The Divinity School is pleased to announce a public lecture by Kenneth G. Appold: "Luther and the Peasants: A Religious Conflict?"

Tuesday, February 21, 5:00pm, Common Room

The German peasants’ uprisings of 1525 were pivotal for the history of the Reformation and for narratives about the Reformation. Typically viewed as a moment when Reformers such as Martin Luther abandoned the common people to side with the ruling classes, the conflict is most often described as political. The protagonists themselves, however, framed it in religious and theological terms. This lecture will explore what happens when we take those views seriously. How does it change our understanding of the peasants’ uprisings, and how does it change our narratives of the Reformation?

Kenneth G. Appold is the James Hastings Nichols Professor of Reformation History at Princeton Theological Seminary. Born in Cologne, Germany and raised in rural Missouri, Appold received his undergraduate and doctoral degrees at Yale, and a Dr.theol.habil. at the Martin-Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Prior to his time in Princeton, he taught at St. Olaf College, Halle-Wittenberg, the Johannes-Gutenberg University of Mainz, and served as a research professor at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France. He has published widely on 16th and 17th-century European intellectual and cultural history, including three monographs and the forthcoming co-edited Cambridge History of Reformation-Era Theology. He is currently finishing a book entitled Luther and the Peasants.