in a realistic story with the goal of keeping his book historically and scripturally accurate. During the Protestant vs. Catholic struggle During the struggle between Protestants and Catholics in Europe, from the 16th century to the 18th, a person belonging to a Church different from the locally dominant one often risked severe punishment – in many cases, capital. At that time, there developed the use of "Nicodemite", usually a term of disparagement referring to a person who is suspected of public misrepresentation of their actual religious beliefs by exhibiting false appearance and concealing true beliefs. The term was apparently introduced by John Calvin in his 1544 Excuse à messieurs les Nicodemites. To Calvin, who opposed all veneration of saints, the fact of Nicodemus becoming a Catholic saint in no way exonerated his "duplicity". The term was originally applied mainly to crypto-protestants – hidden Protestants in a Catholic environment – later used more broadly. United States The discussion with Jesus is the source of several common expressions of contemporary American Christianity, specifically, the descriptive phrase "born again" used to describe salvation or baptism by some groups, and John 3:16, a commonly quoted verse used to describe God's plan of salvation. Daniel Burke notes that, "To blacks after the Civil War, he was a model of rebirth as they sought to cast off their old identity as slaves". Rosamond Rodman asserts that freed slaves who moved to Nicodemus, Kansas, after the Civil War named their town after him. However, the National Park Service indicates that it was more likely based on an 1864 song, "Wake Nicodemus" by Henry Clay Work, used to promote settlement in the area. On 16 August 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. invoked Nicodemus as a metaphor concerning the need for the United States to be "born again" in order to effectively address social and economic inequality. The speech was called "Where Do We Go From Here?", and delivered at the 11th Annual SCLC Convention in Atlanta, Georgia. Gallery See also Saint Nicodemus, patron saint archive Christ's discourse with Nicodemus Citations General and cited references Cornel Heinsdorff: Christus, Nikodemus und die Samaritanerin bei Juvencus. Mit einem Anhang zur lateinischen Evangelienvorlage (= Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte, Bd.67), Berlin/New York, 2003. External links Nicodemus in The Jewish Encyclopedia "St. Nicodemus" in Butler's Lives of the Saints Christian saints from the New Testament Followers of Jesus Gospel of John Pharisees