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Prydain, Westmark and what war is really like: A tribute to Lloyd Alexander
2007-06-14 17:45:00
In adolescence, I maintained a fierce allegiance to three countries: Narnia, Middle Earth and Prydain. Of the three fantasy series, Lloyd Alexander 's Prydain chronicles were the funniest. Taran, the assistant pig-keeper - the main protagonist of the Prydain series - also struck a more intimate chord within me than did hobbits or upper middle-class British children. Like me, Taran was an awkward kid who yearned to be heroic. From him I learned becoming truly heroic usually involves giving up dreams of heroism.Another thing that set Prydain apart from Narnia and Middle Earth was Lloyd Alexander's revulsion of war and the toll it takes on ordinary people whose lands become battlegrounds. Taran's mentors take more pride in domestic pursuits than they do in their war records, one of them telling him, "I have learned there is greater honor in a field well-plowed than a field steeped in blood."Alexander expanded on this antiwar theme in his Westmark trilogy, which for my money contains ...
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Homosexuality and Gospel Christianity
2007-06-07 16:44:00
Should the church ordain ‘homosexuals?’ Should it recognize committed relationships between men and men or women and women. Should it allow lovers of the same sex to worship or take communion in a Christian community? These questions are usually framed in terms of a biblical morality: the Bible condemns homosexuality and so must we. And yet we resolve very few, if any, other moral or sexual issues in this way. The church has found ways of condemning sexuality that is accepted by the Bible (concubinage and polygamy, for example) and accepting what the Bible unambiguously condemns (adultery and divorce, for example). No one proposes we return to the Holiness Code’s assessment of adultery and its consequences (stoning women who sleep with someone who is not their husband). Neither is Lot’s proposal that his daughters be given to a crowd of men to be gang raped (Genesis 19:8) taken up in our reflections on family values. We do not look to Canada and Mexico, as neighboring...
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Where Are PC(USA) Leaders Combatting Fundamentalism in our Midst?
2007-05-25 17:13:00
When will the PC(USA) ever come to terms with the grave damage that has been done both to itself and to this country by fundamentalism? Both our church and the federal government have been radically changed, and not for the better of their missions, by the radical far right. Former President Carter and others have named and protested that radical change in government. Where is the ecclesiastical leadership (as distinct from theological and academic challenge) that does the same for the ecumenical Church?Given that fundamentalism continues to be presented as “Christian,” even though it has launched and over decades has sustained effective attacks on much that the Christian faith affirms, the churches bear the greater responsibility for not having stopped the progress of fundamentalism, not even when the distinctions began to blur between evangelical and fundamentalist groups, goals, and tenets.When Karl Barth came to this country in 1962 and gave his lectures under the title “E...
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Bill Ramsay, longtime pastor, WJK author, and recently a Thoughtful Christi
2007-05-21 23:06:00
Bill Ramsay, longtime pastor, WJK author, and recently a Thoughtful Christian writer, died today. He is survived by his wife, DeVere. He was the author most recently of Church History 101 (2004), as well as Second Corinthians IBS (2004), The Westminster Guide to the Books of the Bible (1994), The Laymen’s Guide to the New Testament (1986), and Four Modern Prophets (1986). His wife and family are in our thoughts and prayers.
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RELIGION INFLUENCES INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
2007-04-30 16:24:00
The recent debates by candidates for president in 2008 indicate that the Democrats are uniting in condemning our current foreign policy, especially the war in Iraq, and not all the Republicans approve. Polls indicate that most of us want to get out. Personally, I wrote my senators and my congresswoman before we ever got in and urged that we not go to war in Iraq. Perhaps Madeleine Albright’s latest book is even more relevant now that the Iraq conflict has become so much a civil war between religious sects.Sometimes former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright sounds almost like atheist writers Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris in showing how religion has been the basis of war after war. Nevertheless Albright repeatedly affirms that religion can be a force for peace and that diplomats ought to recognize its power for good as well as evil. Her latest book is called The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs(HarperCollins, 2006). Reared a Roman Catholic,...
