Besides starting off the Counter-Reformation inside the Roman Catholic Church which inspired numerous works of pure genius there the Protestant Reformation did also offer several key religious, cultural, and historical shifts that anyone who believes in the principles behind our civilisation should value even today:
1. Access to Scripture (Sola Scriptura)
• Vernacular Bibles: reformers translated the Bible from Latin into their own various national languages;
• Direct Access: these translations got eventually published and widely distributed which allowed ordinary believers to read and interpret the Bible themselves rather than relying strictly on the clergy.
2. Emphasis on Grace and Faith
• Free Gift of Grace: the Reformation centered on the idea that salvation is received through faith and God's grace alone, rather than through religious works, church rituals, or buying indulgences;
• Ending Corruption: it challenged and dismantled directly any corruption inside the church of which the financial practices like the sale of papal indulgences were only one example.
3. Literacy and Education
• Promoting Reading: because reading the Bible was indeed placed at the center of personal faith, the whole movement of Reformation sparked a whirlwind push for widespread literacy and schooling and a generally accepted aim that gained in strength throughout the following centuries till today to make sure that also common people could read.
4. Decentralization of Power
• Challenging Monopolies: the Reformation broke also the sweeping political and religious monopoly of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, leading to a much more pluralistic religious and social landscape which did a lot of good to the emerging of entirely new thoughts around the concept of the Enlightenment and an totally innovating idealogy which eventually was called political liberialism or liberal democracy;
• Personal Relationship with God: the relationship of praticising Christians towards God shifted after the Reformation the focus away from church intermediaries toward a much more individual, personal connection with God.
1. That is only a half truth. The Lutherans removed entire books from the bible (66 vs 73) and since education was still exclusively in the hands of elites they controlled which translations got made and those translations we know were influenced by political agendas of the day.
Bibles were also largely kept within circles of already educated elites. Just like how capitalism largely just replaced feudal elites with a new faction of elites.
2. Many Protestant doctrines like predestination created an even more high control faith system that took power over the spiritual realm further out of the hands of the masses.
And well to claim that the new elites were not also corrupt is just naive and silly.
3. Again I am not sure if education for the purpose of religious indoctrination is in the plus column.
This was repeated at the end of a gun barrel through colonialism.
4. No. On paper the papacy was a monopoly but by the 1500s Catholicism was several power centres that paid lip service to the Pope and was more a loose alliance of powerful nations.
All the reformation did was introduce new power centres.
And absolutely none of this had anything to do with liberalism, enlightenment, or liberal democracy🤣
Most of the Protestant states were also absolute monarchies, and Protestantism led to some of the most fanatical attempts to exterminate any faction dictated "heresy" going after both Catholics and each other at various points.
It also lead to the bloodiest religious wars ever seen on the European continent killing millions of people not seen again till WW1.
7 million dead is the lowest estimate.
And no. Protestantism talks about "personal relationships with God" and yet every church tells you that you need a church to make sure you read it correctly and come to the conclusions they deem to be orthodox. It has been that way from 1518 to today.
If people want a future for their church they first need to start being honest about their history.
@BlueSkyKing You think that the last century was any better, or even today? Heard someone say that they'll bomb a country to the stone age recently? It was not the Reformation that killed but the human animal yet again.
It's interesting that having been worshiping in a Protestant fellowship all my life, it's taken until today to even know about this 'day'. I know all about the history and machinations of the era, but celebrating most of these 'days' (like saints' days) is not much of a thing in many free churches in the UK, although the significance of the events is not lost on us,
