First Spark
Picture a crowded marketplace in 1517. Johann Tetzel has arrived with a cross, banners, a sermon, and a wooden chest. He tells anxious listeners that an indulgence can lessen punishment connected with sin. A husband thinks of his dead wife. A laborer feels the few coins in his hand. Metal strikes the bottom of the chest, and a promise of mercy has begun to sound like a sale.
A few miles away in Wittenberg, Martin Luther hears what people are being taught. As a pastor and professor, he fears that a printed certificate is replacing repentance, faith, and trust in Christ. He also sees money leaving poor households for a campaign tied to church finance. Luther takes up his pen. In ninety-five short propositions, he asks what forgiveness is, who may promise it, and whether giving to a needy neighbor is better than buying an indulgence.
His challenge begins as an argument about repentance and the Gospel, but the questions quickly grow. Who may bind a conscience? May an office silence an argument without answering it? Must a ruler obey a higher law? Should ordinary people read Scripture for themselves?
Those questions travel through printing shops, churches, schools, refugee communities, colonial covenants, pulpits, legislatures, and constitutional conventions. A marketplace dispute becomes the first scene on a long road to American liberty.
