Celebrating Martin Luther
Martin Luther lived five hundred years ago. He was born at the dawn of the modern era. He became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation. A key technology in birthing the modern era was the printing press. It also helped drive the Reformation. The printing press propelled the spread of information. This moved a premodern society into the modern era.
The same technology broadcast a message of spiritual enlightenment to a people poised for religious change. We politely refer to the transformation that emerged as the Protestant Reformation, but the word revolution might better describe the spiritual rebellion that followed.
The fuse that ignited this arguably came from a list of ninety-five concerns that this German monk had about the abuse of one specific church practice: the sale of indulgences, which, at the risk of oversimplification, allowed people to buy their salvation. We call his talking points Ninety-Five Theses.
While the words indulgence and theses may make our heads spin and send us running to something less confusing, it’s worth the effort to understand what they mean. When we do, the religious reformation that took place five hundred years ago will make more sense to us. And this knowledge may help us consider more reforms we need to make today.
That’s the goal of this book.
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Five hundred years ago, Luther’s followers used the technology of the day, the printing press, to spread his message. Had he lived today, they might have taken to Twitter instead. Therefore, we’ll respectfully reformat his ninety-five theses into ninety-five tweets for today’s audience, which will better align with our shorter attention spans.
Then we’ll look at ninety-five more tweets that might apply to the church now, followed by ninety-five tweetable discussion questions.
Are you ready to explore Luther’s ninety-five? First, we need some background...
