Dr. E. Christian Kopff
Martin Luther and the American Founding
On Reformation Day, 1817, Lutheran pastor Frederick C Schaeffer preached, “The religious and political liberty which we so eminently enjoy ... may be traced to" Luther. James Madison wrote Schaefer (December 3, 1821) that his sermon “illustrates the excellence of a system which, by a due distinction, to which the genius and courage of Luther led the way, between what is due to Caesar and what is due to God, best promotes the discharge of both obligations.” For Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, the American separation of church and state was based on Luther’s doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, where God rules both church and state, not Thomas Jefferson’s “Wall of Separation” between them. I shall explore evidence for Madison's view in the early Republic.
E. Christian Kopff is a graduate of Haverford College PA (B.A. 1968, summa cum laude) and received his doctorate in Classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He taught at the University of Colorado Boulder (1973-2019) in the Classics Department and the Honors Program. He served as Founding Director of the Center for Western Civilization (2004-2011). As a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, he edited a critical edition of the Greek text of Euripides' Bacchae (Teubner, 1982). For ISIBooks he wrote The Devil Knows Latin: Why America Needs the Classical Tradition (1999) and translated Josef Pieper, Tradition: Concept and Claim (2008). He received the Hero of Conscience Award from the American Freedom Alliance for “his commitment to the advancement of Western ideals and values” (2012) and the designation Magister Magnus from the Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education (2018).