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A Time for Mourning
2007-04-19 20:48:00
The Thoughtful Christian staff joins the chorus of prayers for the families, friends, classmates, and colleagues of all who were affected by the tragedy at Virginia Tech on Monday, April 16.While this tragedy is too large and complex to be discussed in just one study, we do suggest that you consider the following to see if they meet the needs of your group and situation.Where Is God When Disaster Strikes? (1 session) Forgiveness (2 sessions) Gun Control: Is There a Christian Response? (1 session) Excerpt from Letters to a Young Doubter (by William Sloane Coffin)For more information please visit http://www.thethoughtfulchristian.com/Mai n/Mourning .aspHere is a link to resources being offered by The Presbyterian Church (USA). http://www.pcusa.org/peacemaking/virginia tech.htm
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Dreams, Where Have You Gone?: Clues for Unity and Hope
2007-04-03 15:33:00
Sometimes history offers hope. With congregations threatening to split off from their denominations–Presbyterian, Episcopal, and others, a story of union offers hope and guidance. Dreams , Where Have You Gone?: Clues for Unity and Hope ,by William G. McAtee (Witherspoon Press, 2007) is a brand new 434 page history of American Presbyterianism, with special emphasis on the union Presbytery movement. Financed in part by the McLean Foundation, the book is based on recorded interviews with 98 people, forming more than 2,500 written pages of oral history. Presbyterians have a history of wars. McAtee begins his story with the battles of Hastings and Stanford Bridge. He sees also a remnant of the old Scottish clan system, not always peaceful, at work in twentieth century Presbyterianism, especially in the south. The nineteenth century brought the division of the Old School and New School Presbyterians. And the Civil War brought yet another split from which Presbyterians and indeed the wh...

My Lai and the Iraq Invasion
2007-03-29 16:40:00
Last month marked the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the thirty-ninth anniversary of the My Lai massacre, in which U.S. soldiers slaughtered more than 400 Vietnamese women, children and elders.Gene Stoltzfus, who would become director of Christian Peacemaker Teams, went to Vietnam in 1963 as an education and development worker. He resigned from his U.S.-funded position five years later, because he thought the government was using it as a fig leaf to hide the enormous harm the U.S. military was inflicting on the Vietnamese (two million of whom died by the war's end.) As he was traveling around the U.S. in 1968, speaking about what he had witnessed, he heard about My Lai from colleagues. Knowing that similar atrocities had occurred and gone unreported, he did not expect the world to pay much attention. However, the story hit the media in 1969 and My Lai became symbol of all that was evil about America's involvement in Vietnam.In 2003 and 2004, Stoltzfus trav...
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Webs of Corruption and Resistance
2007-03-19 15:18:00
When I got back from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in Fall 2005, I contacted "Tikkun Magazine" and pitched an article to an editor I've worked with in the past about how armed groups there used rape as a weapon of war. She was interested, but said she was leery of representing Africans as savages, because too many North American media outlets have perpetuated that racist stereotype. I told her that the Congolese we met who were ministering to rape survivors connected their nation's tragedy to Western corporations who were dumping enormous amounts of armaments into the Congo and benefiting from the pillage of the DRC's vast mineral resources. That connection was the angle she wanted for the piece, she said. Before the article appeared, she passed on a draft to a colleague who was editing a follow-up book to John Perkins' 2004 bestseller, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"(more than 500,000 sold.) He asked me to adapt the Tikkun article into a chapter for the ...
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Christian Peace Witness for Iraq - Following the Prince of Peace
2007-03-12 16:12:00
Friends,The Christian Peace Witness (www.christianpeacewitness.org) is a week away. Next Friday night, March 16th, there will be thousands of Christians who will gather to worship together at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. at 7:00 p.m. Following our worship service, we will create a joyous procession to the White House, celebrating the Prince of Peace as we walk three and a half miles down Massachusetts Avenue. Worship will continue in Lafayette Park in front of the White House, and at around 10:00 or 10:30, we will surround the White House in a circle of light and prayers for peace and an end to the war in Iraq .Simultaneously, there will be close to one hundred other services going on across the country as Christians gather to insist that we are united by the Jesus who chose the way of the cross. Together, we stand against this war.As of now, close to 3,500 people have registered on-line as participants, with more signing on each day. Perhaps most significantly, over 70...

