Trump’s Muddled Reformation Day Message

President Trump’s “Message on Reformation Day” was a worthy effort to remind Americans of the cultural debt that our democratic republic owes to the Protestant Reformation. Unfortunately, the administration seems strangely unaware of the actual results of Martin Luther’s protest against the Catholic Church: the introduction of the concepts of freedom of conscience, religious pluralism, and the .

The president’s message correctly observes that Luther’s Reformation inspired the work of William Tyndale, who — 500 years ago, in 1526 — produced the first English translation of the New Testament from the original Greek. Because of Tyndale’s influence over the revered King James Bible, virtually every argument for political and religious freedom in the 17th and 18th centuries drew upon Tyndale’s translation. The democratization of Bible ownership became an agent of political liberation in the English-speaking world, the cultural equivalent of the splitting of the atom.

About the Author

Joseph Loconte

Joseph Loconte is the director of The Rivendell Center in New York City and the author of The War for Middle-earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933–1945. He serves as a senior fellow at the Sagamore Institute and as the C.S. Lewis Scholar for Public Life at Grove City College. He is at work on a documentary film about the impact of war on the lives of Tolkien and Lewis.

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President Trump’s “Message on Reformation Day” was a worthy effort to remind Americans of the cultural debt that our democratic republic owes to the Protestant Reformation. Unfortunately, the administration seems strangely unaware of the actual results of Martin Luther’s protest against the Catholic Church: the introduction of the concepts of freedom of conscience, religious pluralism, and the .

The president’s message correctly observes that Luther’s Reformation inspired the work of William Tyndale, who — 500 years ago, in 1526 — produced the first English translation of the New Testament from the original Greek. Because of Tyndale’s influence over the revered King James Bible, virtually every argument for political and religious freedom in the 17th and 18th centuries drew upon Tyndale’s translation. The democratization of Bible ownership became an agent of political liberation in the English-speaking world, the cultural equivalent of the splitting of the atom.

About the Author

Joseph Loconte

Joseph Loconte is the director of The Rivendell Center in New York City and the author of The War for Middle-earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933–1945. He serves as a senior fellow at the Sagamore Institute and as the C.S. Lewis Scholar for Public Life at Grove City College. He is at work on a documentary film about the impact of war on the lives of Tolkien and Lewis.