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doms, in which Christians act in different ways, whether in their public capa-
city as officials charged with the protection and health of society, or in the
realm of faith and personal piety, where there is no place for force or violence.
Most significantly however, he urges that individual Christians should not res-
ist the possible Islamic takeover, meeting violence with violence, but instead
with prayer, fasting and repentance. Luther sees the Turk as God’s judgement
on a spiritually flabby Europe, and that Christendom must either endure this
divine verdict, or oppose Islam, not with violence, but with the spiritual
weapons which God has given. As he writes in this treatise: “I fear the sword
will accomplish little. Now the Christian is not to fight physically with the
Turk, as the pope and his followers teach; nor is he to resist the Turk with the
fist, but he is to recognize the Turk as God’s rod and wrath which Christians
must either suffer, if God visits their sins upon them, or fight against and drive
away with repentance, tears, and prayer.” 7
While he does envisage the possibility of a military response, a defensive
war of resistance against Islamic invasion, his response to the rise of Islam is
not what we would call Islamophobia, or a call for and armed resistance to Is-
lam in the name of Christian Europe, but instead a call for the renewal of the
wellsprings of Christian faith. The rise of Islam is seen as an act of God to call
Christians back to their true identity as Christians: “Every pastor and preacher
ought diligently to exhort his people to repentance and prayer… This fight
must be begun with repentance and we must reform our lives or we shall fight
in vain… Along with these must be cited the words and illustrations of Scrip-
ture in which God makes known how well pleased he is with true repentance
or amendment made in faith and reliance on his word… After people have thus
been taught and exhorted to confess their sins and mend their ways they
should then be most diligently exhorted to prayer and shown that such prayer
pleases God, that he has commanded it and promised to hear it, and that no
one ought to think likely of his own praying or have doubts about it, but with
firm faith be sure that it will be heard.” 8
In particular, he sees the rise of Islam as an incentive to rediscover a
more disciplined form of Christian life. The Reformation can be seen in one
sense as a renewal movement urging deeper Christian engagement with theo-
logy, Bible reading, prayer, and secular work as a profoundly Christian activity,
done for the glory of God rather than for money or fame. All branches of the

7 LW 46.184
8 LW 46.170-2

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