What Are The Causes Of The Protestant Reformation Thematic Essay

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The Protestant Reformation was a major 16th century conflict throughout Europe that divided The Catholic Church into different religions because of their views of how the churches were being run. In 1517, one of the significant events of The Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther (a German Augustinian monk) posted 95 theses on the church door in the university town of Wittenberg. In a part of that document/article it states “Christians are to be taught that they buying of indulgences is a matter of free choice, not commanded. Christians are to be taught that the pope, in granting indulgences, needs and thus desires their devout prayer more than their money.“ Thus meaning when Martin Luther published his 95 theses it was to attack the Catholic …show more content…

The word/religion Lutheran comes from the founder (Martin Luther) and after years of practicing this religion; hundreds of new places of worship were developed and formed, making this spread throughout Germany, Scandinavia, throughout Europe in various forms. The word/religion Anglican means England and the founder (King Henry VIII) was the King of England at the time. Anglicanism was spread by overseas colonization, settlement, and missionary work; there are more than 80 million Anglicans in the world today. Most live in Africa and Asia and are not of British descendent anymore. Martin Luther and the Lutheran religion split from the Catholic Church because of the controversies and contradicting statements of the church. The church believed that a person could just simply buy a slip (indulgence) and speed up the process between purgatory and heaven or just skip purgatory all together and go right to heaven. Martin Luther was disturbed by this because buying an indulgence should not be a justification for getting a person into heaven. This resulted in people throwing their morals away because they could buy a safety paper in the end, which is the wrong message to teach