title: Avengers: Infinity War

text: The film became the highest-grossing release ever in Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, Central America, Bolivia, Venezuela, Latin America as a region, Mexico, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Malaysia, Singapore, India (for a Western release), Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand (for a Western release), and Mongolia, the second-highest in the Asia-Pacific region (for a Western release), Hong Kong, and South Korea (for a Western release), and the third-highest in China (for a Western release). It is also the highest-grossing superhero film in many European countries, including the United Kingdom. , the film's top markets are China ($373.4 million), the United Kingdom ($95.7 million), and South Korea ($92.8 million). The film is the third-highest-grossing film of all time in territories outside the United States and Canada.


title: Avengers: Infinity War

text: The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of , with an average score of , based on reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, ""Avengers: Infinity War" ably juggles a dizzying array of MCU heroes in the fight against their gravest threat yet, and the result is a thrilling, emotionally resonant blockbuster that (mostly) realizes its gargantuan ambitions." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 68 out of 100 based on 54 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Avengers: Infinity War

text: Todd McCarthy of "The Hollywood Reporter" praised the writers' and directors' ability to balance the large cast of characters, saying they, "under the supervision of Marvel Films maestro Kevin Feige, acknowledge the traffic jam of egos and play it for laughs". Owen Gleiberman of "Variety" concurred, stating, ""Infinity War" is a brashly entertaining jamboree, structured to show off each hero or heroine and give them just enough to do, and to update their mythologies without making it all feel like homework". "Rolling Stone"s Peter Travers said the film is "too much of a good thing" and wrote, "The Russo brothers have clearly never learned the concept that less is more. They've used the premise of an Avengers reunion to put on a fireworks explosion of action and laughs that won't quit". Richard Roeper of the "Chicago Sun-Times" called it Marvel's "biggest and most ambitious movie yet", but concluded "it's certainly not the best. However, there's plenty of action, humor and heart—and some genuinely effective dramatic moments". Roeper went on to praise the film's cast and Josh Brolin in particular, whom he called "the film's most interesting performance". Gleiberman called Brolin's motion capture performance "supremely effective" and said, "Brolin infuses Thanos with his slit-eyed manipulative glower, so that the evil in this movie never feels less than personal". McCarthy wrote, "Brolin's calm, considered reading of the character bestows this conquering beast with an unexpectedly resonant emotional dimension, making him much more than a thick stick figure of a supervillain". Gleiberman also praised the film's action sequences, saying ""Infinity War" brims with tensely spectacular combat sequences, even if the question of who's going to win each one has that extravagantly arbitrary could-Mighty-Mouse-beat-up-Superman? quality". McCarthy called the scale of the action "astonishing", and Travers wrote, ""Avengers: Infinity War" leaves viewers up in the air, feeling exhilarated and cheated at the same time, aching for a closure that never comes". Josh Spiegel, also of "The Hollywood Reporter", said the film takes "a cue from the ending of "The Empire Strikes Back" in its super-sized finale; this is the equivalent of Han Solo frozen in the carbonite, on steroids".


title: Avengers: Infinity War

text: A. O. Scott of "The New York Times" criticized the film's reliance on other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, saying, "Considered on its own, as a single, nearly 2-hour-40-minute movie, "Avengers: Infinity War" makes very little sense", but conceded that it "was never meant to be viewed or judged in isolation". Richard Brody of "The New Yorker" agreed, stating, "The insubstantiality of the film isn't due to the infinite yet flimsy malleability of C.G.I. gimmickry but, instead, to the dispersion of its drama throughout the many cinematic installations set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe". Stephanie Zacharek of "Time" said, "[It] isn't really a beginning, but more of a middle or an end with a new piece of yarn attached. You need to have seen and internalized every one of the previous 18 Marvel Cinematic Universe movies to fully get it". Justin Chang of the "Los Angeles Times" called it a "brisk, propulsive, occasionally rousing and borderline-gutsy continuation of a saga that finally and sensibly seems to be drawing to a close", but called its ultimate bid for catharsis "unsuccessful" since the Marvel "assembly line [is not stopped] from chugging ahead with its signature polished, mechanized efficiency". Scott also criticized the action sequences, calling them "tedious and predictable" and "surely the most expensive parts of the movie, but the money seems less like an imaginative tool than a substitute for genuine imagination". Likewise, Zacharek said, "There's no pacing in "Avengers: Infinity War". It's all sensation and no pulse. Everything is big, all of the time".


title: Avengers: Infinity War

text: Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, and those at PostTrak gave the film an 87% overall positive score and a 68% "definite recommend". American YouTube personality Tony "Nem" Mitchell watched the film 103 times in theaters, a world record. When Mitchell's streak was gaining media awareness around his 44th viewing, he noted that IMAX reached out to give him 50 free tickets to continue the streak, and the Russo brothers invited him to "Endgame"s premiere. Mitchell said this was the way he "want[ed] to support Marvel and the Russo brothers". Seventeen-year-old Kieran Harvey from Staffordshire also watched the film in theaters 100 times. Harvey stated that he "didn't plan on seeing it this many times it just sort of happened" adding that "Infinity War" "just felt so different to anything I've ever seen before, and I just love it so much so have been going as much as I can!"


title: Avengers: Infinity War

text: The ending of the film sparked various Internet meme reactions, including one referencing Spider-Man saying he does not feel good as he disintegrates, which was applied to other things. The website, "DidThanosKill.Me" was created for fans to see if they would have been spared by Thanos or not. The ending also spawned the creation of the Reddit subreddit, /r/thanosdidnothingwrong. A user within the subreddit suggested that half of the approximately 20,000 subscribers at the time be banned from the subreddit, in order to mimic the events of the film. After the community agreed to the measure, the moderators approached Reddit's administrators to see if the mass ban would even be possible. Once the administrators agreed to the random ban of half the subscribers, it was set to occur on July 9, 2018. Notice of the impending ban made the subreddit's subscribers increase to over 700,000, including both of the Russos who subscribed. Ahead of the ban, Brolin posted a video saying "Here we go, Reddit users," and ending it with a snap. Over 60,000 people watched a live Twitch stream of the ban occurring, which lasted several hours. The ban of over 300,000 accounts, which included Anthony Russo, was the largest in Reddit's history. Those banned then gathered in the new subreddit, /r/inthesoulstone. One Reddit user who participated described the ban as embodying "the spirit of the Internet" with people "banding together, en masse, around something relatively meaningless but somehow decidedly awesome and hilarious". Andrew Tigani of "Screen Rant" said this showed "how impactful the film has already become to pop culture. It is also a testament to how valuable fan interaction can be via social media".


title: Avengers: Infinity War

text: At the 91st Academy Awards, "Avengers: Infinity War" received a nomination for Best Visual Effects. The film's other nominations include an Annie Award, a British Academy Film Award, and two Critics' Choice Awards, among others. In 2020, "Infinity War" was ranked seventh in an "Empire" magazine poll for the 100 greatest films of the 21st century.


title: Avengers: Infinity War

text: "Avengers: Endgame" was released on April 26, 2019, with the Russos returning to direct, and Markus and McFeely once again writing the screenplay.


title: Martin Luther

text: Martin Luther (; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, and professor, and Augustinian friar. He is the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation and the namesake of Lutheranism.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther was ordained to the priesthood in 1507. He came to reject several teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church; in particular, he disputed the view on indulgences. Luther proposed an academic discussion of the practice and efficacy of indulgences in his "Ninety-five Theses" of 1517. His refusal to renounce all of his writings at the demand of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521 resulted in his excommunication by the pope and condemnation as an outlaw by the Holy Roman Emperor.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther taught that salvation and, consequently, eternal life are not earned by good deeds but are received only as the free gift of God's grace through the believer's faith in Jesus Christ as redeemer from sin. His theology challenged the authority and office of the pope by teaching that the Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge, and opposed sacerdotalism by considering all baptized Christians to be a holy priesthood. Those who identify with these, and all of Luther's wider teachings, are called Lutherans, though Luther insisted on "Christian" or "Evangelical" (German: "evangelisch") as the only acceptable names for individuals who professed Christ.


title: Martin Luther

text: His translation of the Bible into the German vernacular (instead of Latin) made it more accessible to the laity, an event that had a tremendous impact on both the church and German culture. It fostered the development of a standard version of the German language, added several principles to the art of translation, and influenced the writing of an English translation, the Tyndale Bible. His hymns influenced the development of singing in Protestant churches. His marriage to Katharina von Bora, a former nun, set a model for the practice of clerical marriage, allowing Protestant clergy to marry.


title: Martin Luther

text: In two of his later works, Luther expressed antisemitic views, calling for the expulsion of Jews and burning of synagogues. In addition, these works also targeted Roman Catholics, Anabaptists, and nontrinitarian Christians. Based upon his significant anti-judaistic teachings, the prevailing view among historians is that his rhetoric contributed significantly to the development of antisemitism in Germany and of the Nazi Party. Luther died in 1546 with Pope Leo X's excommunication still in effect.


title: Martin Luther

text: Martin Luther was born to Hans Luder (or Ludher, later Luther) and his wife Margarethe (née Lindemann) on 10 November 1483 in Eisleben, County of Mansfeld, in the Holy Roman Empire. Luther was baptized the next morning on the feast day of St. Martin of Tours. In 1484, his family moved to Mansfeld, where his father was a leaseholder of copper mines and smelters and served as one of four citizen representatives on the local council; in 1492 he was elected as a town councilor. The religious scholar Martin Marty describes Luther's mother as a hard-working woman of "trading-class stock and middling means", contrary to Luther's enemies, who labeled her a whore and bath attendant.


