Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

by Brad S. Gregory
Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

by Brad S. Gregory

Hardcover

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Overview

When Martin Luther published his 95 Theses in October 1517, he had no intention of starting a revolution. 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. 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. 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.

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. While recasting the portrait of Luther as a deliberate revolutionary, Gregory describes the cultural, political, and intellectual trends that informed him and helped give rise to the Reformation, which led to conflicting interpretations of the Bible, as well as the rise of competing churches, political conflicts, and social upheavals across Europe. Over the next five hundred years, as Gregory’s account shows, these conflicts eventually contributed to further epochal changes—from the Enlightenment and self-determination to moral relativism, modern capitalism, and consumerism, and in a cruel twist to Luther’s legacy, the freedom of every man and woman to practice no religion at all.  

With the scholarship of a world-class historian and the keen eye of a biographer, Gregory offers readers an in-depth portrait of Martin Luther, a reluctant rebel in the ranks, and a detailed examination of the Reformation to explain how the events that transpired five centuries ago still resonate—and influence us—today.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780062471178
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 09/12/2017
Pages: 304
Sales rank: 943,135
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 8.70(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

BRAD GREGORY is a professor of European History at Notre Dame and the author of Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe, which received six awards, including the prestigious Phi Alpha Theta Best First Book Award and the American Catholic Historical Association’s John Gilmary Shea Prize. His second book, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society, was named Book of the Year by The Spectator, the Times Literary Supplement, and ABC Religion & Ethics. He also received the first annual Hiett Prize in the Humanities from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. He lives in South Bend, Indiana.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Why the Reformation Matters 1

A Hard Life 2

Religion as More-than-Religion 4

An Inherited Christian Worldview 6

From Then to Now: A First Glance 8

Where We Are Going in This Book 13

1 A Reluctant Rebel 15

A Busy and Burdened Friar 15

Augustinian Duties 17

Getting to a New University in a Small Town 20

God's Word, Humanist Scholarship, and Christian Reform 23

Wittenberg's Thriving Christian Piety 27

Sins, Reform, and the Importance of Confession 30

Luther's Struggles Beneath the Surface 33

The Wider Stage: The Holy Roman Empire 35

Going Public with Ninety-Five These 39

Unexpected Fame 46

Making Political Waves 51

A Sheltered Meeting in Augsburg 54

A Public Showdown in Leipzig 59

A Clarifying Anger 66

Liberation and Denunciation 71

A Double Severance Package 82

2 A Fractious Movement 87

Karlstadt's Wittenberg 90

Zwingli's Zürich 97

Reformation as Urban Disruption 103

Reformation as Revolution: The German Peasants' War 110

The Gospel Against the World: Anabaptists 116

For and Against Free Will 122

Broken over the Bread: The Eucharistic Controversy 128

Münster: An Apocalyptic Anabaptist Kingdom 133

Brave-and Troubled-New World 137

3 A Troubled Era 143

Lutheranism Beyond Luther 146

Calvin, Geneva, and Reformed Protestantism 152

The Radical Reformation After Münster 160

Roman Catholicism Renewed 166

War to War in the Holy Roman Empire 175

France and the Wars of More-than-Religion 182

England, Kingdom of Religious Division 190

Violence, Revolt, and Breakup in the Low Countries 200

Religion as More-than-Religion: Creativity, Conflicts, and Impasses 208

4 A New World 213

Going Dutch: Restricting Religion and Unleashing Commerce 220

Enlightenment, Enrichment, and a New Empire 229

Founding Secularization: Religious Freedom in the United States 235

Suspending Secularization: Tocqueville on Religion in America 243

Advancing Secularization: The United States and Europe 250

Separated and Diminished Religion, Secularized and Divided Society 255

Free at Last? 263

Acknowledgments 271

Notes 273

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