The Protestant Reformation began in the German university town of Wittenberg with a young Christian academic and monk by the name of Martin Luther.
Martin Luther's journey to faith had not been easy; it can be described as "search for a merciful God". Originally training to be a lawyer, he was caught in a thunderstorm and, fearing for his life, vowed to become a monk. In due course he took the vows to become a monk, was ordained as a priest, and from 1508 worked as a lecturer in Holy Scripture at the recently founded Wittenberg university. Despite Luther's intense commitment, he felt he could never do enough and was left without assurance of God's mercy. However, as Luther taught his way through Psalms and then Romans, his search for assurance of forgiveness led him to rediscover the truth of salvation in Christ as a gift given by God and received by mere faith. This new evangelical faith was at odds with his experience of church, which offered an endless cycle of confession followed by works of penance, "paying off" the earthly penalty for sins committed (Christ paid the eternal penalty on the cross, but the believer needed to pay off the temporal penalty). The most unacceptable practice for Luther was the sale of indulgences. Indulgences were basically "get out of jail" cards given in exchange for a financial donation to the church. After death, so the church was teaching, a person spent time in an imaginary place called "purgatory", wherethey allegedly "paid off" their outstanding "debt" for sins committed, and only then entered eternal bliss. In exchange for financial donations, the church was offering to shorten time spent in purgatory. It was against these and other abuses that contradicted the church's teaching that Luther wrote his 95 points for debate or "theses" and, as was the custom, nailed them to the cathedral door at Wittenberg on 31 October 1517.
Luther's 95 Theses unleashed a storm of controversy. Translated into German, they were printed and distributed across Germany. As a result, Luther was embroiled in a series of debates and church hearings (1518-1521). As Luther faced opposition from the church hierarchy, his thinking developed further. Soon he was siding with the beliefs of Jan Hus, declared a heretic a hundred years earlier, and questioning other church teachings such as transsubstantiation and the division between those ordained and ordinary people. Luther articulated beliefs later held by all Reformation Christians: the supreme authority of the Bible, justification by faith alone, and the priesthood of all believers. Luther was expelled from the church effective from 1521. At another hearing before the church (Worms, 1521), he boldly refused to recant his writings and declared, "Here I stand, I can do no other." After this, he was secreted away to a castle where he translated the New Testament into German. Returning to Wittenberg in 1522, Luther wrested control from more radical elements, and began to reform the church in the light of the Word of God. From the early 1520s Luther's teachings spread across Europe, as his followers travelled to the Netherlands, France, England and Scotland, Scandinavia, Latvia and many other places besides. In later years Luther penned catechisms to explain the faith to the layperson and offered a new Reformation conception of the Christian life - instead of religious actions, a life of good works lived out in the world. In Luther's case, this included clerical marriage. Luther's Reformation for the most part continued the outward forms of the medieval church but with new gospel content and in the language of the people. The countries where the state religion became Lutheran Christianity were: parts of Germany, Denmark and Norway, Sweden, Finland and Latvia. From 1531, the German Reformation took on a more political dimension and various alliances, such as the Schmalkald League, organised the armed defence of the Reformation. At various stages a temporary peace was agreed, however wars of religion persisted into the 1600s. After the death of Luther, the churches of the German Reformation underwent a series of controversies over issues such as free will, the place of the law and good works, the presence of Christ in communion, and church ceremonies. The final form of Lutheranism was thrashed out in the Formula of Concord of 1577, uniting different elements in Lutheranism, but also clearly delineating what was considered outside of Lutheran orthodoxy.
