Lutheranism is the faith and practice of the Protestant churches that follow Martin Luther, the German monk who broke with the Catholic Church in the 1500s. A central teaching is that people are saved by faith, not by paying the church or stacking up good works as a kind of ticket. Lutheran churches care a lot about the Bible in the people’s own language, and about singing together. In many countries this is a large, ordinary church, not a tiny group on the edge. The word names the whole tradition, not one local building.