Monday, December 10, 2007

There isn't a lot of information for you to master in this last chapter, but there's a lot to ponder. One point I'd like you to think about is a remark Lindberg makes at the bottom of page 379:

We are obviously far removed from the sixteenth century, but also remarkably close to some of the same issues. We too live in a culture rooted in a piety of achievement no less debilitating for all that it is secular instead of religious. The modern concern for the salvation of the economy is no less consuming than the medieval concern for the economy of salvation; and contemporary cathedrals of capitalism and other ideologies require no fewer "good works" than those of the Middle Ages.

Do you agree or disagree? Are we still saddled with some of the same anxieties and delusions that represent the worst of religion on the eve of the Reformation?

Another point to consider is the role the Reformation might play in the secularization of our society. Again, I cite Lindberg, this time towards the top of page 359:

A rationalistic and creed-bound Protestantism and Catholicism contributed politically to the developments of the consolidation of the early modern state and its concomitant imposition of social discipline, and intellectually to the rationalism, Deism, and Pietism that fed the Enlightenment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. . . Without a unitary sacred ideal for the integration of society and without the means and will to enforce a particular confessional ideal for all Europe, toleration became a path to social peace and the eventual secularization of society.

Is this true, and if so, is it a good thing, or are there losses to be considered?

Laurel Carrington carringt@stolaf.edu
Most recent update: December 7, 2007

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