religion

Book Discussion: Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet

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When I started my research on The Magic Battery, I needed to find out about the Reformation in Germany. I’d picked that period because it was a time of change and technological advancement, a good background to set changes in magic against. Learning about Martin Luther was important, since I wanted to understand the ongoing conflict of ideas. At the same time, I wanted to learn about daily life in that period. It’s easy enough to get information on the emperors and electors, the wars and alliances, the states and borders. Finding out how people traveled, ate, and married took more work.

Lyndal Roper’s Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet turned out to be very useful for both purposes. It tells the story of Luther’s life while including lots of details about how he lived. It gives a lot of insight into how people thought in those days.
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Book discussion: The Age of Reason 2

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Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason was published over two centuries ago, but it’s still a readable and enjoyable demolition of Biblical literalism. In its time, it provoked fury from the religious establishment. It will still upset some Christians today. He wrote it in the 1790s and issued it in three parts. He had to consider the first part finished when he was arrested in 1793 in the midst of France’s Reign of Terror. Like many other people that year, he was tried and convicted of treason, though such details as specifying the charges or having him present at his trial were omitted. He escaped the guillotine and died in 1809. By the end of his life, he was widely despised as a heretic, and only six people attended his funeral. Thomas Paine

He is one of my top heroes of the American Revolution, and he’s best known to Americans as the author of Common Sense and The Crisis. Robert Ingersoll wrote a glowing essay on him. There’s good reason to believe he influenced Mark Twain as well.
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