The Protestant Reformation

983 Words2 Pages

There are many types of protestant churches existing today including Baptist, one of the largest denominations in America. This was not always the case before the 16th. To understand how it all began, it is important to go back in history when the Roman Catholic Church was the only church in Western Europe. This paper will look at the history of the protestant reformation movement, its causes, and how it changed the church (Cameron, 2012).
During the 1500s, the Roman Catholic Church was very powerful in western Europe. The church controlled both spiritual and political matters, although there were a number of other political forces at work. Initially, the reformation began as an effort to reform the church by a number of priests who were not in agreement with what the felt were false doctrines as well as ecclesiastic malpractice. Reformers were particularly in opposition to the selling of indulgences in addition to the selling and purchasing of the clerical offices, which they perceived as corruption within the church.
Between the 1300s and 1400, the church was plagued by internal power struggles, and was ruled by 3 popes at the same time. Popes, who claimed temporal and spiritual powers would command armies, make political alliances and even wage war.
With the corruption and power struggles, the church did little for the people, which resulted in a number of attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church by a number of individuals who included John Wyclif as well as Jan Hus among others. However, it was not until martin Luther, a German Augustinian monk, posted 95 theses on the door of the church in the university town of Wittenberg that the movement began gaining adherents in Scandinavia, Scotland, German states as well as some...

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...astated Germany and many lives were lost.
On the positive side, the reformation had a lot of influence on the personal life of many, and resulted in the formation of the protestant churches of today.

Works Cited

Brake, mary jo; weaver, david (2009). Introduction to christianity (4th ed.). Belmont, calif.: wadsworth. Pp. 92–93. Isbn 978-0-495-09726-6.
Cameron, euan (2012). The european reformation (2nd ed.). Oxford university press.
Simon, edith (1966). Great ages of man: the reformation. Time-life books. Pp. 120–121. Isbn 0-662-27820-8., popular and well-illustrated
Spalding, martin (2010). The history of the protestant reformation; in germany and switzerland, and in england, ireland, scotland, the netherlands, france, and northern europe. General books llc.
Bradshaw, brendan. "the reformation and the counter-reformation," history today (1983) 33#11 pp 42–45.

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The Protestant Reformation

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Reformation and Music