title: Martin Luther

text: Hans Luther was ambitious for himself and his family, and he was determined to see Martin, his eldest son, become a lawyer. He sent Martin to Latin schools in Mansfeld, then Magdeburg in 1497, where he attended a school operated by a lay group called the Brethren of the Common Life, and Eisenach in 1498. The three schools focused on the so-called "trivium": grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Luther later compared his education there to purgatory and hell.


title: Martin Luther

text: In 1501, at age 17, he entered the University of Erfurt, which he later described as a beerhouse and whorehouse. He was made to wake at four every morning for what has been described as "a day of rote learning and often wearying spiritual exercises." He received his master's degree in 1505.


title: Martin Luther

text: In accordance with his father's wishes, he enrolled in law but dropped out almost immediately, believing that law represented uncertainty. Luther sought assurances about life and was drawn to theology and philosophy, expressing particular interest in Aristotle, William of Ockham, and Gabriel Biel. He was deeply influenced by two tutors, Bartholomaeus Arnoldi von Usingen and Jodocus Trutfetter, who taught him to be suspicious of even the greatest thinkers and to test everything himself by experience.


title: Martin Luther

text: Philosophy proved to be unsatisfying, offering assurance about the use of reason but none about loving God, which to Luther was more important. Reason could not lead men to God, he felt, and he thereafter developed a love-hate relationship with Aristotle over the latter's emphasis on reason. For Luther, reason could be used to question men and institutions, but not God. Human beings could learn about God only through divine revelation, he believed, and Scripture therefore became increasingly important to him.


title: Martin Luther

text: On 2 July 1505, while Luther was returning to university on horseback after a trip home, a lightning bolt struck near him during a thunderstorm. Later telling his father he was terrified of death and divine judgment, he cried out, "Help! Saint Anna, I will become a monk!" He came to view his cry for help as a vow he could never break. He left university, sold his books, and entered St. Augustine's Monastery in Erfurt on 17 July 1505. One friend blamed the decision on Luther's sadness over the deaths of two friends. Luther himself seemed saddened by the move. Those who attended a farewell supper walked him to the door of the Black Cloister. "This day you see me, and then, not ever again," he said. His father was furious over what he saw as a waste of Luther's education.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther dedicated himself to the Augustinian order, devoting himself to fasting, long hours in prayer, pilgrimage, and frequent confession. Luther described this period of his life as one of deep spiritual despair. He said, "I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of him the jailer and hangman of my poor soul."


title: Martin Luther

text: Johann von Staupitz, his superior, concluded that Luther needed more work to distract him from excessive introspection and ordered him to pursue an academic career. On 3 April 1507, Jerome Schultz (lat. Hieronymus Scultetus), the Bishop of Brandenburg, ordained Luther in Erfurt Cathedral. In 1508, he began teaching theology at the University of Wittenberg. He received a bachelor's degree in biblical studies on 9 March 1508 and another bachelor's degree in the "Sentences" by Peter Lombard in 1509. On 19 October 1512, he was awarded his Doctor of Theology and, on 21 October 1512, was received into the senate of the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg, having succeeded von Staupitz as chair of theology. He spent the rest of his career in this position at the University of Wittenberg.


title: Martin Luther

text: He was made provincial vicar of Saxony and Thuringia by his religious order in 1515. This meant he was to visit and oversee each of eleven monasteries in his province.


title: Martin Luther

text: In 1516, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar, was sent to Germany by the Roman Catholic Church to sell indulgences to raise money in order to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Tetzel's experiences as a preacher of indulgences, especially between 1503 and 1510, led to his appointment as general commissioner by Albrecht von Brandenburg, Archbishop of Mainz, who, deeply in debt to pay for a large accumulation of benefices, had to contribute the considerable sum of ten thousand ducats toward the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Albrecht obtained permission from Pope Leo X to conduct the sale of a special plenary indulgence (i.e., remission of the temporal punishment of sin), half of the proceeds of which Albrecht was to claim to pay the fees of his benefices.


title: Martin Luther

text: On 31 October 1517, Luther wrote to his bishop, Albrecht von Brandenburg, protesting against the sale of indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his "Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences", which came to be known as the "Ninety-five Theses". Hans Hillerbrand writes that Luther had no intention of confronting the church but saw his disputation as a scholarly objection to church practices, and the tone of the writing is accordingly "searching, rather than doctrinaire." Hillerbrand writes that there is nevertheless an undercurrent of challenge in several of the theses, particularly in Thesis 86, which asks: "Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther objected to a saying attributed to Tetzel that "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory (also attested as 'into heaven') springs." He insisted that, since forgiveness was God's alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error. Christians, he said, must not slacken in following Christ on account of such false assurances.


title: Martin Luther

text: According to one account, Luther nailed his "Ninety-five Theses" to the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517. Scholars Walter Krämer, Götz Trenkler, Gerhard Ritter, and Gerhard Prause contend that the story of the posting on the door, although it has become one of the pillars of history, has little foundation in truth. The story is based on comments made by Luther's collaborator Philip Melanchthon, though it is thought that he was not in Wittenberg at the time. According to Roland Bainton, on the other hand, it is true.


title: Martin Luther

text: The Latin "Theses" were printed in several locations in Germany in 1517. In January 1518 friends of Luther translated the "Ninety-five Theses" from Latin into German. Within two weeks, copies of the theses had spread throughout Germany. Luther's writings circulated widely, reaching France, England, and Italy as early as 1519. Students thronged to Wittenberg to hear Luther speak. He published a short commentary on Galatians and his "Work on the Psalms". This early part of Luther's career was one of his most creative and productive. Three of his best-known works were published in 1520: "To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation", "On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church", and "On the Freedom of a Christian".


title: Martin Luther

text: From 1510 to 1520, Luther lectured on the Psalms, and on the books of Hebrews, Romans, and Galatians. As he studied these portions of the Bible, he came to view the use of terms such as penance and righteousness by the Catholic Church in new ways. He became convinced that the church was corrupt in its ways and had lost sight of what he saw as several of the central truths of Christianity. The most important for Luther was the doctrine of justification—God's act of declaring a sinner righteous—by faith alone through God's grace. He began to teach that salvation or redemption is a gift of God's grace, attainable only through faith in Jesus as the Messiah. "This one and firm rock, which we call the doctrine of justification", he writes, "is the chief article of the whole Christian doctrine, which comprehends the understanding of all godliness."


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther came to understand justification as entirely the work of God. This teaching by Luther was clearly expressed in his 1525 publication "On the Bondage of the Will", which was written in response to "On Free Will" by Desiderius Erasmus (1524). Luther based his position on predestination on St. Paul's epistle to the . Against the teaching of his day that the righteous acts of believers are performed in with God, Luther wrote that Christians receive such righteousness entirely from outside themselves; that righteousness not only comes from Christ but actually the righteousness of Christ, imputed to Christians (rather than infused into them) through faith.


title: Martin Luther

text: "That is why faith alone makes someone just and fulfills the law," he writes. "Faith is that which brings the Holy Spirit through the merits of Christ." Faith, for Luther, was a gift from God; the experience of being justified by faith was "as though I had been born again." His entry into Paradise, no less, was a discovery about "the righteousness of God"—a discovery that "the just person" of whom the Bible speaks (as in Romans 1:17) lives by faith. He explains his concept of "justification" in the Smalcald Articles:


title: Martin Luther

text: The first and chief article is this: Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again for our justification (Romans 3:24–25). He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), and God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). All have sinned and are justified freely, without their own works and merits, by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in His blood (Romans 3:23–25). This is necessary to believe. This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law or merit. Therefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us ... Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls (Mark 13:31).


title: Martin Luther

text: Archbishop Albrecht did not reply to Luther's letter containing the "Ninety-five Theses". He had the theses checked for heresy and in December 1517 forwarded them to Rome. He needed the revenue from the indulgences to pay off a papal dispensation for his tenure of more than one bishopric. As Luther later notes, "the pope had a finger in the pie as well, because one half was to go to the building of St. Peter's Church in Rome".


title: Martin Luther

text: Pope Leo X was used to reformers and heretics, and he responded slowly, "with great care as is proper." Over the next three years he deployed a series of papal theologians and envoys against Luther, which served only to harden the reformer's anti-papal theology. First, the Dominican theologian Sylvester Mazzolini drafted a heresy case against Luther, whom Leo then summoned to Rome. The Elector Frederick persuaded the pope to have Luther examined at Augsburg, where the Imperial Diet was held. Over a three-day period in October 1518, Luther defended himself under questioning by papal legate Cardinal Cajetan. The pope's right to issue indulgences was at the centre of the dispute between the two men. The hearings degenerated into a shouting match. More than writing his theses, Luther's confrontation with the church cast him as an enemy of the pope: "His Holiness abuses Scripture", retorted Luther. "I deny that he is above Scripture". Cajetan's original instructions had been to arrest Luther if he failed to recant, but the legate desisted from doing so. With help from the Carmelite monk Christoph Langenmantel, Luther slipped out of the city at night, unbeknownst to Cajetan.


title: Martin Luther

text: In January 1519, at Altenburg in Saxony, the papal nuncio Karl von Miltitz adopted a more conciliatory approach. Luther made certain concessions to the Saxon, who was a relative of the Elector and promised to remain silent if his opponents did. The theologian Johann Eck, however, was determined to expose Luther's doctrine in a public forum. In June and July 1519, he staged a disputation with Luther's colleague Andreas Karlstadt at Leipzig and invited Luther to speak. Luther's boldest assertion in the debate was that does not confer on popes the exclusive right to interpret scripture, and that therefore neither popes nor church councils were infallible. For this, Eck branded Luther a new Jan Hus, referring to the Czech reformer and heretic burned at the stake in 1415. From that moment, he devoted himself to Luther's defeat.


