Lutheran theology has understood the relationship between church and state in terms of God’s two ways of ruling in the world (two “realms” or “kingdoms”). The distinction is similar to that made by St. Augustine between the City of God and the City of Man (i.e., the world). Luther argued that God governs the world in two ways: through orders of creation, such as government and marriage, which stem from God’s desire that all people everywhere live in peace and harmony, and through his Word and Gospel, though these apply only to Christians. These two domains of power and grace are interdependent because the Gospel itself cannot preserve societal peace and justice, and civil government cannot effect salvation. Although this conception allowed North American Lutherans to accept the separation of church and state in the United States and elsewhere, it also meant that Lutheranism, unlike Calvinism, made little effort to “Christianize” the social and political order. Historically, this entailed the autonomy of the secular realm, even a certain subservience of the religious to the secular. Quite consistently, when the German peasants staged an uprising in 1524–25, Luther forcefully argued that social and political demands cannot be justified by the Gospel.

Lutheran theology stressed obedience to government as a Christian duty and did not, as did Reformed theology, produce a fully developed doctrine of resistance against tyrannical governments. Luther advocated resistance only if the preaching of the Gospel was in jeopardy. This principle was first put to the test in the middle of the 16th century, when the Lutheran city of Magdeburg successfully resisted Emperor Charles V’s reintroduction of Catholicism.

Nazi totalitarianism caught German Lutheranism unprepared to offer a clear rationale for opposing tyranny. The weakness of Lutheran theology on this point became evident during the period of Nazi rule. Thus, when the government decreed racially exclusionary laws, which had implications for the churches, most Lutheran theologians conceded that it had the authority to do so under the divine order. The impact of Nazi Germany and other totalitarian regimes led some Lutheran church leaders, such as the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Norwegian bishop Eivind Berggrav, to reconsider the traditional Lutheran view.

Ethics

Lutheran ethical teaching has been described as centring on faith active in love, which means that the believer makes moral choices in freedom, without preset rules and laws. Lutheranism has thus eschewed the notion of a specifically Christian ethos but has insisted that the place of ethical endeavour is the common ordinary life, in which Christian believers are called upon to serve their neighbours. This ethical teaching, therefore, emphasized the sacredness of all human activities and maintained that an ethical life should be pursued apart from legalistic rules in what Martin Luther called “Christian freedom.”

Liturgy and music

Although Luther retained the basic structure of the mass and liturgy, he introduced significant changes in the worship service, primarily of a theological nature, in writings such as the German Mass of 1526. The emphasis in the traditional mass on the reiteration of the sacrifice of Jesus was replaced by an emphasis on thanksgiving. Luther saw the sacrament of the altar (the Lord’s Supper) not as an autonomous form of the Gospel but as a proclamation of it. Therefore, he retained only the recitation of the words of institution (“In the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus…”) from the prayer of thanksgiving. Because of the importance placed on the Bible, the sermon occupied the pivotal place in worship.

In the early 21st century, most Lutheran churches followed essentially the same order of worship. It consisted of two main parts, Word (Liturgy of the Word) and the Lord’s Supper, both understood as the proclamation of the Gospel. The liturgical movement in the 20th century, which sought to restore the active role of the laity in church services, affected Lutheranism by deemphasizing the didactic sermon and increasing the frequency of the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Other liturgical revisions (in Sweden in 1942, in Germany in 1954, and in North America in 1941, 1958, and 1978) increased the uniformity of Lutheran worship beyond national boundaries. Although traditionally only confirmed members received the Communion elements, in 1970 both the Lutheran Church in America and the American Lutheran Church endorsed participation in the Lord’s Supper for baptized younger children, even for those who have not been confirmed. In the decades following the reform, a tendency emerged in the ELCA to allow even young children to receive the bread and wine.

Other rites of the Lutheran churches are baptism, confirmation, ordination, marriage, and burial. Lutherans practice infant baptism. In confirmation (which usually occurs between the ages of 10 and 15), the individual publicly professes the faith received in baptism.

Lutheranism made an important contribution to Protestant hymnody, which not only conveyed the evangelical teaching but also allowed for increased popular participation in worship. Many of the well-known Lutheran hymns come from the 16th and 17th centuries, notably “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” by Martin Luther, “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” by Paul Gerhardt, and “Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying,” by Philipp Nicolai. American Lutherans have been heir to this heritage, but since the 19th century they have also embraced the hymnody of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. Hymns from the 20th century, such as those by the German composer Hugo Distler, have been adopted somewhat more sparingly, though in the early 21st century, as evidenced by the new ELCA hymnal and worship book, Evangelical Worship, a persistent effort was under way to make Lutheran hymnody contemporary and multicultural.