Quotes from Alec Ryrie

We cannot understand the modern age without understanding the dynamic history of Protestant Christianity.

Luther's revolution had, like all great revolutions, failed. But like all great revolutions, it had created a new world.

That we should all have a say in choosing our own rulers and that those rulers 'powers over us should be limited—these principles are in obvious tension, as every society that has tried to combine liberty and democracy has discovered. Without Protestantism and its peculiar preoccupations, that strange and marvelous synthesis could never have come into being as it has.

Protestants are Christians whose religion derives ultimately from Martin Luther's rebellion against the Catholic Church. They are a tree with many tangled branches but a single trunk.

The simple justification for the elders and their work was Christ's detailed prescription in Matthew's Gospel for how Christians should deal with sinners among the faithful: first private admonition, then progressively more formal reprimands, and finally, if repentance was not forthcoming, expulsion from the community.

Luther was horrified. Partly this was because, for all his spiritual radicalism, he was deeply socially conservative. His instinct was to obey rightful authorities, to respect social hierarchies, and to preserve good order. For him, Christian freedom meant inner liberation, not political upheaval.

The kind of sociopolitical structure that Protestantism engenders—based on free inquiry, participatory politics, and limited government—tends to favor market economics.

The real novelty of our own time is not the prominence of the religious Right but the silence of the religious Left.

Some Protestants insist that Protestantism is "Bible Christianity," a religion that takes the whole, inspired Bible as the only and final authoritative source of truth.

John Calvin, brought characteristic rigor to the question. Luther dreamed of good princes, disliked law on principle, and had little interest in institutions. As a result, Lutheran churches ended up with a mishmash of governing structures. Calvin, by contrast, had trained as a lawyer, knew that structures matter, and favored more participatory government.

Luther disliked the idea of secret meetings, which he said reminded him of rats. Calvin had found a way of forming the rats into a choir and then drilling them to march.

Protestant princes believed the Gospel their ministers taught and valued the moral order, sobriety, and social cohesiveness their churches fostered. All sides usually rubbed along well enough.

Martin Luther was the Reformation's indispensable firestarter. Would there have been a Reformation if young Martin had followed his father's wishes and become a lawyer? Who knows, but the Reformation as it actually happened is unimaginable without him.

More important, however, Henry's book found its mark in Rome. He had long resented the pope's gift of glorious titles to the kings of Spain ("the Catholic King") and France ("the Most Christian King"), while England was left out. Now, finally and after some negotiation, Henry got his prize and became "Defender of the Faith.

The Reformation became notorious for two fat men. The first, Martin Luther, we have already met. The second, King Henry VIII of England.

Luther's fire caught because fuel had been quietly building up for some time. The principal fuel was desire for reform of the church.

Martin Luther was a friar as well as a professor. When a man in his position accused the church of moneygrubbing, people were ready to listen.

It turned out that the Germans' modest and conscientious reforms were only a starting point for more rapacious regimes to come.