In the Shadow of the Ark – Provoost’s Novel About Noah and the Flood
2007-03-05 20:44:00
In In the Shadow of the Arkbest-selling author Anne Provoostgives us a novel based on the account in Genesis 6-9 of Noah and the deluge. Provoost sees the story of Noah as among other things the mother of all disaster stories. She packs it with violence, sex, suspense, psychological insight, and–yes–some theological speculation about the God who destroys humankind but saves the unworthy elect. The story is told through the eyes of Re Jana, a dark-skinned outsider, whose father, a master boat-builder, comes to aid Noah in the huge construction project. A whole city of builders, wives, children, zoo keepers, and more have gathered, and nearby are a remarkable assortment of animals. Re Jana is soon involved in an illicit love affair with Ham, Noah’s youngest son. Since there is not even a lake for many miles, most speculate that this, the world’s largest building, is to be some kind of sacrifice to Noah’s God, “the Unnameable.” At length Noah announces its purpose, ...
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An Inconvenient Truth -- A Prophetic Call to Action
2007-02-28 23:00:00
In the early moments of An Inconvenient Truth , Al Gore walks onto a stage at a college campus and introduces himself as the “ex-next President of the United States.” His clever introduction elicited laughter from the audience and revealed a surprisingly engaging side to the ex-Vice President. The Al Gore that is presented in this extraordinary documentary about global warming is a far cry from the stiff and sometimes surly Democratic candidate who huffed and puffed after almost every word uttered by George W. Bush during two Presidential debates in 2000. Here Gore exudes confidence and knowledge about global warming without being arrogant and concern for the well-being of the planet and its inhabits without being gleeful that many of his predictions are coming true. The facts he presents and the charts he uses to support them are as convincing as anything the politician has asserted since his emergence as a major political figure more than two decades ago.During its one hour...
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A Race to the Bottom in the Philippines
2007-02-28 21:22:00
A friend of mine spent a year in Jedda, Saudi Arabia. At her dentist’s office, she noticed several non-Arab hygienists. When she asked about their country of origin, the dentist told her, “Those young women were dentists in the Phil ippines .” They earned more working as hygienists in Saudi Arabia than they did working as dentists in their homeland.These women were among millions of Filipinos driven overseas by the policies of the World Bank. One in ten now work outside the country so their families can survive and/or their children can receive an education. The founders of the World Bank would have been distressed to see the monstrous effects their creation has had on poor nations. In 1944, they noted that the collapse of the German economy contributed to the rise of fascism. Accordingly, they established the World Bank to assist the post-war reconstruction of Europe, and to raise living standards in the developing world afterwards.Somewhere along the way, its mission m...
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The Altar of Mammon
2007-02-20 19:16:00
“What is fundamentally wrong here is thenotion that one nation has a right to another’s resources, andthat they can even be taken by force! This violates the mostbasic human and divine laws and assures that there will be no peace.”Scripture tells us the story of Yahweh’s outrage at a king’s sending a man into battle based on deception and wrongful desires. Coveting, deceit and murder. The king is none other than David, and his lust for Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, drives him to send her husband into battle to be killed. Deliberately. God angrily demands to know why David has shown such contempt for his Lord. How could a man kill to possess what is not rightly his? And be oblivious to the suffering of a woman who will lose her husband? The punishment Yahweh metes out is so severe that their child is to die and an entire nation is cursed with eternal strife.[1] If such a sin was so unfathomable, then how would we...
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Michael Crichton’s latest thriller, "NEXT", and some problems about genet
2007-02-12 16:00:00
Currently Mich ael Crichton’slatest novel, Next, is on the best-seller list. I don’t think that as a novel it is as good as Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, and some of his others. It seemed to me a bit scattered, and the over abundant, unneeded sex was more repulsive than titillating. But Crichton raises some ethical questions for thoughtful Christians to ponder.Next begins with a man ineffectually suing a company that is making money off tissues taken from him in the course of a medical procedure. Those cells, the court rules, belong to the company that, having extracted them, has patented them. Patented stem lines can be worth lots of money to pharmaceutical corporations.A disreputable looking woman, with a baby, presents herself to one middle-aged character. “I’m your daughter,” she announces, “and this is your grandchild.” Twenty-two years ago he had sold some sperm for $25 so his med school professor could help an infertile couple have a child. It was all to be strictly...
