizes; and though a zealous Lutheran himſelf, invaded the territories of the Magdeburgers, hoping that, by the merit of this ſervice, he might procure ſome part of their domains to be allotted to him as an eſtabliſhment.

At this memorable Diet of Speyer (1529), a compact Roman Catholic majority faced a weak Lutheran minority. The Emperor, through his commissioners, declared at the outset that he abolished, "by his imperial and absolute authority (Machtvollkommenheit)," the clause in the ordinance of 1526 on which the Lutherans had relied when they founded their territorial Churches; it had been the cause, he said, "of much ill counsel and misundestanding." […] It was this ordinance which called forth the celebrated Protest, from which comes the name Protestant. The Protest was read in the Diet on the day (April 19th, 1529) when all concessions to the Lutherans had been refused.