Values Added: The Year in Religion (Amy Sullivan & Mollie Ziegler Hemingway)

[GhaleonQ]

It's a little complicated. BRIEF YET TEDIOUS HISTORY LESSON, YEAH! Basically, the American and Australian Lutherans are those that were against the state church of Germany, since it actually combined Calvinists and Lutherans into a "Protestant" church. So, most of the famous Lutherans in northern and central Europe until the 1800s and all non-European ones are agin' it. Presumably, the immigrants and their churches taught their descendents the same, which is why they're all pissed about it. There are the pro-state church folks like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who had to cope with cataclysms like Hiter.

I, at least, feel a lot more comradery with the Reformation-and-before sects than the ones that came after for the reasons you mentioned. I'd call them "orthodox," I guess.

On a topic that isn't boring, definitive Lutheran entertainment: Robert Bresson's film version of Diary Of A Country Priest (the book's definitely Catholic, but Bresson was a spinoff Catholic that had Lutheran sympathies), Mendlessohn's Elijah (you have to know the music's "narrative" to catch everything), Franzmann's Thy Strong Word, Kierkegaard's Fear And Trembling, and others I'm not going to take the time to think of right now. Those are all fantastic.