Christian History Magazine commemorates the 500th anniversary of the Reformation
The Reformation Challenged Christendom with Bible Truths and Started the Protestant Movement – Set of Four Issues Examine Effects on Government, Commerce, Education, Theology & Social Institutions that Birthed Western Civilization
Worcester, PA, October, 2017 – Christian History Institute (CHI), publisher of Christian History magazine (CHM), announces its set of four magazine issues, #115 “Luther leads the way;” #118, “The People’s Reformation;” #120, “Calvin, Councils and Confessions;” and #122, “The Catholic Reformation.” With this series set, Christian History Magazine commemorates the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, which began October 31, 1517. These magazine issues and others are available at no-cost, on the website and by subscription, at: www.ChristianHistoryInstitute.org.
Issue #115 examines the life and impact of Martin Luther, leader and inspiration of the most significant reformation of faith since the time of Jesus Christ. Influenced by early reformers such as John Wycliffe and Jan Hus, Luther not only translated the Bible into the German language, but inspired a church and cultural revolution in Europe by discovering and defining the doctrine of salvation by faith, dependent upon scripture alone. His revelation challenged the foundations of a dominant and corrupt Catholic Church and helped inspire institutions that over time, underwrote Western Civilization.
Seldom has the life of one man affected his culture more than that of Luther, who revolutionized, music, theology, law, education, marriage and politics. Over the course of his life of sixty-three years (1483 – 1546), Luther opposed a corrupted and elite Catholic Church establishment and identified a dynamic Faith, defined by a personal relationship with a historical and living creator and savior. With Luther’s leadership, beginning with his distribution of 95 theses on indulgences in 1517, the reformation movement would not only reveal corrupt church practices but incite an explosion of freedoms and diversity, ending the European medieval period of history and ushering in modern times.
CHM issue #118 examines a Reformation movement that cast European society and culture into extraordinary and rapid change. In a short fifty-year period, the ideas of Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, Martin Bucer, John Calvin and other reformers would challenge the rule of a fractured and corrupt Catholic church, as well as kings and magistrates, causing one of the most extreme periods of radical social change in recorded history.
The ideas and forces of the Reformation resulted in widespread public scandal, such as priests and nuns getting married (often to each other); peasants rebelling against the prevailing class system and demanding rights from overlords; churches violently attacked and artwork plundered by parishioners eager to abolish superstition, idolatry and relic worship. Church services were transformed as Christians sought to reinvent church meetings. New roles for women were created as new denominations opened options to women, such as the pastor’s wife, while the role of nun declined. Kings and rulers chose sides and attacked those of opposing beliefs. Both Protestants and Catholics tracked down and killed Anabaptists, whose opposition to infant baptism was considered worthy of public torture and death by burning, which was considered appropriate for heresy judgments.
Category: Church History, Fall 2017
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