Over the years I have heard the name Lutherans used to describe a branch of Christianity but I never knew anything about their teachings as opposed to other religions. I still don't know much about their teachings and am not that interested to be honest, but today I was having a discussion with a friend of mine from work and I am not sure how we got onto the topic but her was telling me about Martin Luther, who founded the Lutheran religion. He said that he was a monk that was dissatisfied with the ways of the Catholic Church, mainly their collection of money to absolve people from their sins, and their decadence in the spending of this money, and so he formed his own religion. I thought this was all very interesting because I have always been intrigued as to why so many different religions exist in the world and how and why each of them has been founded.
I did some further research online about Martin Luther and verified everything that my friend told me. He was an Augustinian friar who visited Rome in 1510 and afterwards became dissatisfied with the majority of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Afterwards he wrote a series of pamphlets and the '95 Theses'. These writings spread quickly throughout Europe and formed the basis of the Lutheran religion. In 1521 he was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church at which time he fled and went into hiding. Luther was a German priest and in 1534 he published a translated version of 'The Bible' in German, as he believed that all followers should be able to read the bible in their own language. Originally the term Lutheran was meant as a derogatory term used by the Roman Catholic Church to describe Luther's followers. However later Luther's followers adopted this name themselves to describe their particular branch of religion. Today Lutherans are a major branch of the Christian religion in many countries around the world.
I read about Martin Luther on BBC History and Wikipedia, also on Lutherans on Wikipedia.
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