Effects of Protestantism Reformation in Mainland Europe
According to the churches history there are several religious –based reform movements, these includes; Protestantism in mainland Europe, Protestantism in England and the catholic counter – reformation. Due to several ideological differences and aspects view of what is Christianity? There was violence in this period. Basing on Protestantism in mainland Europe reformation, Am going to discuss its influence to political, spiritual and cultural aspect. The Protestantism in mainland Europe reformation occurred in 16th century, which really influenced religious itself, political, spiritual and cultural upheaval under influence of reformers like martin Luther, John Calvin and Henry Viii.
This resulted to political splitting of catholic churches in Europe which lead to thirty years in war and finally making England Anglican. Hence papal authority was challenged and questioned and churches leadership was disrupted and papal powers were reduced. Therefore Martin Luther and other reformers became popular and first skillfully to use power and their ideas was widely speeded to the audience through use of power of printing press.
During this period, Christian got freedom to worship freely and they build up their faith since there was light in Christianity. With the fact that Luther argued that bible was not tradition but it was meant to be sole source of spiritual authority but not Nobel, this gave more rights to exercise their spiritual practices.
Reformation changed people’s mindset culturally from Catholicism to other denominations. Before the reformation, all other national churches answered to the same person who was the pope. Clergy were tasked to interpreting the bible and dictating the practices of the laypeople which led to abuse of power and finances. It is through abuse of power that prompted the led to reformation. Protestant’s cultural beliefs emerged which were a bit contrary to the catholic beliefs. In protestant, clergy were allowed to marry as opposed to Catholics. It also increased the role of women in clergy such as universal education. As need to read and understand bible at a personal level by protestant increased, there rose need to build schools to act as a Centre for learning such as Yale University.
As the reformers broke from Catholicism to their current denominations, they faced various challenges such as diversity. Protestant are many hence there were many ideological differences that faced then. The believers also felt that the Luther’s 95 THESE of 1517 were hypocritical and corrupt. There also emerged the Counter Reformation movement which was against the reformation movement of the reformers.