The Reformation and the Fracturing of Christianity (^) ‹ 67
Introduction
The Reformation in sixteenth-century Europe began as an effort to reform the Catholic
Church, which many believed had become too concerned with worldly matters. Soon, how-
ever, the Church found itself facing a serious challenge from a brilliant German theologian,
Martin Luther, and his followers. What began as a protest evolved into a revolution with
social and political overtones. At stake was secular as opposed to religious political control.
By the end of the century, a Europe that had been united by a single Church was deeply
divided, as the Catholic and Protestant faiths vied for the minds and hearts of the people.The Need for a Religious Reformation
By the onset of the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church of Europe was facing a serious
set of interconnected problems. Concern was growing that the Church had become too
worldly and corrupt in its practices. The Church, and particularly the papacy in Rome, was
widely seen to be more concerned with building and retaining worldly power and wealth
than in guiding souls to salvation. The pope was not only the head of a powerful Church
hierarchy, but he was the ruler of the Papal States, a kingdom that encompassed much of
the central portion of the Italian peninsula. He collected taxes, kept an army, and used his
religious power to influence politics in every kingdom in Europe.
The selling of indulgences (which allowed people to be absolved of their sins, sometimes
even before they committed them, by making a monetary contribution to the Church) is
just one example of the way in which the Church seemed more concerned with amassing
power and wealth than with guiding the faithful to salvation. To many common people
who yearned for a powerful, personal, and emotional connection with God, the Church
not only failed to provide it but worked actively to discourage it in the following ways:
• By protecting the power of the priesthood
• By saying the mass in Latin, a language understood by only the educated elite
• By refusing to allow the printing of the Bible in the vernacularThe Lutheran Revolt
Martin Luther was an unlikely candidate to lead a revolt against the Church. The son of a
mine manager in eastern Germany, Luther received a humanistic education, studying law
before being drawn to the Church and being ordained as a priest in 1507. Continuing his
education, Luther received a doctorate of theology from the University of Wittenberg and
was appointed to the faculty there in 1512.
The revolutionary ideas that would come to define Lutheran theology were a product
of Luther’s personal search. Luther believed that he was living in the last days of the world
and that God’s final judgment would soon be upon the world. This view, now referred to as
millenarianism and widespread in sixteenth-century Europe, led Luther to become obsessed
with the question of how any human being could be good enough to deserve salvation. He
found his answer through the rigorous study of scripture, and he formulated three intercon-
nected theological assertions:
• Salvation by Faith Alone, which declared that salvation came only to those who had true
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