Toward a Lutheran Model of Non-Violent Family [and global-political] Structures.

2025 is both the 500th anniversary of the Peasant's War and Luther's marriage to Katharina von Bora.  How do his views help us think about discipline and order in society and our family? Can we use them to move to a new paradigm of faith and love?

The question of the use and abuse of violence as a means for social control or as a catalyst for social change has been discussed and debated in Lutheran circles since Martin Luther advocated the Christian nobility end the violence of the murdering hordes of peasants with a sword. Luther also argues to the nobility to change the systems by which they oppress peasants. But he does not advocate for or use violence himself to persuade the nobility to be in right relationship with peasants. For this persuasion, he relied on his own good preaching.  But when the peasants turn to violent insurrection, he claims that those in authority have the authority to use force to end the violence. Further, Luther  advocates that the hangman and the soldier in their use of such violence have a vocation from God as all power comes from God, as Jesus reminds Pilate.  Whether Soldiers, Too, Can be Saved  is a complicated and nuanced text that reminds the reader that ultimately we ought trust in the Word of God and not the sword of the soldier even against the most frightening invader. 

Similarly, for Luther, fathers and mothers seem to be allowed to use force against their children when necessary. But similarly Luther is nuanced.  At most he claims that such force should be used sparingly and insists that parents should use love rather than fear to discipline their children. Victor Vieth’s excellent article on Luther’s own family dynamics (See Currents in Theology and Mission 47:4 (October 2020)) is enormously helpful in explaining the complexity in Luther’s view. 

Where are we today? 500 years later? Let us start by looking at our view of discipline in the family and how it relates to our social order. 

bell hooks, at the turn of the millenium, in her essay on Feminist Parenting boldly claimed that the average family is a warzone.  She explains. “In a culture of domination where children have no civil rights, those who are powerful, adult males and females, can exert autocratic rule of children. All the medical facts show that children are violently abused daily in this society.  . . . In the hierarchies of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, male domination of females is condoned, but so is adult domination of children. “  She explains that “adult violence against children is a norm in our society.”  She then proclaims a need to end domination of children--to “make the family a place where children can be safe, where they can be free, where they can know love.”  (Feminist Parenting in Feminism Is for Everybody, South Bend: South Bend Press, 2000) 

Whenever I teach this essay, I watch students affirm hooks’ description of the prevalence of the problem of family violence, and then I listen as they mock her solution. The almost universal critique is that forceful domination is the only way to raise children.  “Has she ever been with small children?” my students laugh incredulously.

What is revealed when I teach this essay is that most of my students struggle to imagine how we might untie the concepts of power and authority from domination and violence.  This makes sense given our lived experience of our political society.

Our nations seek to solve international problems by using violence and domination, whether by using economic sanctions that starve people into compliance or by using guns, tanks, and bombs. Our justice system links justice with punishment from fines to imprisonment. Calls for justice, both internationally and locally are tinged with calls for violence. Whether we are enforcing a rule of law or protesting a rule of law, we assume we will need to use violence and domination. With my incredulous students we might well be saying "Have you ever been with a horde of murdering peasants?"

In both his day and ours, Luther was criticized for his views.  He simply could not give a perfect practical strategy for law and order in the state or the family.  Yet, he does give us a theology that might help us move towards bell hooks' views of non-violent order. Starting with the family as a schoolhouse of faith where members learn to be accepted in love, the goal is to teach each other how to better love. This can radiate into the state as well. 

Recognizing that we are sinners caught in a systemic cycle and recognizing that we are not going to be sinless leaders can help us. The parent's job is not to use the rod to straighten out the crooked child. The children will remain crooked, and they will learn only to fear the parent and the God who gave the parent the power over them. The toxic desire to justify ourselves by raising perfect and law abiding children too often leads to an all too human sadism that takes self-righteous pleasure in punishment and creates a cycle of guilt, anxiety, and abuse.  This is true also with political leaders and citizens.

A different way begins with accepting that one is loved by the Transcendent Lover who is over us, beyond us, and with us. Abiding in that Love, rather than seeking control, in relationships between family members changes our imaginations on how to handle a crying child in a grocery store or a teenager seemingly bent on self-destruction.  Using that model in our closest relationships, we can then begin to imagine a model for our social and political relationships that trusts wholly in the redemptive love of God rather than in our own swords. 

How this will work practically may be beyond the power of our imaginations.  But the first step is re-orientiating our thinking.  As Luther would say, the problem with our ethics often is a lack of faith.