Nilesh Jasani's Reviews > Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World

The reformation paved the way for the renaissance and political revolutions that together birthed modernity as we know it. For an outsider like this reviewer, the book is a concise and readable summary of one of the most seminal historic episodes. For those who know even somewhat about the rise of Protestantism, there might be precious little as the author does not attempt to uncover anything new.

The last chapter - bar its final section that tries to link the current US political morass to the events of the sixteenth century - is the most edifying. It all started with an individual's struggle with the far-away Catholic headquarters' indulgences and corruption. The resistance, as the book shows, soon morphed into casting doubts on numerous theological issues that the Church had settled through decrees. A host of coincident forces - political, ethnological, technological - forces played a role, as did the circumstances of key individuals. The apparent result was the reformation, but it was much more.

The implications from the querying of the edicts and not believing in anything arbitrarily branded preordained (including the "rights" of kings and monarchs) sparked a wildfire transforming humanity everywhere. Martin Luther's repudiation immediately led to a fragmentation of the ecclesiastical structure, which in turn gave rise to the first instances of pluralism and tolerance a few decades later (it was not an easy process). The use of reason and senses to better understand the world was not far away, nor was the tendency to treat the rulers as just regular people who could be cast away when deemed incompetent. The rest of the world caught on, albeit with a lag of a century or more.

A good primer for those not too aware of this history.