title: Martin Luther

text: On 15 June 1520, the Pope warned Luther with the papal bull (edict) "Exsurge Domine" that he risked excommunication unless he recanted 41 sentences drawn from his writings, including the "Ninety-five Theses", within 60 days. That autumn, Eck proclaimed the bull in Meissen and other towns. Von Miltitz attempted to broker a solution, but Luther, who had sent the pope a copy of "On the Freedom of a Christian" in October, publicly set fire to the bull and decretals at Wittenberg on 10 December 1520, an act he defended in "Why the Pope and his Recent Book are Burned" and "Assertions Concerning All Articles". As a consequence, Luther was excommunicated by Pope on 3 January 1521, in the bull "Decet Romanum Pontificem". And although the Lutheran World Federation, Methodists and the Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity agreed (in 1999 and 2006, respectively) on a "common understanding of justification by God's grace through faith in Christ," the Catholic Church has never lifted the 1520 excommunication.


title: Martin Luther

text: The enforcement of the ban on the "Ninety-five Theses" fell to the secular authorities. On 18 April 1521, Luther appeared as ordered before the Diet of Worms. This was a general assembly of the estates of the Holy Roman Empire that took place in Worms, a town on the Rhine. It was conducted from 28 January to 25 May 1521, with Emperor Charles V presiding. Prince Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, obtained a safe conduct for Luther to and from the meeting.


title: Martin Luther

text: Johann Eck, speaking on behalf of the empire as assistant of the Archbishop of Trier, presented Luther with copies of his writings laid out on a table and asked him if the books were his and whether he stood by their contents. Luther confirmed he was their author but requested time to think about the answer to the second question. He prayed, consulted friends, and gave his response the next day:


title: Martin Luther

text: Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.


title: Martin Luther

text: At the end of this speech, Luther raised his arm "in the traditional salute of a knight winning a bout." Michael Mullett considers this speech as a "world classic of epoch-making oratory."


title: Martin Luther

text: Martin, there is no one of the heresies which have torn the bosom of the church, which has not derived its origin from the various interpretation of the Scripture. The Bible itself is the arsenal whence each innovator has drawn his deceptive arguments. It was with Biblical texts that Pelagius and Arius maintained their doctrines. Arius, for instance, found the negation of the eternity of the Word—an eternity which you admit, in this verse of the New Testament—"Joseph knew not his wife till she had brought forth her first-born son"; and he said, in the same way that you say, that this passage enchained him. When the fathers of the Council of Constance condemned this proposition of Jan Hus—"The church of Jesus Christ is only the community of the elect", they condemned an error; for the church, like a good mother, embraces within her arms all who bear the name of Christian, all who are called to enjoy the celestial beatitude.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther refused to recant his writings. He is sometimes also quoted as saying: "Here I stand. I can do no other". Recent scholars consider the evidence for these words to be unreliable since they were inserted before "May God help me" only in later versions of the speech and not recorded in witness accounts of the proceedings. However, Mullett suggests that given his nature, "we are free to believe that Luther would tend to select the more dramatic form of words."


title: Martin Luther

text: Over the next five days, private conferences were held to determine Luther's fate. The emperor presented the final draft of the Edict of Worms on 25 May 1521, declaring Luther an outlaw, banning his literature, and requiring his arrest: "We want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic." It also made it a crime for anyone in Germany to give Luther food or shelter. It permitted anyone to kill Luther without legal consequence.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther's disappearance during his return to Wittenberg was planned. had him intercepted on his way home in the forest near Wittenberg by masked horsemen impersonating highway robbers. They escorted Luther to the security of the Wartburg Castle at Eisenach. During his stay at Wartburg, which he referred to as "my Patmos", Luther translated the New Testament from Greek into German and poured out doctrinal and polemical writings. These included a renewed attack on Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, whom he shamed into halting the sale of indulgences in his episcopates, and a "Refutation of the Argument of Latomus", in which he expounded the principle of justification to Jacobus Latomus, an orthodox theologian from Louvain. In this work, one of his most emphatic statements on faith, he argued that every good work designed to attract God's favor is a sin. All humans are sinners by nature, he explained, and God's grace alone (which cannot be earned) can make them just. On 1 August 1521, Luther wrote to Melanchthon on the same theme: "Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides."


title: Martin Luther

text: In the summer of 1521, Luther widened his target from individual pieties like indulgences and pilgrimages to doctrines at the heart of Church practice. In "On the Abrogation of the Private Mass", he condemned as idolatry the idea that the mass is a sacrifice, asserting instead that it is a gift, to be received with thanksgiving by the whole congregation. His essay "On Confession, Whether the Pope has the Power to Require It" rejected compulsory confession and encouraged private confession and absolution, since "every Christian is a confessor." In November, Luther wrote "The Judgement of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows". He assured monks and nuns that they could break their vows without sin, because vows were an illegitimate and vain attempt to win salvation.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther made his pronouncements from Wartburg in the context of rapid developments at Wittenberg, of which he was kept fully informed. Andreas Karlstadt, supported by the ex-Augustinian Gabriel Zwilling, embarked on a radical programme of reform there in June 1521, exceeding anything envisaged by Luther. The reforms provoked disturbances, including a revolt by the Augustinian friars against their prior, the smashing of statues and images in churches, and denunciations of the magistracy. After secretly visiting Wittenberg in early December 1521, Luther wrote "A Sincere Admonition by Martin Luther to All Christians to Guard Against Insurrection and Rebellion". Wittenberg became even more volatile after Christmas when a band of visionary zealots, the so-called Zwickau prophets, arrived, preaching revolutionary doctrines such as the equality of man, adult baptism, and Christ's imminent return. When the town council asked Luther to return, he decided it was his duty to act.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther secretly returned to Wittenberg on 6 March 1522. He wrote to the Elector: "During my absence, Satan has entered my sheepfold, and committed ravages which I cannot repair by writing, but only by my personal presence and living word." For eight days in Lent, beginning on Invocavit Sunday, 9 March, Luther preached eight sermons, which became known as the "Invocavit Sermons". In these sermons, he hammered home the primacy of core Christian values such as love, patience, charity, and freedom, and reminded the citizens to trust God's word rather than violence to bring about necessary change.


title: Martin Luther

text: Do you know what the Devil thinks when he sees men use violence to propagate the gospel? He sits with folded arms behind the fire of hell, and says with malignant looks and frightful grin: "Ah, how wise these madmen are to play my game! Let them go on; I shall reap the benefit. I delight in it." But when he sees the Word running and contending alone on the battle-field, then he shudders and shakes for fear.


title: Martin Luther

text: The effect of Luther's intervention was immediate. After the sixth sermon, the Wittenberg jurist Jerome Schurf wrote to the elector: "Oh, what joy has Dr. Martin's return spread among us! His words, through divine mercy, are bringing back every day misguided people into the way of the truth."


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther next set about reversing or modifying the new church practices. By working alongside the authorities to restore public order, he signalled his reinvention as a conservative force within the Reformation. After banishing the Zwickau prophets, he faced a battle against both the established Church and the radical reformers who threatened the new order by fomenting social unrest and violence.


title: Martin Luther

text: Despite his victory in Wittenberg, Luther was unable to stifle radicalism further afield. Preachers such as Thomas Müntzer and Zwickau prophet Nicholas Storch found support amongst poorer townspeople and peasants between 1521 and 1525. There had been revolts by the peasantry on smaller scales since the 15th century. Luther's pamphlets against the Church and the hierarchy, often worded with "liberal" phraseology, led many peasants to believe he would support an attack on the upper classes in general. Revolts broke out in Franconia, Swabia, and Thuringia in 1524, even drawing support from disaffected nobles, many of whom were in debt. Gaining momentum under the leadership of radicals such as Müntzer in Thuringia, and Hipler and Lotzer in the south-west, the revolts turned into war.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther sympathised with some of the peasants' grievances, as he showed in his response to the Twelve Articles in May 1525, but he reminded the aggrieved to obey the temporal authorities. During a tour of Thuringia, he became enraged at the widespread burning of convents, monasteries, bishops' palaces, and libraries. In "Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants", written on his return to Wittenberg, he gave his interpretation of the Gospel teaching on wealth, condemned the violence as the devil's work, and called for the nobles to put down the rebels like mad dogs:


title: Martin Luther

text: Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel ... For baptism does not make men free in body and property, but in soul; and the gospel does not make goods common, except in the case of those who, of their own free will, do what the apostles and disciples did in Acts 4 [:32–37]. They did not demand, as do our insane peasants in their raging, that the goods of others—of Pilate and Herod—should be common, but only their own goods. Our peasants, however, want to make the goods of other men common, and keep their own for themselves. Fine Christians they are! I think there is not a devil left in hell; they have all gone into the peasants. Their raving has gone beyond all measure.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther justified his opposition to the rebels on three grounds. First, in choosing violence over lawful submission to the secular government, they were ignoring Christ's counsel to "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's"; St. Paul had written in his epistle to the that all authorities are appointed by God and therefore should not be resisted. This reference from the Bible forms the foundation for the doctrine known as the divine right of kings, or, in the German case, the divine right of the princes. Second, the violent actions of rebelling, robbing, and plundering placed the peasants "outside the law of God and Empire", so they deserved "death in body and soul, if only as highwaymen and murderers." Lastly, Luther charged the rebels with blasphemy for calling themselves "Christian brethren" and committing their sinful acts under the banner of the Gospel. Only later in life did he develop the Beerwolf concept permitting some cases of resistance against the government.