Meanwhile, in Zurich (Switzerland), another priest, in 1519 Ulrich Zwingli began his ministry, preaching his way verse-by-verse through the gospel of Matthew. Unlike Luther's crisis conversion, Zwingli's road to faith was more a gradual move, inspired by the writings of Erasmus, away from superstitious belief to belief in accordance with the Word of God. In Zwingli's thinking a key idea was the difference between God and his creation - devotion can only be to God alone and this cannot be shared with created beings (such as Mary of the other "saints"). For several years after 1519 Zwingli continued to celebrate church services according to the old way. Only in 1523, did Zwingli, with the support of the local city council, conduct a first public disputation which paved the way for church reform. As a result, the churches in Zurich and the surrounding area no longer recognised the authority of the Pope or the Roman Catholic church, and instead looked to the authority of the state (in this case, the city council). The Swiss Reformation (also known as Reformed Christianity) was more thorough in revising existing practices. All images were removed from churches and the services focused on prayer and preaching. Choirs and organs were replaced with congregational participation. The Swiss Reformation spread to other towns in Switzerland such as Berne and Basel, and also influenced many who had earlier embraced Luther's ideas, such as Martin Bucer at Strasburg. In 1529, an attempt was made to unite the two streams of the Reformation, led by Luther and Zwingli respectively, however differences over the understanding of the Lord's Supper proved insuperable, and divisions among Protestants have persisted ever since. In 1531, Zwingli, who had been serving as an army chaplain, was killed in battle. On his death, Zwingli was succeeded in his role ("Antistes") by Heinrich Bullinger. In 1549, the cities of Zurich and Geneva formulated a shared statement of faith; over time it was Geneva that become the focal point of the Swiss Reformation.
In the 1530s a Frenchman by the name of Jean Calvin (1509-1564) had come to reformed convictions. Escaping unrest in Paris, he took refuge in the countryside and began his magnum opus, the Institutes of Christian religion, a defence of reformed Christianity addressed to the French king and based on an extended exposition of the Apostles' Creed. During this time, Calvin visited Martin Bucer at Strasburg and saw for himself a working example of a reformed church, for example, with church services in the local language and church elders appointed in each church. Calvin's first attempt at reform at Geneva 1536-1541 failed, but when he was invited back later in 1541, Calvin was able to see the city transformed into what Scotsman John Knox famously called “the most perfect school of Christ . . . since the days of the apostles." Geneva also became a training centre for pastors sent to France and other countries. Calvin was succeeded by Theodore de Beze. As in the case of Luther's Reformation, Reformed Christianity also reserved a role for the ruler/state, and in several nations, including several Swiss cantons (regions), the Netherlands and Scotland, Reformed Christianity became the "state religion". There was also a strong reformed presence in France, Hungary and Poland.
Around the same time, in England, Henry VIII, wanting to divorce his Spanish wife, seceded from the Catholic church in 1533, setting himself up as head of the Church of England (in place of the Pope). During the reigns of Henry VIII and his son, Edward, under Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the Church of England became reformed in its teaching, beginning with the use in churches of English translations of the Bible. This was reversed under the reign of "Bloody Mary" (r. 1553-8), but then restored under Queen Elizabeth I (from 1558). The Church of England (also known as Anglicanism) has similarities with Lutheran Christianity and has a role for the monarch as "governor" of the church.
Besides these German and Swiss Reformations, a third arm was the Radical Reformation or Anabaptists, which represented a more radical approach and more thorough break with the past than Lutheran and Reformed Christianity. A first expression of the Radical Reformation was in 1521 when Carlstadt and Zwilling went further than Luther, rejecting infant baptism and practising prophetic gifts. A few years later, in 1524, Thomas Muntzer, influenced by the former, led a rebellion which ended in a crack down and massacre. In 1525 at Zurich, some of Zwingli's followers felt that his reform did not go far enough. In particular, they rejected the close connection with the state and the idea of a Christian society of which everyone was a member by infant baptism. In 1525 a group of these took the bold step of baptising one another "again" (Anabaptist means "rebaptiser") - this time based on profession of faith. They believed that the Christian church is a voluntary community entered by personal commitment expressed in believer's baptism. The leading theologian among them was Balthasar Hubmaier (martyred in 1528). The Anabaptists were violently persecuted, often drowned as a punishment, and they were seen as seditious and a threat to society. Some, along the lines of Thomas Muntzer (above), developed in the direction of political radicalism, most notably Jan of Leyden who set up a theocracy in the city of Munster 1532-5 which ended in a blood-bath. Others developed in the direction of mysticism. There were also rationalist Anabaptists who anticipated the views of later Enlightenment thinkers. The Hutterite Anabaptists developed in the direction of communal living. Finally, the evangelical stream of Anabaptists followed Menno Simons (from which comes the name, Mennonites). Their churches were spread across Germany and the Netherlands, and later Poland and Russia.
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