That’s an excellent column, Paul. I’ll take the comparison to Luther’s 95 Theses any day; it’s very apt. Luther nailing his “blog” on the outside of the church (pro fano ? the origin of our terms “profane” and “profanity,” the latter of which you’ll note I used deliberately in my previous post) sparked a flowering of freedom as it defied the Church leaders who had monopolized Scripture, keeping it locked in a foreign tongue that parishioners could not understand and thereby arrogating for themselves total control over interpretation, a policy rife with abuse.
Maney mentioned Gutenberg’s press ? because of that, Scripture could be printed in the vernacular and people learned that they could read and interpret Scriptures for themselves. This indeed led to Protestantism ? the root of the term is “protest” against the Church ? as well as a host of different new sects (e.g., at the time of the English Revolution, there were Levellers, Diggers, Baptists, Quakers, Muggletonians, Seekers, and Ranters, among others).