title: Martin Luther

text: Without Luther's backing for the uprising, many rebels laid down their weapons; others felt betrayed. Their defeat by the Swabian League at the Battle of Frankenhausen on 15 May 1525, followed by Müntzer's execution, brought the revolutionary stage of the Reformation to a close. Thereafter, radicalism found a refuge in the Anabaptist movement and other religious movements, while Luther's Reformation flourished under the wing of the secular powers. In 1526 Luther wrote: "I, Martin Luther, have during the rebellion slain all the peasants, for it was I who ordered them to be struck dead."


title: Martin Luther

text: Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, one of 12 nuns he had helped escape from the Nimbschen Cistercian convent in April 1523, when he arranged for them to be smuggled out in herring barrels. "Suddenly, and while I was occupied with far different thoughts," he wrote to Wenceslaus Link, "the Lord has plunged me into marriage." At the time of their marriage, Katharina was 26 years old and Luther was 41 years old.


title: Martin Luther

text: On 13 June 1525, the couple was engaged, with Johannes Bugenhagen, Justus Jonas, Johannes Apel, Philipp Melanchthon and Lucas Cranach the Elder and his wife as witnesses. On the evening of the same day, the couple was married by Bugenhagen. The ceremonial walk to the church and the wedding banquet were left out and were made up two weeks later on 27 June.


title: Martin Luther

text: Some priests and former members of religious orders had already married, including Andreas Karlstadt and Justus Jonas, but Luther's wedding set the seal of approval on clerical marriage. He had long condemned vows of celibacy on biblical grounds, but his decision to marry surprised many, not least Melanchthon, who called it reckless. Luther had written to George Spalatin on 30 November 1524, "I shall never take a wife, as I feel at present. Not that I am insensible to my flesh or sex (for I am neither wood nor stone); but my mind is averse to wedlock because I daily expect the death of a heretic."


title: Martin Luther

text: Before marrying, Luther had been living on the plainest food, and, as he admitted himself, his mildewed bed was not properly made for months at a time.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther and his wife moved into a former monastery, "The Black Cloister," a wedding present from Elector John the Steadfast. They embarked on what appears to have been a happy and successful marriage, though money was often short. Katharina bore six children: Hans – June 1526; Elisabeth – 10 December 1527, who died within a few months; Magdalene – 1529, who died in Luther's arms in 1542; Martin – 1531; Paul – January 1533; and Margaret – 1534; and she helped the couple earn a living by farming and taking in boarders. Luther confided to Michael Stiefel on 11 August 1526: "My Katie is in all things so obliging and pleasing to me that I would not exchange my poverty for the riches of Croesus."


title: Martin Luther

text: By 1526, Luther found himself increasingly occupied in organising a new church. His biblical ideal of congregations choosing their own ministers had proved unworkable. According to Bainton: "Luther's dilemma was that he wanted both a confessional church based on personal faith and experience and a territorial church including all in a given locality. If he were forced to choose, he would take his stand with the masses, and this was the direction in which he moved."


title: Martin Luther

text: From 1525 to 1529, he established a supervisory church body, laid down a new form of worship service, and wrote a clear summary of the new faith in the form of two catechisms. To avoid confusing or upsetting the people, Luther avoided extreme change. He also did not wish to replace one controlling system with another. He concentrated on the church in the Electorate of Saxony, acting only as an adviser to churches in new territories, many of which followed his Saxon model. He worked closely with the new elector, John the Steadfast, to whom he turned for secular leadership and funds on behalf of a church largely shorn of its assets and income after the break with Rome. For Luther's biographer Martin Brecht, this partnership "was the beginning of a questionable and originally unintended development towards a church government under the temporal sovereign".


title: Martin Luther

text: The elector authorised a visitation of the church, a power formerly exercised by bishops. At times, Luther's practical reforms fell short of his earlier radical pronouncements. For example, the "Instructions for the Visitors of Parish Pastors in Electoral Saxony" (1528), drafted by Melanchthon with Luther's approval, stressed the role of repentance in the forgiveness of sins, despite Luther's position that faith alone ensures justification. The Eisleben reformer Johannes Agricola challenged this compromise, and Luther condemned him for teaching that faith is separate from works. The "Instruction" is a problematic document for those seeking a consistent evolution in Luther's thought and practice.


title: Martin Luther

text: In response to demands for a German liturgy, Luther wrote a "German Mass", which he published in early 1526. He did not intend it as a replacement for his 1523 adaptation of the Latin Mass but as an alternative for the "simple people", a "public stimulation for people to believe and become Christians." Luther based his order on the Catholic service but omitted "everything that smacks of sacrifice", and the Mass became a celebration where everyone received the wine as well as the bread. He retained the elevation of the host and chalice, while trappings such as the Mass vestments, altar, and candles were made optional, allowing freedom of ceremony. Some reformers, including followers of Huldrych Zwingli, considered Luther's service too papistic, and modern scholars note the conservatism of his alternative to the Catholic Mass. Luther's service, however, included congregational singing of hymns and psalms in German, as well as parts of the liturgy, including Luther's unison setting of the Creed. To reach the simple people and the young, Luther incorporated religious instruction into the weekday services in the form of catechism. He also provided simplified versions of the baptism and marriage services.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther and his colleagues introduced the new order of worship during their visitation of the Electorate of Saxony, which began in 1527. They also assessed the standard of pastoral care and Christian education in the territory. "Merciful God, what misery I have seen," Luther writes, "the common people knowing nothing at all of Christian doctrine ... and unfortunately many pastors are well-nigh unskilled and incapable of teaching."


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther devised the catechism as a method of imparting the basics of Christianity to the congregations. In 1529, he wrote the "Large Catechism", a manual for pastors and teachers, as well as a synopsis, the "Small Catechism", to be memorised by the people. The catechisms provided easy-to-understand instructional and devotional material on the , the , , , and the . Luther incorporated questions and answers in the catechism so that the basics of Christian faith would not just be learned by rote, "the way monkeys do it", but understood.


title: Martin Luther

text: The catechism is one of Luther's most personal works. "Regarding the plan to collect my writings in volumes," he wrote, "I am quite cool and not at all eager about it because, roused by a Saturnian hunger, I would rather see them all devoured. For I acknowledge none of them to be really a book of mine, except perhaps the "Bondage of the Will" and the Catechism." The "Small Catechism" has earned a reputation as a model of clear religious teaching. It remains in use today, along with Luther's hymns and his translation of the Bible.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther's "Small Catechism" proved especially effective in helping parents teach their children; likewise the "Large Catechism" was effective for pastors. Using the German vernacular, they expressed the Apostles' Creed in simpler, more personal, Trinitarian language. He rewrote each article of the Creed to express the character of the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. Luther's goal was to enable the catechumens to see themselves as a personal object of the work of the three persons of the Trinity, each of which works in the catechumen's life. That is, Luther depicts the Trinity not as a doctrine to be learned, but as persons to be known. The Father creates, the Son redeems, and the Spirit sanctifies, a divine unity with separate personalities. Salvation originates with the Father and draws the believer to the Father. Luther's treatment of the Apostles' Creed must be understood in the context of the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments) and The Lord's Prayer, which are also part of the Lutheran catechetical teaching.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther had published his German translation of the New Testament in 1522, and he and his collaborators completed the translation of the Old Testament in 1534, when the whole Bible was published. He continued to work on refining the translation until the end of his life. Others had previously translated the Bible into German, but Luther tailored his translation to his own doctrine.


title: Martin Luther

text: Two of the earlier translations were the Mentelin Bible (1456) and the Koberger Bible (1484). There were as many as fourteen in High German, four in Low German, four in Dutch, and various other translations in other languages before the Bible of Luther.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther's translation used the variant of German spoken at the Saxon chancellery, intelligible to both northern and southern Germans. He intended his vigorous, direct language to make the Bible accessible to everyday Germans, "for we are removing impediments and difficulties so that other people may read it without hindrance." Published at a time of rising demand for German-language publications, Luther's version quickly became a popular and influential Bible translation. As such, it contributed a distinct flavor to the German language and literature. Furnished with notes and prefaces by Luther, and with woodcuts by Lucas Cranach that contained anti-papal imagery, it played a major role in the spread of Luther's doctrine throughout Germany. The Luther Bible influenced other vernacular translations, such as the Tyndale Bible (from 1525 forward), a precursor of the King James Bible.


