Martin Luther: Born 1483, he is said to have been a freedom fighter who thought of himself as a simple Christian. While a law student at Erfurt University, Luther was struck by lightening and survived! He took this to be a sign from God and entered Erfurt U's Augustinian monastery. In 1512, age 29, he took a teaching post at Wittenberg University. He came to believe (as opposed to the teachings of the Church of Rome) that justification for eternal salvation was through the grace of God, not by good works.

Now, importantly, diversity was a thing to be stamped out. Societies worldwide valued conformity to the utmost. There was no separation of church and state...a nation's religion was the basis for government. Though nations had differing names and locations, most were firmly controlled by the Roman Catholic Church...this church having power to a degree of "awesome" that we can't comprehend today. Yet Luther would, enabled by the power of the Holy Spirit, stand against Rome.

As he developed this thinking, he posted his "95 Theses" on the door of the church in Wittenberg in 1517, setting off a movement that gained adherents. Luther wanted the Bible in language that the ordinary person could read...not just in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew that only priests could read. Pope Leo declared his views heretical. Luther, emboldened,  encouraged a revolt of the clergy against the church at Rome...he simply wished to reform the church, not overthrow it. Charles V demanded that he recant his views, and Luther refused and was officially branded an outlaw targeted for execution...but he survived. This brought on the Reformation movement, which, when the Roman Catholic Church refused reformation, exploded into the Protestant Reformation. 

While some might have thought of Luther as sort of an ecclesiastical terrorist, Luther also wrote about another form of theological terrorism: "The Kingdom of Mohammed is a kingdom of revenge, of wrath, and dissolution." He died in 1546.

(posted about 2002; latest addition 1 November 2004)