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Martin Luther has been frequently accused of Anti-Semitism in relation to his book On the Jews and their Lies.
Luther distinguished between the religious and racial aspects of the Jews in his 1523 essay That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, reminding his followers that "When we are inclined to boast of our position we should remember that we are but Gentiles, while the Jews are of the lineage of Christ. We are aliens and in-laws; they are blood relatives, cousins, and brothers of our Lord. Therefore, if one is to boast of flesh and blood the Jews are actually nearer to Christ than we are."
Twenty years later, after his overtures to Jews failed to convince Jewish people to adopt Christianity, he wrote On the Jews and Their Lies, a work which has been described as "a notorious Antisemitic document"), and which, according to Paul Johnson, "may be termed the first work of modern anti-Semitism, and a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust." (A History of the Jews, 1987, p.242)
In the book Luther views the Jews' lineage in quite a different light. He states "There is one thing about which they boast and pride themselves beyond measure, and that is their descent from the foremost people on earth, from Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and from the twelve patriarchs, and thus from the holy people of Israel." He quotes the words of Jesus in Matthew 12:34, where Jesus called the Jewish religious leaders (Pharisees) of his day "a brood of vipers and children of the devil", and attributes this characteristic to all Jews. In the book, written three years before his death, he describes the Jews as (among other things) "miserable, blind, and senseless", "truly stupid fools", "thieves and robbers", "lazy rogues", "daily murderers", and "vermin", likens them to "gangrene", and recommends that Jewish synagogues and schools be burned, their homes destroyed, their writings be confiscated, their rabbis be forbidden to teach, their travel be restricted, that lending money be outlawed for them and that they be forced to earn their wages in farming. Finally, Luther advised "f we wish to wash our hands of the Jews' blasphemy and not share in their guilt, we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country" and "we must drive them out like mad dogs."
Luther's harsh comments about the Jews are seen by many as a continuation of medieval Christian anti-Semitism, and a reflection of earlier anti-Semitic expulsions in the 14th century, when Jews from other countries like France and Spain were invited into Germany. When Luther writes that the Jews should be expelled from his homeland, he expresses widespread feelings of his times, and these sentiments were echoed in the Germany of the 1930s. According to Daniel Goldhagen
One leading Protestant churchman, Bishop Martin Sasse published a compendium of Martin Luther's antisemitic vitriol shortly after Kristallnacht's orgy of anti-Jewish violence. In the foreword to the volume, he applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day: On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany. The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.
In 1983, the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, noting that "Anti-Semitism and other forms of racism are a continuing problem in our world," made an official statement disassociating themselves from what they describe as "intemperate remarks about Jews" in Luther's works.
In 1988 Lutheran theologian Stephen Westerholm argued that Luther's attack on Judaism was part and parcel of his attack on the Catholic Church — that Luther was applying a Pauline critique of Phariseism as legalistic and hypocritical to the Catholic Church. Westerholm rejects Luther's interpretation of Judaism and his apparent anti-Semitism, and acknowledges that Paul's critique of the Pharisees is based on a charicature that lacks historical merit. But Westermark points out that whatever problems exist in Paul's and Luther's arguments against Jews, what Paul, and later, Luther, were arguing for was and continues to be an important vision of Christianity.
In 1994, the Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America publicly rejected what it described as "Luther's anti-Judaic diatribes and the violent recommendations of his later writings against the Jews," and their "appropriation... by modern anti-Semites for the teaching of hatred toward Judaism or toward the Jewish people in our day."