title: Martin Luther

text: When he was criticised for inserting the word "alone" after "faith" in , he replied in part: "[T]he text itself and the meaning of St. Paul urgently require and demand it. For in that very passage he is dealing with the main point of Christian doctrine, namely, that we are justified by faith in Christ without any works of the Law. ... But when works are so completely cut away—and that must mean that faith alone justifies—whoever would speak plainly and clearly about this cutting away of works will have to say, 'Faith alone justifies us, and not works'." Luther did not include First Epistle of John , the Johannine Comma in his translation, rejecting it as a forgery. It was inserted into the text by other hands after Luther's death.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther was a prolific hymnodist, authoring hymns such as "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" ("A Mighty Fortress Is Our God"), based on Psalm 46, and "Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her" ("From Heaven Above to Earth I Come"), based on Luke 2:11–12. Luther connected high art and folk music, also all classes, clergy and laity, men, women and children. His tool of choice for this connection was the singing of German hymns in connection with worship, school, home, and the public arena. He often accompanied the sung hymns with a lute, later recreated as the waldzither that became a national instrument of Germany in the 20th century.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther's hymns were frequently evoked by particular events in his life and the unfolding Reformation. This behavior started with his learning of the execution of Jan van Essen and Hendrik Vos, the first individuals to be martyred by the Roman Catholic Church for Lutheran views, prompting Luther to write the hymn "Ein neues Lied wir heben an" ("A New Song We Raise"), which is generally known in English by John C. Messenger's translation by the title and first line "Flung to the Heedless Winds" and sung to the tune Ibstone composed in 1875 by Maria C. Tiddeman.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther's 1524 creedal hymn "" ("We All Believe in One True God") is a three-stanza confession of faith prefiguring Luther's 1529 three-part explanation of the Apostles' Creed in the "Small Catechism". Luther's hymn, adapted and expanded from an earlier German creedal hymn, gained widespread use in vernacular Lutheran liturgies as early as 1525. Sixteenth-century Lutheran hymnals also included "Wir glauben all" among the catechetical hymns, although 18th-century hymnals tended to label the hymn as Trinitarian rather than catechetical, and 20th-century Lutherans rarely used the hymn because of the perceived difficulty of its tune.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther's 1538 hymnic version of the Lord's Prayer, "Vater unser im Himmelreich", corresponds exactly to Luther's explanation of the prayer in the "Small Catechism", with one stanza for each of the seven prayer petitions, plus opening and closing stanzas. The hymn functions both as a liturgical setting of the Lord's Prayer and as a means of examining candidates on specific catechism questions. The extant manuscript shows multiple revisions, demonstrating Luther's concern to clarify and strengthen the text and to provide an appropriately prayerful tune. Other 16th- and 20th-century versifications of the Lord's Prayer have adopted Luther's tune, although modern texts are considerably shorter.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther wrote "Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir" ("From depths of woe I cry to You") in 1523 as a hymnic version of Psalm 130 and sent it as a sample to encourage his colleagues to write psalm-hymns for use in German worship. In a collaboration with Paul Speratus, this and seven other hymns were published in the "Achtliederbuch", the first Lutheran hymnal. In 1524 Luther developed his original four-stanza psalm paraphrase into a five-stanza Reformation hymn that developed the theme of "grace alone" more fully. Because it expressed essential Reformation doctrine, this expanded version of "Aus tiefer Not" was designated as a regular component of several regional Lutheran liturgies and was widely used at funerals, including Luther's own. Along with Erhart Hegenwalt's hymnic version of Psalm 51, Luther's expanded hymn was also adopted for use with the fifth part of Luther's catechism, concerning confession.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther wrote "Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein" ("Oh God, look down from heaven"). "Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland" (Now come, Savior of the gentiles), based on "Veni redemptor gentium", became the main hymn (Hauptlied) for Advent. He transformed "A solus ortus cardine" to "" ("We should now praise Christ") and "Veni Creator Spiritus" to "" ("Come, Holy Spirit, Lord God"). He wrote two hymns on the , "" and "Mensch, willst du leben seliglich". His "Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ" ("Praise be to You, Jesus Christ") became the main hymn for Christmas. He wrote for Pentecost "Nun bitten wir den Heiligen Geist", and adopted for Easter "" (Christ is risen), based on Victimae paschali laudes. "", a paraphrase of Nunc dimittis, was intended for Purification, but became also a funeral hymn. He paraphrased the Te Deum as "Herr Gott, dich loben wir" with a simplified form of the melody. It became known as the German Te Deum.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther's 1541 hymn "" ("To Jordan came the Christ our Lord") reflects the structure and substance of his questions and answers concerning baptism in the "Small Catechism". Luther adopted a preexisting Johann Walter tune associated with a hymnic setting of Psalm 67's prayer for grace; Wolf Heintz's four-part setting of the hymn was used to introduce the Lutheran Reformation in Halle in 1541. Preachers and composers of the 18th century, including J.S. Bach, used this rich hymn as a subject for their own work, although its objective baptismal theology was displaced by more subjective hymns under the influence of late-19th-century Lutheran pietism.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther's hymns were included in early Lutheran hymnals and spread the ideas of the Reformation. He supplied four of eight songs of the First Lutheran hymnal "Achtliederbuch", 18 of 26 songs of the "Erfurt Enchiridion", and 24 of the 32 songs in the first choral hymnal with settings by Johann Walter, "Eyn geystlich Gesangk Buchleyn", all published in 1524. Luther's hymns inspired composers to write music. Johann Sebastian Bach included several verses as chorales in his cantatas and based chorale cantatas entirely on them, namely "Christ lag in Todes Banden", BWV 4, as early as possibly 1707, in his second annual cycle (1724 to 1725) "Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein", BWV 2, "Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam", BWV 7, "Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland", BWV 62, "Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ", BWV 91, and "Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir", BWV 38, later "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott", BWV 80, and in 1735 "Wär Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit", BWV 14.


title: Martin Luther

text: In contrast to the views of John Calvin and Philipp Melanchthon, throughout his life Luther maintained that it was not false doctrine to believe that a Christian's soul sleeps after it is separated from the body in death. Accordingly, he disputed traditional interpretations of some Bible passages, such as the parable of the . This also led Luther to reject the idea of torments for the saints: "It is enough for us to know that souls do not leave their bodies to be threatened by the torments and punishments of hell, but enter a prepared bedchamber in which they sleep in peace." He also rejected the existence of purgatory, which involved Christian souls undergoing penitential suffering after death. He affirmed the continuity of one's personal identity beyond death. In his Smalcald Articles, he described the saints as currently residing "in their graves and in heaven."


title: Martin Luther

text: The Lutheran theologian Franz Pieper observes that Luther's teaching about the state of the Christian's soul after death differed from the later Lutheran theologians such as Johann Gerhard. Lessing (1755) had earlier reached the same conclusion in his analysis of Lutheran orthodoxy on this issue.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther's "Commentary on Genesis" contains a passage which concludes that "the soul does not sleep ("anima non sic dormit"), but wakes ("sed vigilat") and experiences visions". Francis Blackburne argues that John Jortin misread this and other passages from Luther, while Gottfried Fritschel points out that it actually refers to the soul of a man "in this life" ("homo enim in hac vita") tired from his daily labour ("defatigus diurno labore") who at night enters his bedchamber ("sub noctem intrat in cubiculum suum") and whose sleep is interrupted by dreams.


title: Martin Luther

text: In October 1529, Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, convoked an assembly of German and Swiss theologians at the Marburg Colloquy, to establish doctrinal unity in the emerging Protestant states. Agreement was achieved on fourteen points out of fifteen, the exception being the nature of the Eucharist—the sacrament of the Lord's Supper—an issue crucial to Luther. The theologians, including Zwingli, Melanchthon, Martin Bucer, and Johannes Oecolampadius, differed on the significance of the words spoken by Jesus at the Last Supper: "This is my body which is for you" and "This cup is the new covenant in my blood" (1 Corinthians 11:23–26). Luther insisted on the Real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine, which he called the sacramental union, while his opponents believed God to be only spiritually or symbolically present.


title: Martin Luther

text: Zwingli, for example, denied Jesus' ability to be in more than one place at a time. Luther stressed the omnipresence of Jesus' human nature. According to transcripts, the debate sometimes became confrontational. Citing Jesus' words "The flesh profiteth nothing" (John 6.63), Zwingli said, "This passage breaks your neck". "Don't be too proud," Luther retorted, "German necks don't break that easily. This is Hesse, not Switzerland." On his table Luther wrote the words ""Hoc est corpus meum"" ("This is my body") in chalk, to continually indicate his firm stance.


title: Martin Luther

text: Despite the disagreements on the Eucharist, the Marburg Colloquy paved the way for the signing in 1530 of the Augsburg Confession, and for the formation of the Schmalkaldic League the following year by leading Protestant nobles such as John of Saxony, Philip of Hesse, and George, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach. The Swiss cities, however, did not sign these agreements.


title: Martin Luther

text: Some scholars have asserted that Luther taught that faith and reason were antithetical in the sense that questions of faith could not be illuminated by reason. He wrote, "All the articles of our Christian faith, which God has revealed to us in His Word, are in presence of reason sheerly impossible, absurd, and false." and "[That] Reason in no way contributes to faith. [...] For reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things." However, though seemingly contradictorily, he also wrote in the latter work that human reason "strives not against faith, when enlightened, but rather furthers and advances it", bringing claims he was a fideist into dispute. Contemporary Lutheran scholarship, however, has found a different reality in Luther. Luther rather seeks to separate faith and reason in order to honor the separate spheres of knowledge that each applies to.


title: Martin Luther

text: At the time of the Marburg Colloquy, Suleiman the Magnificent was besieging Vienna with a vast army. Luther had argued against resisting the Turks in his 1518 "Explanation of the Ninety-five Theses", provoking accusations of defeatism. He saw the Turks as a scourge sent by God to punish Christians, as agents of the biblical apocalypse that would destroy the Antichrist, whom Luther believed to be the papacy and the Roman Church. He consistently rejected the idea of a Holy War, "as though our people were an army of Christians against the Turks, who were enemies of Christ. This is absolutely contrary to Christ's doctrine and name". On the other hand, in keeping with his doctrine of the two kingdoms, Luther did support non-religious war against the Turks. In 1526, he argued in "Whether Soldiers can be in a State of Grace" that national defence is reason for a just war. By 1529, in "On War against the Turk", he was actively urging Emperor Charles V and the German people to fight a secular war against the Turks.


title: Martin Luther

text: He made clear, however, that the spiritual war against an alien faith was separate, to be waged through prayer and repentance. Around the time of the Siege of Vienna, Luther wrote a prayer for national deliverance from the Turks, asking God to "give to our emperor perpetual victory over our enemies".


title: Martin Luther

text: In 1542, Luther read a Latin translation of the Qur'an. He went on to produce several critical pamphlets on Islam, which he called "Mohammedanism" or "the Turk". Though Luther saw the Muslim faith as a tool of the devil, he was indifferent to its practice: "Let the Turk believe and live as he will, just as one lets the papacy and other false Christians live." He opposed banning the publication of the Qur'an, wanting it exposed to scrutiny.


