The Protestant Reformation Changed Christianity

The Protestant Reformation changed Christianity from a religion with one omnipotent power, the Catholic Church, to one that encompasses new beliefs differing from the universal church. Religious factions within Christendom began to grow against the corruption of the Catholic Church which lead to the protest for reform. A rise in complaints against the church threatened the social structure of the monarch from the Pope down and challenged the doctrine and practices which provoked the movement towards religious change. As groups began to function independently of the orthodox church both in association and in theology, several theologians would gain notoriety in Europe. These reformers sought to make improvements from within, by addressing

Luther, who was a clergyman, as well as a teacher at the University of Wittenberg, abhorred the practice of confusing the free gift of grace with the controlling system of indulgences and good works. In response to the abuse of this penitential system of the Catholic church, Luther wrote the ninety-five theses offering his criticisms. In the Ninety-five Theses, he deals with the context of the indulgence system. Luther contended that the pope did not have rights to claim whether or not salvation will be granted to those purchasing indulgences, and that the principles undergirding the actions of the saints were not scripturally

For instance, Protestantism had limited appeal in parts of eastern Europe. Traditional Catholic piety and customary beliefs had its roots firmly established in the religious system were as the reform brought about many forms of Christianity which lack the kind of accommodations that helped affirm the universal faith. Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms separated the domain of ecclesiastical and secular authority which described the eventual secularization of Western society. The Protestant reform offered a radically simple way of life, but not necessarily an easy one. Ozment reports that about half of former reformers returned back to Catholicism by the end of the sixteenth century. The goal of the movement initially was to reform the practices of the Roman Catholic church, but scholars such as Max Weber claims that the Reformation inadvertently solidified the principle of absolving religious anxieties with effective works. (Ozment, 1993). Weber and like thinking scholars associated the Reformation movement with that of a self-absorbed worldly culture increasingly independent of all religion. Still, others maintain that this was an overly ambitious attempt to inflict the uneducated reluctant members of society with a new Christian way of living. Furthermore, suggesting that the