Protestants

Protestant Christianity begins five hundred years ago with Martin Luther, a stubborn monk whose rebellion set off one of the most creative and most destructive movements in human history. Today it counts a billion people worldwide. Alec Ryrie follows the men and women who made and remade this quarrelsome faith.

This is a global history, not a history of one church or country. Its people claim life-changing encounters with God and travel to every corner of the world. They demand new freedoms and try out new systems of government.

Newly accessible Bibles reshape their inner lives, and that change spills outward into social upheaval and political revolution. Protestants end up on both sides of the great ideological fights of modern times. Some back liberalism, imperialism, slavery, Nazism, communism, apartheid and women's rights, while others oppose them.

Across these divisions Ryrie finds shared ground: devotion to God, a belief in self-determination, and a willingness to fight for conviction. The book closes in the present, as the faith takes deep root in China, Africa and Latin America. Its question is how that restless energy shaped the modern world and keeps shaping it.