“Luther’s protest was against certain things that the church was doing at the time. Oddly enough, the church stopped doing almost all of those things because he was right.”
No. Whatever the Church put a stop to it did so because she considered them wrong not because Luther did.
“The Reformation didn’t become the Protestant church until after Rome had excommunicated the Reformers.”
Not exactly. Luther’s beliefs - such as sola fide - were already heretical before he was formally excommunicated and those heretical beliefs formed the underpinnings of his heretical and schismatic sect. His schismatic body may not have taken full form until it was cut out of the Body of Christ like the cancer it was by his excommunication, but there can be no doubt the sect he was forming was not orthodox long before his excommunication.
“How many years? He would find that the evangelical view of the Crusades has changed quite a bit in the last decade, due to the activities of Islam and the fact that people are more educated about the real history of the Crusades now.”
Among some Evangelicals their views of the Crusades has changed, but all that proves is that the Evangelicals were wrong for decades or centuries and now have changed their views out of necessity and still have not admitted their errors on the Crusades. Someone could make the case that the only reason we are having problems with Islam now is that Protestantism arose in the 16th century.
>>Someone could make the case that the only reason we are having problems with Islam now is that Protestantism arose in the 16th century.
They could say that, but that is hardly a case. In the span of a few decades, God kicked the Muslims out of Europe, gave us the Reformation to close out the Middle Ages, and then gave us a new world to move to where his new church could flourish. America was founded on Protestant ideals.