LBW# 230, "Lord, Keep Us Steadfast in Your Word"
Devotion
Lord, keep us in Thy Word and work,
Restrain the murderous Pope and Turk,
Who fain would tear from off Thy throne
Christ Jesus, Thy beloved Son.
These words differ from the prayer below that we sing nowadays. However, the original first stanza, translated here to English, gave the new Protestant population a sense of themselves as a community while they faced two different threats – the Turks and the Pope.
In 1541 Sultan Suleiman and his Turkish army were threatening to overrun Germany. They had already conquered Hungary and were nearing Vienna. In that turmoil, Martin Luther responded by writing this hymn as part of a special service asking for Germany’s protection.
It is said that "another threat came from Catholic ideology as embodied by the Pope. 'Rowdy Lutherans' used this particular hymn to 'sing down' Catholic preachers from the pulpit." (Music as Propaganda in the German Reformation, Ashgate, 2001.) Many Catholic priests found their masses disrupted by these Protestants proclaiming an alternate system of belief through song.
Prayer
Lord, keep us steadfast in your Word;
Curb those who by deceit or sword
Would wrest the kingdom from your Son
And bring to naught all he has done.
Text for first "Lord, Keep Us" by Stulken, Marilyn Kay. Hymnal Companion to the Lutheran Book of Worship (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), pp.308-309.