Reviews
The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society, by Brad S. Gregory
kbc's review
4.0
This makes me wish I had my old access to scholarly journals to see how the academy is reacting.
I am pro-anything that makes historians of the "modern era" have to pay attention to the Middle Ages/Reformations. When I studied that time period, I had to know about how the history/philosophy since the 16th century affected the books and articles I was reading, so I think it is proper that those who deal with times closer to the present see how the Middle Ages and Reformation still inform the present day.
There are two major points Gregory makes: 1. Western history is not a tale of progress that leaves religion behind. Much of Western fundamental beliefs have their roots in Christianity. 2. The Reformation shattered the Western consensus of what truth is and we've never been able to reach a consensus again. Instead we've come to a consensus that acquiring stuff is the way to live life.
It's an uneasy conclusion: the movement away from a moral consensus has left the West with no intellectual underpinning for our current outlooks, but the shift it made to science/natural philosophy has made our world materially better.
For me, I guess I wonder how the split in Christianity differs from splits in other moral pinnings in the non-Western world. He treated Islam as one coherent system, yet there are splits within it. And somewhat personally, I'd rather live in the "Kingdom of Whatever" than be seen as property of a man and/or be burnt as a witch. So while my intellectual underpinnings of the idea of equality may be shaky, I guess I have to go with my emotional feeling. Alas.
I am pro-anything that makes historians of the "modern era" have to pay attention to the Middle Ages/Reformations. When I studied that time period, I had to know about how the history/philosophy since the 16th century affected the books and articles I was reading, so I think it is proper that those who deal with times closer to the present see how the Middle Ages and Reformation still inform the present day.
There are two major points Gregory makes: 1. Western history is not a tale of progress that leaves religion behind. Much of Western fundamental beliefs have their roots in Christianity. 2. The Reformation shattered the Western consensus of what truth is and we've never been able to reach a consensus again. Instead we've come to a consensus that acquiring stuff is the way to live life.
It's an uneasy conclusion: the movement away from a moral consensus has left the West with no intellectual underpinning for our current outlooks, but the shift it made to science/natural philosophy has made our world materially better.
For me, I guess I wonder how the split in Christianity differs from splits in other moral pinnings in the non-Western world. He treated Islam as one coherent system, yet there are splits within it. And somewhat personally, I'd rather live in the "Kingdom of Whatever" than be seen as property of a man and/or be burnt as a witch. So while my intellectual underpinnings of the idea of equality may be shaky, I guess I have to go with my emotional feeling. Alas.
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