title: Martin Luther

text: Early in 1537, Johannes Agricola—serving at the time as pastor in Luther's birthplace, Eisleben—preached a sermon in which he claimed that God's gospel, not God's moral law (the Ten Commandments), revealed God's wrath to Christians. Based on this sermon and others by Agricola, Luther suspected that Agricola was behind certain anonymous antinomian theses circulating in Wittenberg. These theses asserted that the law is no longer to be taught to Christians but belonged only to city hall. Luther responded to these theses with six series of theses against Agricola and the antinomians, four of which became the basis for disputations between 1538 and 1540. He also responded to these assertions in other writings, such as his 1539 open letter to C. Güttel "Against the Antinomians", and his book "On the Councils and the Church" from the same year.


title: Martin Luther

text: In his theses and disputations against the antinomians, Luther reviews and reaffirms, on the one hand, what has been called the "second use of the law," that is, the law as the Holy Spirit's tool to work sorrow over sin in man's heart, thus preparing him for Christ's fulfillment of the law offered in the gospel. Luther states that everything that is used to work sorrow over sin is called the law, even if it is Christ's life, Christ's death for sin, or God's goodness experienced in creation. Simply refusing to preach the Ten Commandments among Christians—thereby, as it were, removing the three letters l-a-w from the church—does not eliminate the accusing law. Claiming that the law—in any form—should not be preached to Christians anymore would be tantamount to asserting that Christians are no longer sinners in themselves and that the church consists only of essentially holy people.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther also points out that the Ten Commandments—when considered not as God's condemning judgment but as an expression of his eternal will, that is, of the natural law—positively teach how the Christian ought to live. This has traditionally been called the "third use of the law." For Luther, also Christ's life, when understood as an example, is nothing more than an illustration of the Ten Commandments, which a Christian should follow in his or her vocations on a daily basis.


title: Martin Luther

text: The Ten Commandments, and the beginnings of the renewed life of Christians accorded to them by the sacrament of baptism, are a present foreshadowing of the believers' future angel-like life in heaven in the midst of this life. Luther's teaching of the Ten Commandments, therefore, has clear eschatological overtones, which, characteristically for Luther, do not encourage world-flight but direct the Christian to service to the neighbor in the common, daily vocations of this perishing world.


title: Martin Luther

text: From December 1539, Luther became involved in the designs of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse to marry a lady-in-waiting of his wife, Christine of Saxony. Philip solicited the approval of Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer, citing as a precedent the polygamy of the patriarchs. The theologians were not prepared to make a general ruling, and they reluctantly advised the landgrave that if he was determined, he should marry secretly and keep quiet about the matter because divorce was worse than bigamy. As a result, on 4 March 1540, Philip married a second wife, Margarethe von der Saale, with Melanchthon and Bucer among the witnesses. However, Philip's sister Elisabeth quickly made the scandal public, and Philip threatened to expose Luther's advice. Luther told him to "tell a good, strong lie" and deny the marriage completely, which Philip did. Margarethe gave birth to nine children over a span of 17 years, giving Philip a total of 19 children. In the view of Luther's biographer Martin Brecht, "giving confessional advice for Philip of Hesse was one of the worst mistakes Luther made, and, next to the landgrave himself, who was directly responsible for it, history chiefly holds Luther accountable". Brecht argues that Luther's mistake was not that he gave private pastoral advice, but that he miscalculated the political implications. The affair caused lasting damage to Luther's reputation.


title: Martin Luther

text: Tovia Singer, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, remarking about Luther's attitude toward Jews, put it thus: "Among all the Church Fathers and Reformers, there was no mouth more vile, no tongue that uttered more vulgar curses against the Children of Israel than this founder of the Reformation."


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther wrote negatively about the Jews throughout his career. Though Luther rarely encountered Jews during his life, his attitudes reflected a theological and cultural tradition which saw Jews as a rejected people guilty of the murder of Christ, and he lived in a locality which had expelled Jews some ninety years earlier. He considered the Jews blasphemers and liars because they rejected the divinity of Jesus. In 1523, Luther advised kindness toward the Jews in "That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew" and also aimed to convert them to Christianity. When his efforts at conversion failed, he grew increasingly bitter toward them.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther's major works on the Jews were his 60,000-word treatise "Von den Juden und Ihren Lügen" ("On the Jews and Their Lies"), and "Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi" ("On the Holy Name and the Lineage of Christ"), both published in 1543, three years before his death. Luther argued that the Jews were no longer the chosen people but "the devil's people", and referred to them with violent language. Citing Deuteronomy 13, wherein Moses commands the killing of idolaters and the burning of their cities and property as an offering to God, Luther called for a ""scharfe Barmherzigkeit"" ("sharp mercy") against the Jews "to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames." Luther advocated setting synagogues on fire, destroying Jewish prayerbooks, forbidding rabbis from preaching, seizing Jews' property and money, and smashing up their homes, so that these "envenomed worms" would be forced into labour or expelled "for all time". In Robert Michael's view, Luther's words "We are at fault in not slaying them" amounted to a sanction for murder. "God's anger with them is so intense," Luther concluded, "that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!"


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther spoke out against the Jews in Saxony, Brandenburg, and Silesia.<ref name="Michael:Josel/Strasbourg">Michael, 117.</ref> Josel of Rosheim, the Jewish spokesman who tried to help the Jews of Saxony in 1537, later blamed their plight on "that priest whose name was Martin Luther—may his body and soul be bound up in hell!—who wrote and issued many heretical books in which he said that whoever would help the Jews was doomed to perdition." Josel asked the city of Strasbourg to forbid the sale of Luther's anti-Jewish works: they refused initially but did so when a Lutheran pastor in Hochfelden used a sermon to urge his parishioners to murder Jews. Luther's influence persisted after his death. Throughout the 1580s, riots led to the expulsion of Jews from several German Lutheran states.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther was the most widely read author of his generation, and within Germany he acquired the status of a prophet. According to the prevailing opinion among historians, his anti-Jewish rhetoric contributed significantly to the development of antisemitism in Germany, and in the 1930s and 1940s provided an "ideal underpinning" for the Nazis' attacks on Jews. Reinhold Lewin writes that anybody who "wrote against the Jews for whatever reason believed he had the right to justify himself by triumphantly referring to Luther." According to Michael, just about every anti-Jewish book printed in Nazi Germany contained references to and quotations from Luther. Heinrich Himmler (albeit never a Lutheran, having been brought up Catholic) wrote admiringly of his writings and sermons on the Jews in 1940. The city of Nuremberg presented a first edition of "On the Jews and their Lies" to Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi newspaper "Der Stürmer", on his birthday in 1937; the newspaper described it as the most radically antisemitic tract ever published. It was publicly exhibited in a glass case at the Nuremberg rallies and quoted in a 54-page explanation of the Aryan Law by E.H. Schulz and R. Frercks.


title: Martin Luther

text: On 17 December 1941, seven Protestant regional church confederations issued a statement agreeing with the policy of forcing Jews to wear the yellow badge, "since after his bitter experience Luther had already suggested preventive measures against the Jews and their expulsion from German territory." According to Daniel Goldhagen, Bishop Martin Sasse, a leading Protestant churchman, published a compendium of Luther's writings shortly after Kristallnacht, for which Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of the history of the church at the University of Oxford argued that Luther's writing was a "blueprint." Sasse applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, "On 10 November 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words "of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews."


title: Martin Luther

text: At the heart of scholarly debate about Luther's influence is whether it is anachronistic to view his work as a precursor of the racial antisemitism of the Nazis. Some scholars see Luther's influence as limited, and the Nazis' use of his work as opportunistic. Johannes Wallmann argues that Luther's writings against the Jews were largely ignored in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that there was no continuity between Luther's thought and Nazi ideology. Uwe Siemon-Netto agreed, arguing that it was because the Nazis were already antisemites that they revived Luther's work. Hans J. Hillerbrand agreed that to focus on Luther was to adopt an essentially ahistorical perspective of Nazi antisemitism that ignored other contributory factors in German history. Similarly, Roland Bainton, noted church historian and Luther biographer, wrote "One could wish that Luther had died before ever ["On the Jews and Their Lies"] was written. His position was entirely religious and in no respect racial."


title: Martin Luther

text: However, Christopher J. Probst, in his book "Demonizing the Jews: Luther and the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany" (2012), shows that a large number of German Protestant clergy and theologians during the Nazi era used Luther's hostile publications towards the Jews and their Jewish religion to justify at least in part the anti-Semitic policies of the National Socialists. The pro-Nazi Christian group Deutsche Christen drew parallels between Martin Luther and the "Führer" Adolf Hitler.


title: Martin Luther

text: Some scholars, such as Mark U. Edwards in his book "Luther's Last Battles: Politics and Polemics 1531–46" (1983), suggest that since Luther's increasingly antisemitic views developed during the years his health deteriorated, it is possible they were at least partly the product of a state of mind. Edwards also comments that Luther often deliberately used "vulgarity and violence" for effect, both in his writings condemning the Jews and in diatribes against "Turks" (Muslims) and Catholics.


