MHO: first person to make the argument for "works not faith" was probably James the Just, Jesus' brother, and probably the leader of what Eisenman and others call "The Jerusalem Church" though I would really just call it a "community". Of course, James' position is closer to the original Jewish view. Even today, the most ultra-Orthodox are more concerned with Orthodoxy of action (following the commandments) than Orthodoxy of belief (though I'm not affiliated with those guys). This agnostic thinks humans wrote the Torah as well as anything else, humans devised the rules for their community 3000 years ago, and no, I'm going to go ahead and eat bacon and shellfish. For sure, I'm not gonna put to death people who wear mixed fabrics.
The commandments about treating your fellow man fairly, justly, and honestly were the ones emphasized by the Prophets, who BTW kinda before that Jesus feller were saying "the law was made for man, not man for the law".
I really like this Hillel feller who said "the heart of the Torah is to love thy neighbor as thyself; the rest is commentary". (Then Rabbi Jesus, who appears to have been a follower of his liberal sect of Pharisaism, said it).
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... rsion=NKJV
I think James was probably the central figure for this early sect of Christianity Biblical historians call the Ebionites. The weird thing is who would have known Jesus' actual teachings better -- his own brother, or some outsider named "Better Call Saul" from Tarsus who never knew him? But we know the deal, the Paulines became the dominant faction, and the Ebionites became declared the heretics.
Martin Luther started out as a philosemite. He thought if he fixed and removed the "errors" of the Catholic Church, the Jews would no longer have the barriers he thought kept them from converting. But when they didn't follow suit, yeah, he became a nasty antisemite.
As for the Catholic Church during the Holocaust - so much could be said on it - there were priests who resisted, the movie
Amen is about one -- but generally without the support of their institution. Today, I will say this much, even before Francis (a Pope I also like, but look there are things he won't change now I don't know whether it's because he wants to and even a Pope can't change the steering of the Titanic alone) ... they were often good voices in this country for defending the rights of immigrants. If only because most of them coming from Latin American countries were Catholic. (Something that's changing there.)
As far as Orthodoxy goes, well all I will say is the Russian Orthodox patriarch Kirill is a douchebag. Now the thing about Eastern Orthodoxy is they never went full top down hierarchy. They have no top level Pope, just a bunch of regional and national patriarchs. Obviously, Ukrainian Orthodox patriarchs and Russian Orthodox patriarchs are saying different things - but Msr. Kirill said Ukraine "deserved" to be invaded and occupied because, well, they held LGBTQ Pride events.... he was the one who said that, and, well, F him.