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Throughout this year, I will be spending time reflecting upon various hymns.  We may not think about hymns as a way that we teach and pass on the faith, but the reality is that many of us can remember hymns a lot easier than memorizing scripture.

This month, the hymn I want to lift up is ‘A Mighty Fortress is our God.’  This hymn is the one most connected to the Reformation, Lutheranism and Martin Luther.

Most know Martin Luther as the leader of the Protestant Reformation which is traditionally said to begin when Luther posted his famous 95 These on the door of the church at Wittenberg.  This act was to initiate a debate about a variety of practices (mainly the selling of Indulgencies) within the Catholic Church that Luther thought was not scriptural.  This led to Luther being excommunicated from the church and the beginning of the movement we now call Lutheranism.

Luther is mostly known for his writings (there are 54 volumes of Luther’s Works) and translating the Bible into German.  However, in addition to being a translator and writer he was also an amateur musician.  This led to Luther writing 37 hymns in addition to everything else that he did.  The United Methodist Hymnal editor Carlton R. Young summarizes well Luther’s contribution to hymnody: he “wrote several original hymns and melodies, revised many Latin hymns to German texts set to adaptations of plainsong and folk melodies, and encouraged the composition of new texts and rhythmic hymn melodies. His thirty-seven hymns and paraphrase are cast in simple, plain, and sometimes rough phrases and striking metaphors, qualities that are for the most part lost in English translations.”

Luther penned the hymn ‘A Mighty Fortress is our God’ around 1527 and was meant to be a paraphrase of Psalm 46 (God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble) with images of Christ embedded within the paraphrase. 

There has been a popular notion among many pastors who state that Luther (as well as John & Charles Wesley) went into bars to find congregational tunes. This leaves a very inaccurate impression. It is true that both Luther and the Wesleys either composed or incorporated musical settings reflecting the musical styles of their day. In the case of the tune for the hymn (‘Ein feste Burg’), the original music reflects a Renaissance folk style. Very few tunes may be traced to a specific folk song, however, and none to a bar. Some have confused Luther’s use of the “Bar Form” (AAB), the melodic structure of many German chorales (including ‘Ein feste Burg’), with their possible presence in drinking establishments.

Even if the story of Luther using drinking songs are not factual, he did use music of his day to create hymns that people could sing and remember.  We can see his success in that we are still singing this hymn as well as some of his other hymns even to this day and my guess is that moving to the future we will continue to sing this hymn for years to come. 

The success of the hymn I think comes because it continually teaches us the power of God and how God watches over and protects us—For A Mighty Fortress is our God!

(material for this article was adapted from website:  www.umcdiscipleship.org)