Skip to main content

500 Years of History to Size Up

Recently there has been a timely opportunity to wrestle with the Big Picture: the Protestant Reformation had its 500th birthday. Secondly a quirky election (for a Senate seat in Alabama) makes you wonder how American culture looks from the perspective of a European post-Christian. Thus there are two timely examples to think about the last 500 years of the Decline and Fall of European Christianity.

I cannot answer these issues in a brief post. But I do want to advertise them as an opportunity. Many important questions are ignored even though we know that they are important. They are big, and take too much hard work. This is how the timeliness of the news, or our outrage at news coverage, can be used to spur us on to the Difficult. It's the best use I know of.

For my part I am reading Hilaire Belloc again, in part because the English-speaking world is already saturated with the Whig Interpretation of History. I need to hear history from the Catholic viewpoint to be 'awakened from my dogmatic slumbers.' 

Suffice it to say that I have been convinced that Protestantism as a separate religion from Catholicism was a sad result of a potentially beneficial Reformation.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Re the last paragraph: Could you explain in more detail what you mean, please? Why are you convinced that Protestantism was a sad result...? What could have made the Reformation more beneficial?

Chris
1. By overthrowing the authority of Rome, and replacing it with the authority of the Bible, Protestantism became more like Islam and less like Christianity. That is, they worshipped a book, a static book, flawed book. If they had stayed loyal to a church, that church could have evolved over time.

2. Overthrowing the unity of Christendom hastened the growth of nation-states. Nationalism became the new religion. It finally culminated in World War I.
Anonymous said…
Reasonable generalizations. I like them. Would not our existence be just about perfect if we had embraced the principles of Humanism from "Lucy" on?

Chris
"Humanism" is a pretty broad term. In the context of this post, Humanism means something like Erasmus or Thomas More in the early 1500s. They were Catholics. They wanted to supplement the Faith with the wisdom and philosophy of pre-Christian Greece and Rome.

The Protestants had no interest in this sort of thing. They only cared about the bible, Bible, BIBLE, and making money.
Redundancy is the natural state of the cosmos. A simple and effective way to continue on in the cycle.

If you look up climate cycles, witches burn when it gets unseasonably cold.

The reformation came out of such a cycle.

Nationalism is redundant. It is a larger family. Globalism is where the problems begin.

Islam is in the midst of their own Reformation.

Redundancy will win in the end, you can not change the cycle.

What is the common thread that is found in all sacred books?

This is where truth of our past can be found.
XXXXX said…
You might want to consider the credentials of the author of the book you are reading. Woods is one of the founders of the League of the South. Here is some info from Wiki:
The League of the South is a white nationalist, Neo-Confederate, white supremacist organization,[1][2][3][4] headquartered in Killen, Alabama, which states that its ultimate goal is "a free and independent Southern republic".[5] The group defines the Southern United States as the states that made up the former Confederacy.[6] It claims to be also a religious and social movement, advocating a return to a more traditionally conservative, Christian-oriented Southern culture.[7

Does Wiki reveal the credentials and agenda of the person who wrote the blurb you mentioned?
XXXXX said…
You can check out the organization yourself online from other sources.
Or are you questioning whether Woods has played an active role in the organization? Just google the name of the organization and look for key people listed. His name is there.
Maybe this doesn't concern you.
"Islam is in the midst of their own Reformation..." That is news to me. I would like to read more about that.
Expand your sources of information gathering from many eclectic sources while filtering the data through your well developed critical thinking skills will net tons of info online.
I went to their website and could find no white supremacist propaganda.

They are very much a successionist group who value their white culture and history. Being proud of ones heritage does not make one a white supremacist.

In fact the whole racist argument is an Anti West anti White anti Male Marxist ploy and after many years of fooling the majority, it is finally reached it's peak and is in collapse.

Just look at poor Europe. What a hot mess. I will keep my nationalism and trade with my neighbors in an honest manner any day over that.

Martin Armstrong of armstrongeconomics said.

What the Protestant Reformation did was the beginning a Capitalism for previously only the Jews were bankers and they tended to be restrained overall and were not lending down to individual consumers. The Protestant Reformation was funded by rich merchants who wanted to be bankers, but the Catholic practiced the Sin of Usury just as did the Muslims. The Protestant Reformation opened the door to Christian banking and then credit became widespread. This leveraged the economy and thus here is where the line is drawn for the rebirth of Capitalism.