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The Presbyterian Position is Already a Viable Centrist Position - Almost
2007-01-13 15:21:00
The upshot of the argument that I have been making over the past week is nearly identical to what the Presbyterian Church (USA) already teaches and promotes.The church says that homosexuals are welcome in all offices of the church, and should be protected in civil society.The church teaches that in God's plan for human beings the gift of sex is only properly expressed in marriage (of a man and a woman). Celibacy is a good though difficult discipline. We all have impulses to sex outside of marriage, including homosexual acts, but they are not part of God's plan for us. We should try to control them, and ask for help to do so. We should repent of our lapses. This applies to everyone, regardless of act or orientation.The one point not yet clarified is whether it is better to try to curb those impulses within a committed relationship, or whether that is already too much of a structure of temptation. The church has already accepted this kind of unmarried but committed relationship as a...
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How Should Christians Understand the Death of Saddam Hussein?
2007-01-12 19:51:00
Saddam Hussein, former President of Iraq and ally of the United States, died on December 30, 2006 around 6:00 a.m. local time near Baghdad, at the beginning of the Sunni observance of Second Eid. Saddam Hussein, former dictator of Iraq, torturer, rapist-by-proxy, murderer of children, user of weapons of mass destruction, was executed on December 30, 2006 by hanging, pursuant to the laws of the new Iraq. President Bush is reported to have said that justice has been done. Reactions, other than in Iraq, where people had and have a real stake in the life and death of this man, are fairly predictable: the end point tends to be predetermined by where the opiner begins. Thus Europeans, generally opposed to the death penalty, decried the execution as unjust, while the United States, a death-penalty nation, proclaimed it a day when justice prevailed. As always, what we see depends quite a bit on where we stand. But why should we in these United States care? The short answer ...
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Tax Evasion is Theft from the Poor
2007-01-10 17:00:00
“Client is a private investment company domiciled in the Bahamas used as a vehicle to manage the investment needs of beneficial owner, now a retired professional who achieved much success in his career and accumulated wealth during his lifetime for retirement in an orderly way.” Such was the Riggs Bank’s anonymity-preserving description of dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose death last month inspired thousands of Chileans to celebrate in the streets. Pinochet, in addition to having directed death squads to torture and murder thousands of his opponents, enriched himself through drug and arms trafficking and other lucrative forms of corruption. From 1979 onward, he maintained accounts worth an estimated $6 billion to $8 billion in the Washington, D.C.-based Riggs, thus evading taxes in Chile. Other dictators and ruling elites in the developing world have defrauded their countries by funneling huge amounts of untaxed revenue into foreign banks and tax havens, in...
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PREDICTIONS AS 2007 BEGINS
2007-01-05 20:52:00
Here is what is going to happen in 2007. Once a year I buy one or another of the tabloids on sale beside the line at the supermarket cash register. In case you missed them, here are some of the predictions of the Sun dated January 1, 2007. Pages 20-21 of that journal assure us that its prophecies come from “the world’s most trusted seers.” A few–very few–are hopeful: -One thousand cancer victims will be cured at Lourdes. -China will renounce communism. -An American will become Pope. -A U.S. scientist will find a cure for cancer in a coffee bean extract. Most of the Sun’s predictions are frightening: -Part of the United Nations building will collapse while the U. N. is in session. -Various catastrophes will destroy Oklahoma City, Mobile, Los Angeles, and Miami. -The moon will poison the earth. -Iran will launch a nuclear strike against Washington. Some seem unlikely: -Saddam Hussein will be elected leader in Iraq, declare himself the Antichrist, and lead war...
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You are invited to water a garden in Africa
2006-12-12 17:32:00
Exactly one year ago, my family was at a theme park. David and the kids went for a quick swim and I opted to stay back in our hotel room. I needed a break from the fun and it gave me a chance to scan what the rest of the world was doing while we were in fantasyland.A 30 second spot on CNN catapulted me from indifference to tears. Having grown up in four countries in southern Africa , the story took me back to my childhood home of Malawi where the report was saying, "five million are at risk of hunger" due to the fourth drought in ten years. This was no fantasyland and I took up a personal call to do something about this unnoticed crisis.Unnoticed? Malawi has been one of the forgotten countries in the midst of Africa's great needs due to war, disease, corruption, and genocide. Until Madonna marked the country with her presence, few knew, including Madonna, that Malawi was on the map. Malawi has a population of close to 12 million with an HIV Aids rate of 14 %. There a...
