Last year marked the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, sparking fervent conversation and timely reflection on its cultural impact. Brad Gregory’s award winning book, The Unintended Reformation (2012), describes the many ways our secular present is a result of a religious revolution from half a millennia ago.

In partnership with Geneva Campus Church and Badger Catholic, Dr. Gregory will be at Upper House to explore the linkage between an unlikely collection of theological visionaries, and the surprising developments of hyper-pluralism, technological advance, and the influential spread of consumerism. Thursday evening's lecture will focus on the unintended role the Reformation played in an economic revolution, laying the groundwork for the advance of Western capitalism.

Brad S. Gregory is Dorothy G. Griffin Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Notre Dame, a world-class historian, and award-winning author of Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe and The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows. Before joining the faculty at Notre Dame in 2003, Gregory taught at Stanford University. He has received multiple teaching awards and was named the inaugural winner of the Hiett Prize in the Humanities from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Gregory's research focuses on Christianity in the Reformation era, the long-term effects of the Reformation, secularization in early modern and modern Western history, and methodology in the study of religion. Dr. Gregory is the author of many scholarly articles and most recently published Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World.