Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World

On the 500th anniversary of Luther’s theses, a landmark history of the revolutionary faith that shaped the modern world.

＂Ryrie writes that his aim ’is to persuade you that we cannot understand the modern age without understanding the dynamic history of Protestant Christianity.’ To which I reply: Mission accomplished.＂
-Jon Meacham, author of American Lion and Thomas Jefferson

Five hundred years ago a stubborn German monk challenged the Pope with a radical vision of what Christianity could be. The revolution he set in motion toppled governments, upended social norms and transformed millions of people’s understanding of their relationship with God. In this dazzling history, Alec Ryrie makes the case that we owe many of the rights and freedoms we have cause to take for granted--from free speech to limited government--to our Protestant roots.

Fired up by their faith, Protestants have embarked on courageous journeys into the unknown like many rebels and refugees who made their way to our shores. Protestants created America and defined its special brand of entrepreneurial diligence. Some turned to their bibles to justify bold acts of political opposition, others to spurn orthodoxies and insight on their God-given rights. Above all Protestants have fought for their beliefs, establishing a tradition of principled opposition and civil disobedience that is as alive today as it was 500 years ago. In this engrossing and magisterial work, Alec Ryrie makes the case that whether or not you are yourself a Protestant, you live in a world shaped by Protestants.

Alec Ryrie was born in London and grew up in Washington DC. He graduated from Cambridge University with a double First in History and received a doctorate in Theology from Oxford University. He is now Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University and a licensed minister in his local church. An expert on the Reformation in England and Scotland, he is the author of the prizewinning Being Protestant in Reformation Britain and The Sorcerer’s Tale: Faith and Fraud in Tudor England and is co-editor of the Journal of Ecclesiastical History.