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Movie Review - The Nativity Story
2006-12-12 17:20:00
O.K. Like some other movies based on classics, “The Nativity Story ” is not as good as the book, but I liked it.When I first heard that a regular Hollywood company, not just some evangelistic foundation, was planning to make a story about the birth of Jesus I feared that it might be a kind of animated Christmas Card, with Mary dressed all in blue and with wise men wearing crowns, all in vivid technicolor, accompanied by an organ with a vibrato stop. The opposite is the case. Director Catherine Hardwicke has filmed almost all the story in subdued light, and the emphasis has been on realism. Much of the movie, I am told, was filmed in the ancient village of Matera in Italy, and in the film Nazareth looks like a poor, dirty, Arab village. Houses are made of stone, so small that all the family sleeps in one room. Kraisha Castle-Hughes’s Mary looks like the other village teen-aged girls, and with the others swaps glances with the boys. At one point she wonders, “Why is it me God h...
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The Massacre at E Mozote: 25 years later
2006-11-30 17:11:00
As the solders from the Atlacatl battalion raped her, the girl sung evangelical Christian hymns. They shot her in the chest, and she kept singing. Bewildered, the soldiers pumped more bullets into her. When she continued to sing, their astonishment turned to fear and finally they hacked through her neck with machetes to make the singing stop.December 11, 2006 marks the 25th anniversary of the massacre at El Mozote, committed by an elite Salvadoran Army unit, the leaders of which had received training at the School of the Americas paid for with U.S. tax dollars. Since more than half of the village's residents were evangelical Christian and anti-communist, they thought they were safe from the violence that the Salvadoran army was committing in villages whose Catholic priests and laypeople had adopted the tenets of Liberation Theology. Many other people from surrounding villages had also taken refuge El Mozote, thinking they would be safer there. But they had not reckoned on the...
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Pausing on the Road to Bethlehem: A Spiritual Journey through Advent
2006-11-30 16:59:00
As it does every year, Advent comes upon us much too quickly, and we get caught up in the whirlwind of activities and preparations that lead to Christmas. It will be January before we know what hit us. We will have rushed through another Advent, hardly stopping to take a breath and wonder at the good news of Emmanuel, “God with us.” This study pack is designed for those who want to slow down and sink into the Advent season. It is inspirational and devotional in nature, an experiential Advent-ure through the weeks of Advent. During these five sessions we will utilize music, art, poetry, and a variety of interactive activities centered on biblical passages that connect to Advent. Each session includes a Bible passage that relates to Advent; time for guided prayer using a unique format each week; thoughtful reflection on music, art, and poetry; guided meditation; suggestions for continuing the Advent-ure during the week. This Advent-ure isn’t for everyone. It is for those who wa...
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The Thoughtful Christian featured for using cutting edge web site strategie
2006-11-22 16:20:00
This month The Thoughtful Christian is being featured across the country in Business First Magazine for our use of cutting edge web site strategies. You can view this article online through the following link.Aiming for positive Net results: Business' Web site strategies - San Francisco Business Times:: "Aiming for positive Net results: Business' Web site strategies"
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Some Reflections on Thankfulness
2006-07-17 18:06:00
For the past ten years or so, God has been leading me on a journey of thankfulness. Or, perhaps more accurately, a journey of growing a little in thankfulness. I was raised in a family where optimism and positive thinking were highly valued. My childhood occurred in the fifties and early sixties, which, at least in my memory, were highly optimistic times when positive thinking was valued. As a melancholy, moody child and teenager, I felt like my family and my culture were encouraging a form of dishonesty when they pushed me to look on the bright side all the time. So I became negative. Hey, I wanted to be honest! I had no problem finding material for melancholy thoughts. Life is full of bad things that happen, sad emotions that feel overwhelming, and low moments that seem hopeless. I guess I wasn'’t negative all the time, but I did try to be honest about how I felt. And I tried to give others permission to reflect honestly about their lives. I did a lot of speaking and t...
