How Luther inadvertently fractured the Catholic Church and reconfigured Western civilization is at the heart of renowned historian Brad Gregory's Rebel in the Ranks. The ensuing disruptions prompted responses that gave shape to the modern world, and the unintended and unanticipated consequences of the Reformation continue to influence the very communities, religions, and beliefs that surround us today. From Germany to England, Luther's ideas inspired spontaneous but sustained uprisings and insurrections against civic and religious leaders alike, pitted Catholics against Protestants, and because the Reformation movement extended far beyond the man who inspired it, Protestants against Protestants. But very quickly his criticism of indulgences became a rejection of the papacy and the Catholic Church emphasizing the Bible as the sole authority for Christian faith, radicalizing a continent, fracturing the Holy Roman Empire, and dividing Western civilization in ways Luther-a deeply devout professor and spiritually-anxious Augustinian friar-could have never foreseen, nor would he have ever endorsed. Ultimately, he contends, some of the major historical and cultural developments that arose in its wake-including the Enlightenment, individual self-determination and moral relativism, and a religious freedom that protects one's right to worship or even to reject religion-would have appalled Luther: a reluctant revolutionary, a rebel in the ranks, whose goal was to make society more Christian, yet instead set the world on fire.When Martin Luther published his 95 Theses in October 1517, he had no intention of starting a revolution. He reveals how Luther's insistence on the Bible as the sole authority for Christian truth led to conflicting interpretations of its meaning-and to the rise of competing churches, political conflicts, and social upheavals. Gregory analyzes Luther's inadvertent role in starting the Reformation and the epochal changes that followed.
Yet his actions would profoundly shape our world in ways he could never have imagined.
Luther did not intend to start a revolution that would divide the Catholic Church and forever change Western civilization.
In Rebel in the Ranks, Brad Gregory, renowned professor of European history at Notre Dame, recasts this long-accepted portrait. On the 500th anniversary of the Reformation comes this compelling, illuminating, and expansive religious history that examines the complicated and unintended legacies of Martin Luther and the epochal movement that continues to shape the world today.įor five centuries, Martin Luther has been lionized as an outspoken and fearless icon of change who ended the Middle Ages and heralded the beginning of the modern world.
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