Martin Luther Influence On Religion

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Whenever humanity makes a large change in one very important aspect of everyday life such as religion, it doesn’t just affect that one thing, but everything attached to it. There is a rippling effect that expands outward moving everything it touches. In this case, Martin Luther broke off from the Catholic Church due to distaste in their promotion of indulgences, or “credits for good deeds done by others, which one could purchase to reduce the punishment for sin.” He believed these to be contrary to God’s wishes as it raised money purely for the Church. Therefore, he wrote his 95 theses and nailed them to the door and was promptly excommunicated. After this the Protestant Reformation started which would stimulate a large change in the way that …show more content…

The change in theology really started with the rejection of indulgences which to them only helped the rich and the powerful. This also went against Luther’s belief that salvation should come through faith alone and not from participating in penance or through punishment. He made the Lutheran church and was supported by many of the princes in the German speaking lands. Martin Luther really wanted the people to become more involved in the church services so he translated a lot of the liturgical texts into the vernacular, in this case German. This meant that most of the music was mostly in German now and was understandable by those people who did not speak Latin. Martin Luther was a huge supporter of music being a composer and flute player. In his article on Martin Luther, Robin A. Leaver wrote that “Luther developed a positive, theological understanding of music. He considered music to be ‘the excellent gift of God.’” He believed that each individual in the congregation could bring themselves closer to God by demonstrating their faith through music. Walter Buszin quoted Luther in his article, “Luther on Music,” saying I am willing to make German psalms for the people…in order that the Word of God may be conserved among the people through singing also.” Luther composed a lot of the hymns for the Lutheran church himself for the people to sing. Despite these changes from Catholicism, some of the larger churches still kept a lot of the Latin liturgy and complex polyphonic music while the smaller churches definitely had a tendency to adopt Luther’s Deudsche Messe or German

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