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On Pirates, Mafiosi, and Unpayable Debts
2006-07-12 21:09:00
Is this an overstatement? The crucial experience of Christian faith is redemption.If so, then “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” may be the most Christian movie of 2006. It is shot through with the quest for redemption. (It’s also bursting with bucks having just set the record for the highest grossing opening weekend in history with a take of $136 million.) The term “redemption,” by the way, carries no massive theological freight. It simply means that we are chained and cannot release ourselves or that have a debt we cannot pay. In both cases, we need someone beyond ourselves to release the chains or to pay the price.I’ve offered some initial reflections vis-à-vis “Pirates II” on my blog, http://cootsona.blogspot.com. Here I go a slightly different, and more comparative, direction.Mafiosi and Pirates being reasonably similar characters, it shouldn’t have surprised me to find parallels between “Pirates II” and “The Godfather,” even though the fi...
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In Defense of Munich
2006-07-10 23:07:00
The recent abduction of Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit and escalating violence in the Middle East prompted me to offer this reflection on Munich , a bold film that offers compelling insights on the massacre of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Summer Olympics and subsequent events that further fueled the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.Munich, the Oscar-nominated film from director Steven Spielberg, created a wave of controversy upon its release at the end of 2005. Although the film received a few negative reviews, it still finished the year with a higher overall rating from the nation's top critics than Crash, which ultimately took home the Oscar for Best Picture (from a survey of thirty of the nation'’s top critics in Premiere magazine'’s January 2006 issue).Munich is Spielberg'’s account of the aftermath of the 1972 shootings of eleven Israeli athletes during the Olympic games in Munich. (Two athletes were initially killed and nine were taken hostage. When Germ...
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Free Session Provokes Theological Questions
2006-05-26 19:57:00
I would like, from time to time, to share some of the feedback we get from visitors to www.thethoughtfulchristian.com, especially when the comments raise a number of interesting points.Robert Shaw, Presbyterian minister from Ohio, wrote me this week with a number of poignant questions about the free study "Should the Ten Commandments Be Displayed in Public?"” He writes, "These two sample sessions lack theological depth and deal more with civics than theology. Many Presbyterians hold advanced degrees, yet our adult school sessions could be taught to high school students."The study on the Ten Commandments looks at the debate as a contemporary issue rather than a theological debate. While these areas can and should cross over, I think the Ten Commandments study achieves its goal of pushing Christians to reflect on the issues raised by placing all or part of the Decalogue in public places. While it is not exhaustive in its treatment of the subject, I still think it is a strong study. ...
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CURRICULUM FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS
2006-05-17 22:01:00
On May 12th PBS posted an article by Elizabeth Caldwell entitled "CURRICULUM FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS". Elizabeth lifted up The Thoughtful Christian and SEASONS OF THE SPIRIT as two "exemplary examples" of curriculum that illustrate Craig Dykstra's criteria of "fashioning" and Maria Harris's vision for curriculum.We, meaning the staff of TheThoughtfulChristian.com truly believe we have something unique and special to offer religious educators. We are honored to have been recognized by Elizabeth as a Curriculum that's doing something right.This article is part of series of resources that have been created for a PBS project called RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY. This project is the result of a matching grant from the Lilly Endowment, the principal funder of the PBS program RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, to support an online project that would extend the reach of the show and highlight the special resources that the news can offer for teaching about world religions.
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Q&A with Author Donald McKim
2006-03-24 22:42:00
This is the Rev. Karen Blatt, First Presbyterian Church, Beaverton, MichiganI have a question for Donald McKim, author of the article "What Do Presbyterians Believe"This is an excellent article with lots of good information. However, I would like to know the specific things which Zwingli, Calvin, and Bullinger considered to be the "unbiblical practices" in God's church that they wanted changed or reformed.Given that the answer(s) to this question may involve a lot of information, I would be pleased to be directed to the articles or books that give the answer(s) to my question.Thank you, the Rev. Karen BlattDear Karen,Thank you very much for your question.A number of issues were swirling in the sixteenth century when the Protestant Reformation began. Martin Luther, and those who followed him, questioned the theology and the practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Luther was an Augustinian monk, who was later excommunicated by the Pope. He wanted the church to believe and practice it...
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