Issue 118: The Reformation continues (and so does our four-issue series!)
The new issue of Christian History: a Swiss preacher, a printing press, an English king, and thousands of angry peasants
Christian History's issue 115, "Luther Leads the Way," told the story of the church in the late Middle Ages and the efforts for reform that culminated in Luther's shocking theses and world-shaking ideas. Now we've released the second issue in our four-issue series on the Reformation—reminding us that Luther was not alone. At the same time Luther was puzzling over justification, a Swiss preacher named Huldrych Zwingli was also questioning traditional teachings.
The ideas they both championed took hold—among Anabaptists who claimed Zwingli had not gone far enough, among peasants who thought the same about Luther, and across a whole continent as theology and calls to action spread by means of a new technology, the printing press.
The peasants took new thoughts of freedom into the political realm and demanded rights from their overlords. Priests and nuns married. Church art was forcefully, often violently, removed. New roles opened up to women while others closed down. Rulers afraid of political and social instability attacked others who believed differently. A philadering king's search for a male heir birthed a new English church. And almost everybody drowned the Anabaptists, whose ideas were seen as so destabilizing to the political landscape that they could not be allowed to continue.
Relive this turbulent time in issue 118, "The People's Reformation." You can read it online and order your print copies here!