title: Martin Luther

text: Since the 1980s, Lutheran denominations have repudiated Martin Luther's statements against the Jews and have rejected the use of them to incite hatred against Lutherans. Strommen et al.'s 1970 survey of 4,745 North American Lutherans aged 15–65 found that, compared to the other minority groups under consideration, Lutherans were the least prejudiced toward Jews. Nevertheless, Professor Richard Geary, former professor of modern history at the University of Nottingham and the author of "Hitler and Nazism" (Routledge 1993), published an article in the magazine "History Today" examining electoral trends in Weimar Germany between 1928 and 1933. Geary notes that, based on his research, the Nazi Party received disproportionately more votes from Protestant than Catholic areas of Germany.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther had been suffering from ill health for years, including Ménière's disease, vertigo, fainting, tinnitus, and a cataract in one eye. From 1531 to 1546 his health deteriorated further. In 1536, he began to suffer from kidney and bladder stones, arthritis, and an ear infection ruptured an ear drum. In December 1544, he began to feel the effects of angina.


title: Martin Luther

text: His poor physical health made him short-tempered and even harsher in his writings and comments. His wife Katharina was overheard saying, "Dear husband, you are too rude," and he responded, "They are teaching me to be rude." In 1545 and 1546 Luther preached three times in the Market Church in Halle, staying with his friend Justus Jonas during Christmas.


title: Martin Luther

text: His last sermon was delivered at Eisleben, his place of birth, on 15 February 1546, three days before his death. It was "entirely devoted to the obdurate Jews, whom it was a matter of great urgency to expel from all German territory," according to Léon Poliakov. James Mackinnon writes that it concluded with a "fiery summons to drive the Jews bag and baggage from their midst, unless they desisted from their calumny and their usury and became Christians." Luther said, "we want to practice Christian love toward them and pray that they convert," but also that they are "our public enemies ... and if they could kill us all, they would gladly do so. And so often they do."


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther's final journey, to Mansfeld, was taken because of his concern for his siblings' families continuing in their father Hans Luther's copper mining trade. Their livelihood was threatened by Count Albrecht of Mansfeld bringing the industry under his own control. The controversy that ensued involved all four Mansfeld counts: Albrecht, Philip, John George, and Gerhard. Luther journeyed to Mansfeld twice in late 1545 to participate in the negotiations for a settlement, and a third visit was needed in early 1546 for their completion.


title: Martin Luther

text: The negotiations were successfully concluded on 17 February 1546. After 8 p.m., he experienced chest pains. When he went to his bed, he prayed, "Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God" (Ps. 31:5), the common prayer of the dying. At 1 a.m. on 18 February, he awoke with more chest pain and was warmed with hot towels. He thanked God for revealing his Son to him in whom he had believed. His companions, Justus Jonas and Michael Coelius, shouted loudly, "Reverend father, are you ready to die trusting in your Lord Jesus Christ and to confess the doctrine which you have taught in his name?" A distinct "Yes" was Luther's reply.


title: Martin Luther

text: An apoplectic stroke deprived him of his speech, and he died shortly afterwards at 2:45 a.m. on 18 February 1546, aged 62, in Eisleben, the city of his birth. He was buried in the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg, in front of the pulpit. The funeral was held by his friends Johannes Bugenhagen and Philipp Melanchthon. A year later, troops of Luther's adversary Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor entered the town but were ordered by Charles not to disturb the grave.


title: Martin Luther

text: A piece of paper was later found on which Luther had written his last statement. The statement was in Latin, apart from "We are beggars," which was in German. The statement reads:


title: Martin Luther

text: <poem># No one can understand Virgil's "Bucolics" unless he has been a shepherd for five years. No one can understand Virgil's "Georgics", unless he has been a farmer for five years.


title: Martin Luther

text: The tomb of Philipp Melanchthon, Luther's contemporary and fellow reformer, is also located in the All Saints' Church.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther made effective use of Johannes Gutenberg's printing press to spread his views. He switched from Latin to German in his writing to appeal to a broader audience. Between 1500 and 1530, Luther's works represented one fifth of all materials printed in Germany.


title: Martin Luther

text: In the 1530s and 1540s, printed images of Luther that emphasized his monumental size were crucial to the spread of Protestantism. In contrast to images of frail Catholic saints, Luther was presented as a stout man with a "double chin, strong mouth, piercing deep-set eyes, fleshy face, and squat neck." He was shown to be physically imposing, an equal in stature to the secular German princes with whom he would join forces to spread Lutheranism. His large body also let the viewer know that he did not shun earthly pleasures like drinking—behavior that was a stark contrast to the ascetic life of the medieval religious orders. Images from this period include the woodcuts by Hans Brosamer (1530) and Lucas Cranach the Elder and Lucas Cranach the Younger (1546).


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther is honoured on 18 February with a commemoration in the Lutheran Calendar of Saints and in the Episcopal (United States) Calendar of Saints. In the Church of England's Calendar of Saints he is commemorated on 31 October. Luther is honored in various ways by Christian traditions coming out directly from the Protestant Reformation, i.e. Lutheranism, the Reformed tradition, and Anglicanism. Branches of Protestantism that emerged afterwards vary in their remembrance and veneration of Luther, ranging from a complete lack of a single mention of him to a commemoration almost comparable to the way Lutherans commemorate and remember his persona. There is no known condemnation of Luther by Protestants themselves.


title: Martin Luther

text: Various sites both inside and outside Germany (supposedly) visited by Martin Luther throughout his lifetime commemorate it with local memorials. Saxony-Anhalt has two towns officially named after Luther, Lutherstadt Eisleben and Lutherstadt Wittenberg. Mansfeld is sometimes called Mansfeld-Lutherstadt, although the state government has not decided to put the "Lutherstadt" suffix in its official name.


title: Martin Luther

text: Reformation Day commemorates the publication of the "Ninety-five Theses" in 1517 by Martin Luther; it has been historically important in the following European entities. It is a civic holiday in the German states of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg. Two further states (Lower Saxony and Bremen) are pending a vote on introducing it. Slovenia celebrates it because of the profound contribution of the Reformation to its culture. Austria allows Protestant children not to go to school that day, and Protestant workers have a right to leave work in order to participate in a church service. Switzerland celebrates the holiday on the first Sunday after 31 October. It is also celebrated elsewhere around the world.


title: Martin Luther

text: Luther is often depicted with a swan as his attribute, and Lutheran churches often have a swan for a weather vane. This association with the swan arises out of a prophecy reportedly made by the earlier reformer Jan Hus from Bohemia and endorsed by Luther. In the Bohemian language (now Czech), Hus's name meant . In 1414, while imprisoned by the Council of Constance and anticipating his execution by burning for heresy, Hus prophesied, "Now they will roast a goose, but in a hundred years' time they'll hear a swan sing. They'd better listen to him." Luther published his "Ninety-five Theses" some 103 years later.


title: Generation Alpha

text: Generation Alpha (Gen Alpha for short) is the Western demographic cohort succeeding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early to mid 2010s as starting birth years and the mid 2020s as ending birth years. Named after the first letter in the Greek alphabet, Generation Alpha is the first to be born entirely in the 21st century. Most members of Generation Alpha are the children of Millennials.


title: Generation Alpha

text: Generation Alpha has been born at a time of falling fertility rates across much of the world. Children's entertainment has been increasingly dominated by electronic technology, social networks, and streaming services, with interest in traditional television concurrently falling. Changes in the use of technology in classrooms and other aspects of life have had an effect on how this generation has experienced early learning compared to previous generations. Studies suggest that allergies, obesity and health problems related to screen time have become increasingly prevalent among children in recent years.


title: Generation Alpha

text: The name "Generation Alpha" originated from a 2008 survey conducted by the Australian consulting agency McCrindle Research, according to founder Mark McCrindle, who is generally credited with the term. McCrindle describes how his team arrived at the name in a 2015 interview:


title: Generation Alpha

text: When I was researching my book The ABC of XYZ: Understanding the Global Generations (published in 2009) it became apparent that a new generation was about to commence and there was no name for them. So I conducted a survey (we're researchers after all) to find out what people think the generation after Z should be called and while many names emerged, and Generation A was the most mentioned, Generation Alpha got some mentions too and so I settled on that for the title of the chapter Beyond Z: Meet Generation Alpha. It just made sense as it is in keeping with scientific nomenclature of using the Greek alphabet in lieu of the Latin and it didn't make sense to go back to A, after all they are the first generation wholly born in the 21st Century and so they are the start of something new not a return to the old.


title: Generation Alpha

text: McCrindle Research also took inspiration from the naming of hurricanes, specifically the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season in which the names beginning with the letters of the Latin alphabet were exhausted, and the last six storms were named with the Greek letters alpha through zeta.


title: Generation Alpha

text: Some anticipate the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will become this generation's defining event, and have suggested the name Generation C or "Coronials" for those either born during, or growing up during, the pandemic.


title: Generation Alpha

text: There is not yet a general consensus on the birth years of Generation Alpha. Media sources focused specifically on Generation Alpha use starting birth years such as 2010 and 2011. However, many definitions of Generation Z ending in 2012 or 2015 would indicate that the oldest members of Generation Alpha were born in 2013 or 2016.


title: Generation Alpha

text: Generation Alpha are the youngest people alive today. Sources suggest that the final members of the cohort will be born in the mid 2020s, often specifically 2025.


title: Generation Alpha

text: As of 2015, there were some two and a half million people born every week around the globe; Generation Alpha is expected to reach close to two billion by 2025. For comparison, the United Nations estimated that the human population was about 7.8 billion in 2020, up from 2.5 billion in 1950. Roughly three-quarters of all people reside in Africa and Asia in 2020. In fact, most human population growth comes from these two continents, as nations in Europe and the Americas tend to have too few children to replace themselves.


