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Protestant Reformation Leaders

Martin Luther and John Calvin were two of the most important leaders of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. Martin Luther sparked the Reformation by nailing his 95 Theses to a church door in 1517 to protest corrupt Catholic practices. John Calvin agreed with Luther's teachings but stressed predestination and interpreted communion as a spiritual experience rather than physical. Other key reformers included Ulrich Zwingli in Switzerland, who attacked fasting and images in worship; Thomas Cranmer in England, who helped establish the Church of England; and Martin Bucer, who tried to unite Protestants and Catholics in Germany.

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100 views1 page

Protestant Reformation Leaders

Martin Luther and John Calvin were two of the most important leaders of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. Martin Luther sparked the Reformation by nailing his 95 Theses to a church door in 1517 to protest corrupt Catholic practices. John Calvin agreed with Luther's teachings but stressed predestination and interpreted communion as a spiritual experience rather than physical. Other key reformers included Ulrich Zwingli in Switzerland, who attacked fasting and images in worship; Thomas Cranmer in England, who helped establish the Church of England; and Martin Bucer, who tried to unite Protestants and Catholics in Germany.

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Sean Sanchez
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Protestant leaders and their reforms/teachings

Protestant Reformation, is the religious revolution that took place in the Western church in the 16th
century. Its greatest leaders undoubtedly were Martin Luther and John Calvin. Having far-reaching
political, economic, and social effects, the Reformation became the basis for the founding of
Protestantism, one of the three major branches of Christianity.

Martin Luther was a German monk and Professor of Theology at the University of Wittenberg. Luther
sparked the Reformation in 1517 by presenting his "95 Theses. These theses were a list of statements
that expressed Luther's concerns about certain Church practices mainly, the sale of indulgences, but
they were based on Luther's deeper concerns with the Church doctrine. Martin Luther claimed that
what distinguished him from previous reformers was that while they attacked corruption in the life of
the church, he went to the theological root of the problem, the perversion of the church’s doctrine of
redemption and grace.

Another important leader of protestant reformation is John Calvin, a French lawyer who fled France
after his conversion to the Protestant cause. He was the leading French Protestant reformer and the
most important figure in the second generation of the Protestant Reformation. Calvin agreed with
Luther’s teaching on justification by faith. However, he found a more positive place for law within the
Christian community than did Luther. Calvin also stressed the doctrine of predestination and interpreted
Holy Communion as a spiritual partaking of the body and blood of Christ. The different perspective of
John Calvin brought upon a movement called Calvinism or the Reformed church/tradition

Huldrych Zwingli was a leader of the Reformation in Switzerland. Zwingli became the Leutpriester
(people's priest) of the Grossmünster in Zürich where he began to preach ideas on reform of the
Catholic Church. He attacked the custom of fasting during Lent. In his publications, he noted corruption
in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, promoted clerical marriage, and attacked the use of images in places of
worship. He agreed with Luther in the centrality of the doctrine of justification by faith, but he espoused
a different understanding of the Holy Communion. Luther had rejected the Catholic church’s doctrine of
transubstantiation, according to which the bread and wine in Holy Communion became the actual body
and blood of Christ, while Zwingli claimed that entailed a spiritual presence of Christ and a declaration of
faith by the recipients.

Thomas was a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury. He helped build the case
for the annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which was one of the causes of the
separation of the English Church from union with the Holy See. He was responsible for establishing the
first doctrinal and liturgical structures of the reformed Church of England. He wrote and compiled the
first two editions of the Book of Common Prayer, a complete liturgy for the English Church.

Martin Bucer was a German Protestant reformer in the Reformed tradition based in Strasbourg who
influenced Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican doctrines and practices. Bucer believed that the Catholics in
the Holy Roman Empire could be convinced to join the Reformation, he tried to unite Protestants and
Catholics to create a German national church separate from Rome. Bucer's efforts to reform the church
resulted in his excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church. Bucer was exiled to England, where,
under the guidance of Thomas Cranmer, he was able to influence the second revision of the Book of
Common Prayer.

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