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Alec Ryrie

The World’s Reformation: How Protestantism Became a Global Religion, by Alec Ryrie

The World’s Reformation: How Protestantism Became a Global Religion, by Alec Ryrie

A nuanced and globe-spanning examination of how Protestantism’s often chaotic missionary efforts helped shape the early modern world.
Zeb Baker-Smith

In a secular age, religious history can feel slightly tangential and recondite, particularly when set against the commercial and colonial designs of fledgling empires in the early modern age. Very well, except that is missing the point. Reformation Europe remains a...

The World’s Reformation

The World’s Reformation

An exploration of the forgotten global ambitions of Protestantism, showing how missionaries sought to spread their faith far and wide, their patchy success an indication of the imaginative limits of early modern Europeans.
Alec Ryrie

In April 1521, three famous subjects of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V were risking their lives on three different continents. Martin Luther was standing before the emperor in person at the Diet of Worms, where he defied all the powers of Europe in the name of...