Religious Revolution

The topic of religious revolution interests me because much of history has been shaped by religious revolution. Consider the history of the West. The rise of Constantine to the seat of the Emperor in the early 4th century allowed Christianity to flourish. The Roman Catholic Church became deeply influential some 400 years later with Charlemagne, who was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope in 800. Religious revolution broke out in Europe with the Protestants, led by Luther, Zwingli, Knox, Calvin and Henry VIII. Their actions led to a revolution in the West that changed the nature of society. Today’s society has very much been impacted the Protestant Revolution, as strains of Puritanism are still seen in American society, for example, as authors like Hawthorne and Melville have shown.

What I hope to learn from the research is how religious revolution unfolded in Europe and what its impact was on society in the Middle Ages and on up through today. The question I want to answer is this: What have been the social, political and economic effects of the Protestant religious revolution in the West?
Three questions that might help me to explore this topic are: 1) Who started the religious revolution in the West? 2) What happened to the Roman Catholic Church as a result of the revolution? 3) What other revolutions were made possible as a result of the religious revolution?

I began the search process by using Google Scholar and searching the keywords: “religious revolution West,” “Protestant Revolution,” and “social economic political effects of Protestant Revolution.” These searches yielded thousands of results, but they mainly all books. There were hardly any links to scholarly articles. I decided I would have to do some background research on the subject in order to better know what to search for. I Googled “Protestant Reformation” and began reading about it on History.com. But this did not really tell me anything I didn’t already know. So I decided to search Google directly for scholarly journals. I used the keywords “medieval journals scholarly” and obtained a few promising choices. I tried another keyword search: “religious studies journals” and this gave me more selections. However, I wanted to explore an alternate approach. I knew that the Peace of Westphalia was an outcome of the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants and that this peace ushered in a new era of political and social norms. I wanted to search this topic for more information so I returned to Google Scholar and searched “protestant reformation Westphalia” and many results came up in scholarly journals that looked very promising.

The works that I began looking at were: “The Religious Roots of Modern International Relations” by Daniel Philpott in the World Politics, vol. 52, issue 2 from the year 2000. This article actually had a lot of good references with links, which I could use to look up several other journal articles. Another article that appeared was “The Myth of the English Reformation” by Diarmaid MacCulloch in Journal of British Studies, volume 30, issue 1 from the year 1991. It examined the ways in which the identity of the Anglican Church was conveyed over time and how it impacted society. I located some books which proved helpful in expanding my understanding of the subject, such as The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560-1791 by Dale K. Van Kley, published by Yale University Press in 1996, and Wayward Monks and the Religious Revolution of the Eleventh Century by Phyllis G. Jestice, published by Brill in 1997. Both books were helpful in increasing my sense of the background of religious revolution and how it can impact so much of society in various ways. Another useful scholarly journal article that I found was “Better Papist than Calvinist: Art and Identity in Later Lutheran Germany” by Bridget Heal in German History, volume 29, issue 4 from 2011. Likewise, I found “Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition in America” by Mark Silk from American Quarterly, volume 36, no. 1 from 1984, which looked at how the term Judeo-Christianity became popularized and how its meaning took on a new form in the U.S. in the 20th century, essentially altering much of how these two groups have been defined throughout history.

The success of this research was that I was able to expose myself to a lot of different sources that I would never have come across had I not persisted in locating texts from scholarly journals. The challenge was to keep digging and refining my keyword searches and search options so as to locate journals with publications that would serve the purpose of this study.

The religious revolution in the West that fragmented the Roman Catholic Church and led to the creation of several new forms of Protestantism caused the political, economic and social fabric of the West to alter substantially in terms of how life was organized, how philosophy was conceptualized, and various forms of new thought came along to fill the gap left by the abandonment of the Old World order. The evidence indicates that the religious revolution was the root of the change. As Philpott and Van Kley show, the religious revolution served as the basis for modern political forms and for modern political and social revolution. Silk also notes that this has been the case, even in America, where a new conception of Judeo-Christianity has emerged. The religious revolution that rent the Church beginning in the 16th century helped spawn the world of today.

Major findings include:
1) Calvinism played a major role in creating the conditions for the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century.
2) The Protestant Revolution helped bring Jews back to a more accepted place in society (especially in England and later in America).
3) The religious revolution essentially led to a new world order.
Counter-argument:
· The religious revolution of the West was merely a blip in the larger historical narrative and did not really impact society, politics or economics to any great extent.

What I learned from writing this paper was that history is very complex and while you might be able to identify certain variables and factors regarding the cause of an event or trend or change, there are always more factors that can be uncovered or examined from numerous other perspectives and theoretical frameworks. This is why it is important to define your own theoretical framework and identify any biases you might have when you approach a subject. What I knew about the topic matched to some extent what the experts have said, but in other ways I learned a lot more about specific events and connections that I was unaware of before. What I have learned will affect my view on this topic in the future in the sense that I do not think I will be able to discuss current events or our current political, economic and social landscape without touching on the religious revolution that made it all possible in the first place. I certainly see how everything that happened in the religious revolution of the West played a part in making the world which we now have today and I am better able to identify the manner in which that revolution played out and how the effects of that revolution carried on throughout the centuries.

Heal, Bridget. “‘Better Papist than Calvinist’: Art and Identity in Later Lutheran
Germany.” German History 29.4 (2011): 584-609.
A good source that describes the social impact of the religious revolution in Germany, this article discusses the manifestation of the revolution in terms of art and identity. The source is reliable, its author credentialed. It was helpful in writing this paper because it provided good background on the subject in a major European country.

Jestice, Phyllis G. Wayward Monks and the Religious Revolution of the Eleventh
Century. New York: Brill, 1997.
This book looked at the early foundations of the religious revolution, going back even before Luther and Wycliffe. It showed how the revolution was brewing for a long while. The source is credible and the author has published other works and is an academic. It helped with the writing of this paper by exposing me to more background on the early events leading up to the religious revolution in the West.

MacCulloch, Diarmaid. “The Myth of the English Reformation.” Journal of British
Studies, 30.1 (1991): 1-19.
This study focuses on how identity, politics and social institutions were impacted by the religious revolution in England. It shows that various perspectives are needed to understand the whole. The source is reliable and the author is an academic. I found this source helpful for better understanding how the religious revolution requires one to be open about how to look at it from different points of view.

Philpott, Daniel. “The Religious Roots of Modern International Relations.” World
Politics, 52.2 (2000): 206-245.
This source notes that the Peace of Westphalia helped institutionalize a new world order. It describes this order as one separate from the order conceived by the Church prior to the religious revolution. The author and source of this text are both reliable and trustworthy. I found this article helpful because it shed light on the politics and economic outcomes of the revolution.

Silk, Mark. “Notes on the Judeo-Christian tradition in America.” American
Quarterly 36.1 (1984): 65-85.
This article focuses on how the religious revolution created a new concept of Jewish and Christian relations. The source and author are reliable and I found this article to be helpful in understanding how the relationship between Jews and Christians changed as a result of the religious revolution in the West.

Van Kley, Dale K. The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the
Civil Constitution, 1560-1791. CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
This source looked at the role that Calvinism played in the French Revolution. The source and author are reliable. It was helpful in connecting the religious revolution to other revolutions in history and showing that they are all related because religion is such an important factor in society at its most basic level.