# The summarized history of the Christian church 8: Breakup #2 - The Explosion

In 1517 in Germany, Martin Luther very bluntly asserted his opinion of the Catholic Church's doctrines with 95 Theses:

- 1-4 - we must repent ourselves and act on it, and the clergy aren't part of that experience
- 5-7 - the pope can only announce God's forgiveness of sin, but can't do it himself
- 8-13 - the church leadership can't do anything directly about a person's spiritual payment for sins
- 14-29 - only God manages purgatory, so church leadership can't change anything about it
- 30-95 - indulgences are a corrupt money-extraction scheme, and following Christ is the only way to enter heaven

There were echoes of resistance against the Catholic Church *before* Martin Luther, but his message was the trigger to the Protestant Reformation.

In 1521, Emperor Charles V issued the Diet/Edict of Worms that made this contrast *abundantly* clear: nobody was allowed to read or distribute Luther's ideas.

In 1522, Martin Luther went on to translate the Bible into German, which was the plain language of the region.

In 1525, William Tyndale translated the Bible into English, which was the plain language of *that* region.

In the 1520s, Hundrych Zwingli in Switzerland publicly attacked the custom of fasting during Lent. He discussed a wide variety of topics, including clerical marriage and the use of images in places of worship. He also broke the tradition of the Catholic Mass by using [biblical exegesis](bible-study.md) to go systematically through the entire New Testament, and introduced a new communion liturgy to replace the Mass. While Luther started Protestantism, Zwingli started the **Anabaptists**.

There was another problem the Catholic Church hadn't considered, starting in 1492. Christopher Columbus had discovered the New World, and people were starting to colonize it. This meant anyone willing to take on the risks of starting life in a new place could be as self-governing as they wanted, with much less religious influence from the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church's authority was under attack from more than the heretics, too. Henry VIII wanted to legally divorce, but the Catholic Church forbade it, so he simply broke off the **Church of England** in 1534 to fulfill his specific desire (which had been around but until that point was aligned with the Roman Catholic Church).

**Lutherans** closely followed and advanced the idea of Pietism (individual piety and devotion to God is most important, *not* the corporate body of worshipers), and they culturally froze around the year 1534.