Review of Brad S. Gregory: "The Unintended Reformation - How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society" (2012)

[MWinther]

We cannot find an answer to the Life Questions in a Western culture infested with hyperpluralism, relativism and godlessness. How did it come to this? Gregory sums up the argument of the book thusly:

Judged on their own terms and with respect to the objectives of their own leading protagonists, medieval Christendom failed, the Reformation failed, confessionalized Europe failed, and Western modernity is failing, but each in different ways and with different consequences, and each in ways that continue to remain important in the present. (p. 365)

The author rejects supersessionism, the view that we can account for today's world by largely ignoring the Reformation era and the Middle Ages, by arguing that these epochs were transcended and left behind in the Enlightenment. The deterioration began in late Middle Ages when theologians abandoned the non-univocal metaphysics of the Church Fathers. God came to be seen as a this-worldly ruler rather than transcendent Creator. The medievals failed to practice what they preached whereas the Reformation foundered partly because the doctrine of Sola Scriptura was useless. Theologians could not agree about the meaning and implications of Scripture. The fragmentation of the wholeness-world of the Middle Ages led to today's secularism. Says Gregory:

As we have seen, religious persecution understandably led most Catholics and Protestants alike eventually to welcome the free exercise of individual conscience with respect to religious belief and worship. By privatizing religion and separating it from society, individual religious freedom unintentionally precipitated the secularization of religion and society. [...] Increasingly they preferred to agree to disagree, eschewing theological controversy in order to go shopping... (p. 243)

With the Reformation [the] market and inherited Christian morality were increasingly divorced, which removed the ethical restraints inhibiting the eventual formation of a full-blown capitalist and consumerist society. The great irony of the Reformation era with respect to economics is the fact that despite themselves, Catholics, magisterial Protestants, and radical Protestants collectively forged the very things that they condemned. (p. 272)

The author presents a bleak picture. There seems to be no way back to a wholeness-world with the Life Questions answered. Fragmentation continues unabated. The book is littered with historical facts, which I find cumbersome. But it answers the question of why we are where we are today. I give the book five stars out of five.

 

[Jefferson]

The author presents a bleak picture. There seems to be no way back to a wholeness-world with the Life Questions answered.

As far as the purpose of human life is concerned: He who dies having pleased God most, wins.

 

[Idolater]

We cannot find an answer to the Life Questions in a Western culture infested with hyperpluralism, relativism and godlessness. How did it come to this?

Whatever led to the general de-emphasis of teaching children about political science (civics), is the root cause.

Fragmentation continues unabated.

Some things are more important than everything else. We can be fragmented on everything else, so long as we're united on all the more important things.

 

[Jefferson]

Some things are more important than everything else. We can be fragmented on everything else, so long as we're united on all the more important things.

In the US we need to be united on valuing the 1st amendment. When we're not, the result is Cancel Culture.

 

[Idolater]

In the US we need to be united on valuing the 1st amendment. When we're not, the result is Cancel Culture.

I think we need the whole Constitution. Including the whole First, Second and all the other Amendments.