Rector’s Reflections
Thursday 5th June 2025
Why the Church of England Needs Martin Luther
In yesterday’s reflections, I imagined Martin Luther asking whether the Church of England has lost touch with the life and experience of the ordinary person. For example, does the Church of England actually engage with what it might mean to be “English” or British”? Do the senior leaders in the Church understand what makes people tick- not just as Christians, but as ordinary human beings? Does the Church recognise that most people are driven as much by what they feel as by what they think – by their emotions, prejudices, hopes and fears?
Luther was not afraid to connect with people’s emotions, with their hopes and with their fears. This was despite the fact that one might have expected Luther, as a University professor, living in a university town, to have limited himself to the world of academic argument. But Luther refused to live out his life as a narrowly focussed academic. He was passionate about communicating the gospel, and he knew that to do this he needed to make connections with people as they really are – not just with people’s minds, but also with their hearts. So he focussed his attention on making a real connection with his contemporaries. I could well imagine Luther asking us today: is the Church of England really connecting with the men and women of today? Or is it just trying to communicate with itself?
Luther’s starting point was that the Church needs to face the reality of what it means to be a human being. Theologians can write pages and pages on what they think it means to be a human being, or how they think human beings really ought to behave in an ideal world. But what if theologians stopped all their pious imaginings, and looked instead at the evidence – the evidence of the lives which human beings actually live? If they did this, they would discover two things.
The first is that Christians are a mix of good and bad. Yes, they are “saved” though faith in Jesus Christ. So technically, in God’s eyes, they are saints, sharing in the holiness of Jesus Christ himself. But at the same time, they are also sinners. Even regular churchgoers, who live exemplary lives, are still sinners. All of us fall short. None of us are going to achieve perfect holiness, even if we retreat from the world and become monks or nuns. The search for a perfect holiness is a waste of time. We need to grow up and recognise that we are all sinners, and will always be sinners. But God loves us anyway, and we are still “saved” through our faith in Jesus Christ.
The second is that most human beings seek a sense of security and fulfilment through their families. Families come in all shapes and sizes, and all families have their tensions, their misunderstandings and their hurts. But Luther would say that human beings are created to live within family units, and the Church needs to recognise this and to celebrate it.
Luther himself came from a large family. He was the eldest child in a family of 9. When Luther decided to become a monk and a priest, people might have assumed that this meant that Luther wouldn’t have a family of his own, as the general rule in the Roman Catholic Church was that monks and priests were meant to live celibate lives. But by his early 40s, Luther had come to the view that there was no good reason why clergy should not be allowed to marry and have a family, if they felt called to do so. So on 13th June 1525, Luther married Katherine, a former nun, and they went on to have 7 children: John, Elisabeth, Magdalen, Anna Margareta, Martin, Paul and Margarethe. Luther very much enjoyed his family life, and it was important to him. He was probably not always the easiest of husbands and fathers, but there again, Martin would probably have said that none of us is perfect, and we are who we are.
Luther understood that family life is one of the things which make us human, and that this is just as true for priests, as it is for members of the laity. For Luther, it made no sense at all to have a rule which prevented parish priests from marrying (at least officially). Why shouldn’t a parish priest marry and support a family? What was the problem? Luther’s view wasn’t about forcing clergy to marry. It was the recognition that not every priest is called to celibacy, and there was nothing wrong in a priest having a family life. Indeed, a priest’s family could be a good witness and example to other families in a parish. Clergy needed to be treated as human beings.
This may seem an obvious sentiment, but the reality is that in every age and culture the Church often fails to treat its clergy as normal human beings, who need to be supported and enabled to live normal lives. Luther knew that a successful Church depended on a foundation of happy and fulfilled clergy. The Church grows and flourishes when its clergy grow and flourish. Diktats from on high and well-meaning Mission Statements do not drive church growth. Church growth comes from flourishing local leadership, both lay and ordained. And we won’t allow our leaders to flourish unless we enable and support them in their family lives.
I wonder what the Church of England is doing to support the family lives of its members, both lay and ordained? Indeed, is it doing anything at all?