Luther and his Progeny: 500 Years of Protestantism and Its Consequences

In October 2016, in Lund, Sweden, Pope Francis met with Lutheran church leaders to inaugurate a year of commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the posting of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses in 1517, the first salvo in his rebellion against the Catholic Church. What was the nature of that revolution of half a millennium ago? Upon what new course did it launch human history? What were its hidden and many consequences? And why does Pope Francis’s proposed cooperation of Catholic and Lutheran churches matter?

This volume contains 12 illuminating essays—based on lectures delivered at the 2016 Roman Forum Summer Symposium on Lake Garda, Italy. The authors assess the impact of Luther’s newfangled theological and philosophical doctrines on faith, law, ethics, economics, and science—as well as his enormous role in the devastation of Christendom and the creation in its place of the contemporary secular culture of the West.

While the authors acknowledge that the Reformation is not “the sole cause of the social problems of modernity” but rather “one major cause in a chain of causes,” they make it completely clear that there is “nothing about Luther and his Protestant rebellion that we should celebrate.”

With essays from John Rao, Chris Ferrara, Brian McCall, and eight others, Luther and His Progeny is a signal contribution toward understanding the Protestant revolt.