An Unplanned and Out-of-Control Protestant Reformation 

In 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, he surely did not intend to shatter the union of religion, culture, and society of Latin Christendom, and plunge it into centuries of religious wars that claimed the lives of millions, philosophical chaos, and existential doubt that is still with us,. But that is exactly what happened, because he very quickly lost control of the Reformation he'd had no intention of starting. His 95 Theses turned out to be the catalyst that created the modern Western world: it awakened the spirit of individualism; people now felt free to believe what they liked, whatever made sense to them. The world that emerged was radically different from the world the reformers - Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and all the others - imagined they were bringing about.