title: Generation Alpha

text: 2018 was the first time when the number of people above 65 years of age (705 million) exceeded those between the ages of zero and four (680 million). If current trends continue, the ratio between these two age groups will top two by 2050. Fertility rates have been falling around the world due to rising standards of living, higher access to contraceptives, and more educational and economic opportunities. In fact, about half of all countries had sub-replacement fertility in the mid-2010s. The global average fertility rate in 1950 was 4.7 but dropped to 2.4 in 2017. However, this average masks the huge variation between countries. Niger has the world's highest fertility rate at 7.1 while Cyprus has one of the lowest at 1.0. In general, the more developed countries, including much of Europe, the United States, South Korea, and Australia, tend to have lower fertility rates. People in such places tend to have children later and fewer of them. However, surveys conducted in developed economies suggest that women's desired family sizes tend to be higher than their completed fertility. Stagnant wages and eroding welfare programs are the contributing factors. While some countries, such as Sweden and Singapore, have tried various incentives to raise their fertility rates, such policies have not been particularly successful. Moreover, birth rates following the COVID-19 global pandemic might drop significantly due to economic recession. As a matter of fact, data from late 2020 and early 2021 suggests that despite hopes of a baby boom due to the lockdowns, precisely the opposite happened, at least in developed nations like France or the United States, but not necessarily developing ones, such as Brazil or Uganda.


title: Generation Alpha

text: Education is in fact one of the most important determinants of fertility. The more educated a woman is, the later she tends to have children, and fewer of them. At the same time, the global average life expectancy has gone from 52 in 1960 to 72 in 2017. Higher interest in education brings about an environment in which mortality rates fall, which in turn, increases population density. All these factors reduce fertility, as does cultural transmission. Increasing immigration is problematic while policies that encourage people to have more children rarely succeed. Moreover, immigration is not an option at the global level.


title: Generation Alpha

text: Half of the human population lived in urban areas in 2007, and this figure became 55% in 2019. If the current trend continues, it will reach two thirds by the middle of the century. A direct consequence of urbanization is falling fertility. In rural areas, children can be considered an asset, that is, additional labor. But in the cities, children are a burden. Moreover, urban women demand greater autonomy and exercise more control over their fertility. The United Nations estimated in mid-2019 that the human population will reach about 9.7 billion by 2050, a downward revision from an older projection to account for the fact that fertility has been falling faster than previously thought in the developing world. The global annual rate of growth has been declining steadily since the late twentieth century, dropping to about one percent in 2019. In fact, by the late 2010s, 83 of the world's countries had sub-replacement fertility.


title: Generation Alpha

text: During the early to mid-2010s, more babies were born to Christian mothers than to those of any other religion in the world, reflecting the fact that Christianity remained the most popular religion in existence. However, it was Muslims who had a faster rate of growth. About 33% of the world's babies were born to Christians who made up 31% of the global population between 2010 and 2015, compared to 31% to Muslims, whose share of the human population was 24%. During the same period, the religiously unaffiliated (including atheists and agnostics) made up 16% of the population but gave birth to only 10% of the world's children.


title: Generation Alpha

text: Effects of intensifying assortative mating—the tendency to seek out mates with similar characteristics to one's own, such as income level and educational attainment—in the early twenty-first century will likely be seen in the next generation, as parental income and educational level are positively correlated with children's success. In the United States, children from families in the highest income quintile are the most likely to live with married parents (94% in 2018), followed by children of the middle class (74%) and the bottom quintile (35%).


title: Generation Alpha

text: In order to boost the nation's birthrate, in 2019, the government of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe introduced a number of education reforms. Starting in October 2019, preschool education will be free for all children between the ages of three and five. Childcare will be free for children under the age of two from low-income households. These programs will be funded by a consumption tax hike, from eight to ten percent. Starting April 2020, entrance and tuition fees for public as well as private universities will be waived or reduced. Students from low-income and tax-exempt families will be eligible for financial assistance to help them cover textbook, transportation, and living expenses. The whole program is projected to cost ¥776 billion (US$7.1 billion) per annum.


title: Generation Alpha

text: In 2020, the government of Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc recommended a series of education reforms in order to raise the fertility rates of localities that found themselves below the replacement level. In particular, the construction of daycare facilities and kindergartens in urban and industrial zones, housing subsidies for couples with two children in sub-replacement areas, and priority admission for children of said couples in public schools.


title: Generation Alpha

text: In early 2021, the government of China announced a plan to invest more in physical education (PE) in order to make boys "more masculine". Thanks to a combination of the (now rescinded) one-child policy and the traditional preference for sons, boys are perceived to be overly coddled by their parents, and looked at as too effeminate, delicate, and timid. In order to calm public concerns, state-controlled media published pieces downplaying gender roles and gender differences.


title: Generation Alpha

text: In France, while year-long mandatory military service for men was abolished in 1996, all citizens between 17 and 25 years of age must still participate in the Defense and Citizenship Day, when they are introduced to the French Armed Forces, and take language tests. In 2019, President Emmanuel Macron introduced something similar to mandatory military service, but for teenagers, as promised during his presidential campaign. Known as the "Service National Universel" or SNU, it is a compulsory civic service. Though it does not explicitly involve military training, it does require recruits to spend four weeks at a camp where they participate in a variety of activities designed to teach practical skills, personal discipline and a greater understanding of the French political system and society. The aim of this program is to promote national cohesion and patriotism, and to encourage interaction among young people of different backgrounds, something mandatory military service used to do. The SNU is due to become mandatory for all French 16 to 21 year olds by 2026.


title: Generation Alpha

text: In 2018, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement summarizing progress on developmental and neurological research on unstructured time spent by children, colloquially 'play', and noting the importance of playtime for social, cognitive, and language skills development. This is because to many educators and parents, play has come to be seen as outdated and irrelevant. In fact, between 1981 and 1997, time spent by children on unstructured activities dropped by 25% due to increased amounts of time spent on structured activities. Unstructured time tended to be spent on screens at the expense of active play. The statement encourages parents and children to spend more time on "playful learning," which reinforces the intrinsic motivation to learn and discover and strengthens the bond between children and their parents and other caregivers. It also helps children handle stress and prevents "toxic stress," something that hampers development. Dr. Michael Yogman, the lead author of the statement, noted that play does not necessarily have to involve fancy toys; common household items would do as well. Moreover, parents reading to children also counts as play, because it encourages children to use their imaginations.


title: Generation Alpha

text: In 2019, psychiatrists from Quebec launched a campaign urging for the creation of courses on mental health for primary schoolchildren in order to teach them how to handle a personal or social crisis, and to deal with the psychological impact of the digital world. According to the Association des médecins psychiatres du Québec (AMPQ), this campaign focuses on children born after 2010, that is, Generation Alpha. In addition to the AMPQ, this movement is backed by the Fédération des médecins spécialistes du Québec (FMSQ), the Quebec Pediatric Association (APQ), the Association des spécialistes en médecine préventive du Québec (ASMPQ) and the Fondation Jeunes en Tête.


title: Generation Alpha

text: Although the Common Core standards, an education initiative in the United States, eliminated the requirement that public elementary schools teach cursive writing in 2010, lawmakers from many states, including Illinois, Ohio, and Texas, have introduced legislation to teach it in theirs in 2019. Some studies point to the benefits of handwriting – print or cursive – for the development of cognitive and motor skills as well as memory and comprehension. For example, one 2012 neuroscience study suggests that handwriting "may facilitate reading acquisition in young children." Cursive writing has been used to help students with learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, a disorder that makes it difficult to interpret words, letters, and other symbols. Unfortunately, lawmakers often cite them out of context, conflating handwriting in general with cursive handwriting. In any case, some 80% of historical records and documents of the United States, such as the correspondence of Abraham Lincoln, was written by hand in cursive, and students today tend to be unable to read them. Historically, cursive writing was regarded as a mandatory, almost military, exercise. But today, it is thought of as an art form by those who pursue it, both adults and children.


title: Generation Alpha

text: In 2013, less than a third of American public schools had access to broadband Internet service, according to the non-profit EducationSuperHighway. By 2019, however, that number reached 99%. This has increased the frequency of digital learning.


title: Generation Alpha

text: Since the early 2010s, a number of U.S. states have taken steps to strengthen teacher education. Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas had the top programs in 2014. Meanwhile, Rhode Island, which previously had the nation's lowest bar on who can train to become a school teacher, has been admitting education students with higher and higher average SAT, ACT, and GRE scores. The state aims to accept only those with standardized test scores in the top third of the national distribution by 2020, which would put it in the ranks of education superpowers such as Finland and Singapore. In Finland, studying to become a teacher is as tough and prestigious as studying to become a medical doctor or a lawyer.


title: Generation Alpha

text: While food allergies have been observed by doctors since ancient times and virtually all foods can be allergens, research by the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota found they are becoming increasingly common since the early 2000s. By the late 2010s, one in twelve American children had a food allergy, with peanut allergy being the most prevalent type. Reasons for this remain poorly understood. Nut allergies in general have quadrupled and shellfish allergies have increased 40% between 2004 and 2019. In all, about 36% of American children have some kind of allergy. By comparison, this number among the Amish in Indiana is 7%. Allergies have also risen ominously in other Western countries. In the United Kingdom, for example, the number of children hospitalized for allergic reactions increased by a factor of five between 1990 and the late 2010s, as did the number of British children allergic to peanuts. In general, the better developed the country, the higher the rates of allergies. Reasons for this also remain poorly understood. One possible explanation, supported by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is that parents keep their children "too clean for their own good." They recommend exposing newborn babies to a variety of potentially allergenic foods, such as peanut butter, before they reach the age of six months. According to this "hygiene hypothesis," such exposures give the infant's immune system some exercise, making it less likely to overreact. Evidence for this includes the fact that children living on a farm are consistently less likely to be allergic than their counterparts who are raised in the city, and that children born in a developed country to parents who immigrated from developing nations are more likely to be allergic than their parents are.