Five hundred years ago, an obscure monk challenged the authority of the pope with a radical new vision of what Christianity could be. The revolution he unwittingly set in motion has toppled governments, upended social norms, and transformed millions of people's understanding of their relationship with God. In this dazzling global history charting five centuries of innovation and change, Alec Ryrie makes the case that the world we live in was indelibly shaped by Protestants. Protestants introduces us to the men and women who defined this quarrelsome faith. Some turned to their newly accessible Bibles to justify bold acts of political opposition, others to support a new understanding of how they should live. Protestants are conditioned to fight for their beliefs, and if you look at any of the great confrontations of the last five centuries, you will find them defining the debate on both sides: for and against monarchy, colonialism, slavery, fascism, communism, temperance, and war. Protes

"Recent studies of the English Reformation have tended either to emphasise the vitality of traditional religious culture, or to shift the focus to the reigns of Elizabeth and the early Stuarts. As a result the men and women who once seemed central to the story - those who became Protestants in the early and middle decades of the sixteenth century - have tended to be marginalised." "This collection of essays by nine leading British and American scholars draws attention back to the critical early years, and to the importance of the evangelical movement in the making of England's religious revolution. By considering themes such as conversion and martyrdom, gender and authority, printing and propaganda, and the long shadow of medieval religious culture, the authors show early English Protestantism to have been a complex and many-headed movement. Rather than assuming the onward march of Protestantism, the essays reveal the unpredictable and deeply contested process by which an English Prote