9781422274163

or Armenian Orthodox churches. In the sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church was challenged by protests against abuses by the clergy. People such as Martin Luther, a Roman Catholic monk from Germany, and the Frenchman John Calvin led opposition to certain practices of the Roman Catholic leadership. It was a time of upheaval in Europe. The invention of the printing press made the Bible more available and there was social

In 1517 Martin Luther nailed a list of his complaints about the Roman Catholic Church to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany. His call to reform the Church led to a major division of Christianity, known as the Protestant Reformation.

unrest. The time was ripe for a change. The reform movement became known as the Protestant Reformation. The rulers of Europe’s many small kingdoms and principalities either defended Catholicism or adopted the teachings of one of the Protestant denominations: the Lutherans, Calvinists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and so on. Fueled in part by religious differences, conflicts between

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Contemporary Issues: Religious Freedom