History · Church word
Reformation
In plain words
The 1500s movement, begun by Martin Luther in 1517, to reform the church around God’s grace.
The fuller definition
The sixteenth-century movement to reform the Western church, usually dated from Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in 1517. It led to the Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and Anabaptist churches, and to reforms within the Roman Catholic Church. Remembered on Reformation Sunday each October.
In History: The Reformation, and the people who carried it.