This paper reviews Alister McGrath's Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution, a historical account of Protestantism from the sixteenth century to the present. The review evaluates McGrath's central argument that Protestantism was founded on the principle that individuals need no intermediaries to interpret scripture and faith. While the paper acknowledges McGrath's success in demonstrating this core thesis across three historical sections—European origins, common Protestant beliefs, and contemporary Southern Hemisphere applications—it identifies a significant weakness: the breadth of coverage sacrifices analytical depth. The paper argues that McGrath's sweeping historical scope, though commendable, leaves important theological questions unexamined and raises unresolved issues about religious cohesion in Protestantism.
In Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution: A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First, author Alister McGrath provides a comprehensive chronicle of Protestantism from its earliest roots to present-day conceptions. McGrath is a prominent theologian and priest in the United Kingdom and the author of several books, many of which detail some aspect of Protestantism. In this particular volume, he presents a largely unbiased account of the primary notion that spawned this religion and examines its myriad applications, with varying degrees of success, throughout the ensuing years. This approach is both the book's strength and its weakness: with so many different epochs, ideas, and people covered—which McGrath should be rewarded for—he cannot devote considerable length of time to them.
Although the book is divided into three different sections, they all revolve around the conception that Protestantism was founded by Martin Luther largely on the principle that intermediaries (such as the Catholic Church) are not necessary to understand and interpret both the Bible and its Christian tenets, and that anyone can interpret these teachings and apply them with relevance to their own lives. As one scholar summarizes McGrath's argument: "Protestantism is the dangerous idea that every individual Christian may go back to Christ and the Bible and reformulate, revise, and adapt the historic faith to fit his own culture and setting, to his own understanding" (Battle, no date). McGrath's manual is divided into three sections, all of which provide various evidence of this principle. The first details the European beginnings of this movement and the events that spawned it. The second draws various parallels among common Protestant beliefs and the reasons for them, while the final section—which is the most interesting—details contemporary notions and applications of this religion in the Southern Hemisphere.
One extremely positive aspect of this manuscript is that McGrath is able to demonstrate the central notion of his thesis fairly convincingly. The uniformity and rigid adherence to the Catholic Church, and its various forms of institutional corruption in the sixteenth century, spawned the idea that such an entity was not truly needed. To that extent, McGrath proves that the individualistic component of Protestantism is the commonality between its many manifestations, as in this religion "the individual's relationship with God is direct" (McGrath, 2007, p. 44). McGrath spends a substantial amount of time chronicling several different varieties of Protestantism and some of the more notable and lesser-known figures who have helped extend its principles in defense of this central premise, such as Martin Bucer and John Calvin. This historical accounting effectively demonstrates how the principle of individual interpretation persists across denominational lines.
"Breadth sacrifices theological depth and leaves questions unresolved"
"Whether individualism achieves true religious cohesion"
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