Religion and the Reformation
... than that of the pope. However, in 1450 this view lost support and the pope was the supreme figure in the Church. The religious reformation of the renaissance was a pivotal event that had influenced religion in the twentieth-century by the emergence of Protestants by Martin Luther in protest of the Catholic Church. This tenacious German monk was a man who expressed his opinions freely at an instance where many were reluctant to articulate their outlook on the way of life during the renaissance. “Martin Luther stands in history as one of those unique forces, an individual who by force of will and by his ideas changed the world fundamentally.” At this stage of the renaissance, many allowed the beliefs and rituals of the Catholic Church to embody their soul and permitted religious views to cloud their ability to think freely and form ideas based on their own moral code, as opposed to what Catholics portrayed to be right and wrong through G-d’s judgement. Because of the Catholic Church’s manipulation and misuse of power among the German people by selling indulgences, Luther made it his duty to set an example to the citizens of Germany to think freely and give humans an individual sense of religion. He did this by writing 95 theses, which were statements against the Catholic Church, and posted them on the town’s Church door. This document attacked certain policies and beliefs of the Catholic Church and the authority of the Pope. Luther was followed by reformers and produced a mass movement entitled the Protestant Reformation. Luther initially saw himself as a great reformer of the Catholic church, a simple man who thought the force of his ideas would single-handedly redirect the Leviathan of the church. However, in the end, Luther divided Christianity into two separate churches and that second division, Protestantism, which means to protest, would divide over the next four centuries into a near infinity of separate churches. For the reformers, the Bible was now the ultimate authority for all matters of religious belief and practice. This led to individuals interpreting the Bible in their own distinctive ways, and recurrently forming new denominations and sects that they felt were closer to Jesus' intentions for the church. There are numerous sub-divisions of Protestantism, such as the Pentecostal religion, Seventh Day Adventist, etcetera. As a result of the Reformation led by Martin Luther and the many revolutionized branches of Protestantism, in the twentieth-century, Protestantism remains a key element in Christianity. The religious reformation of the renaissance was a pivotal event that had influenced religion in the twentieth-century by rulers such as King Henry VIII modifying the rules of religion. Henry VIII was the determined king of England who was willing to sacrifice anything in order to conceive a son who would one day become heir to his throne. Henry VIII possessed considerable political insight, and he provided England with a visible and active national leader in himself. Although Henry VIII gave Archbishop Thomas Wolsey the freedom to rule England until he failed to provide King Henry with his desired annulment from Katherine of Aragon, once Henry gained control of the British Government, he began to alter the face of...