Word: seculare
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...book--the only secular biography coming out of the Byzantine period--"purports to be the life of the grandfather by the grandson," says the 61-year-old scholar. "I purport it to be the life of the grandfather by a ghost-writer...
...hardly the cry of a skeptic, but it was ample grounds for the Emperor to put Luther under sentence of death as a heretic. Instead of being executed, Luther lived for another 25 years, became a major author and composer of hymns, father of a bustling household and a secular figure who opposed rebellion-in all, a commanding force in European affairs. In the years beyond, the abiding split in Western Christendom developed, including a large component of specifically "Lutheran" churches that today have 69 million adherents in 85 nations...
...match him," says Father Peter Manns, a Catholic theologian in Mainz. "On the question of truth, Luther is a lifesaver for Christians." While Western Protestants still express embarrassment over Luther's anti-Jewish rantings or his skepticism about political clergy, Communist East Germany has turned him into a secular saint because of his influence on German culture. Party Boss Erich Honecker, head of the regime's Luther-jahr committee, is willing to downplay Luther's antirevolutionary ideas, using the giant figure to bolster national pride...
Luther sought to declericalize society and to free people from economic burdens imposed by the church. But he was soon forced, if reluctantly, to deliver considerable control of the new Protestant church into the hands of secular rulers who alone could ensure the survival of the Reformation. Luther spoke of "two kingdoms." the spiritual and the secular, and his writings provided strong theological support for authoritarian government and Christian docility...
...stories of supernatural powers arise from the days when he was a God-haunted youth alternately studying sacred works and trembling at the revelations of Dostoyevsky: "I suffered deep crises, was subject to hallucinations. My dreams were filled with demons, ghosts, devils, corpses." His fascination with the secular began with his brother's apostasy. Recalled Israel: "I could gather more from one person than from a thousand holy books. I fled from these books and slaked my thirst for life among ... the common people whose lives seemed so round and complete...