An Agent of Anarchy and Tyranny: Martin Luther and American Democracy in Antebellum Catholic Apologetics

Abstract:Beginning in the Early Republic’s first decades, American Protestants construed their new nation as Protestant. This conception led to evaluations of Martin Luther as a proto-American figure, with his Reformation anticipating the American Revolution. In response, Catholics began adapting the traditional apologetic readings of Luther by Cochlaeus and Bossuet, increasingly emphasizing the disastrous political and social effects of his actions. The 1817 Reformation Jubilee elicited anti-Luther works from American Jesuits Roger Baxter, Anthony Kohlmann, and John William Beschter. This approach continued into the 1820s and 1830s as American Protestants further asserted their notion of a proto-American Luther. Catholics refined their arguments to conceptualize the reformer as a friend to tyrants, an enemy of religious liberty, and an instigator of anarchy. These efforts became the basis of the more prominently studied Catholic apologetics in the 1840s and 1850s, especially Bishop Martin John Spalding and Orestes Brownson.