FOREWORD TO PART V In the closing division of the study, we examine the place of the Bible and its religion in the development of modern society. Once more the fact is emphasized that religious questions have had an intimate connection with secular history. The practical use of sociological Bible-study is indicated in this part of the investigation. CHAPTER XXXII PROTESTANTISM AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM There was at length a great social revolt against the mediaeval church. The movement known as the "Reformation" can be treated as an incident in social and economic history. This is not to deny that Protestantism and the Reformation can be described in spiritual terms. We cannot understand history until human thoughts are viewed in relation to human life as a whole. Not long ago scholars were treating the Reformation as if it were chiefly a matter of ideas and opinion; and although recent investigators have corrected this mistake, the old idea survives in the popular mind, and appears in a great deal of current religious opinion. "Doubtless the social problem has waited longer than it ought for adequate formulation," writes Albion W. Small, "because many men have believed too implicitly with Plato that 'ideas make the world.' Such men have told the story of history as though it were a ghost-dance on a floor of clouds. They have tried to explain how spirits with indiscernible bodies have brought about the visible results. They would not admit that the facts of human association have been the work of flesh-and-blood men with their feet on the ground." The older view of the Reformation went along with reluctance about admitting that men have bodies as well as minds, and that they live on bread as well as upon ideas. The new view of this great religious movement is part of the modern scientific interpretation of history as a whole. It does not claim that men are only physical creatures, nor that they live on bread alone; but it combats the notion that history is a "ghost-dance on a floor of clouds," and it tries to see material things in their true perspective as legitimate factors in human life. From the sociological standpoint, the Reformation was the revolt of the lower classes against the older nobility. Going farther, and resolving it into terms of economics, the Reformation was a protest against the special privileges of the mediaeval Catholic church. Religious questions were political and economic issues at that period because Church and State were united. Religion, as interpreted by Catholicism, was expensive. While the outlay of capital on the church had brought solid returns in mediaeval times, the investment yielded smaller and smaller interest as the centuries rolled on. There were mutterings of revolt in the Middle Ages. The storm had been long gathering when it came to a head at the opening of modern history, and burst with terrific violence. The more progressive part of western society shook off allegiance to the Catholic church and instituted the Protestant churches of Christendom. The head and center of the Reformation was in the rising merchant and manufacturing classes, which had been slowly differentiating throughout the Middle Ages; but these classes were aided by certain sections of the agricultural peasantry, on the one side, and on the other by certain kings and nobles who stood to profit by the dispossession of the church from its landed estates. In economic terms, the Reformation was a protest against expensive religion in favor of cheap religion. It opposed the doctrine of "justification by works," which cost labor and money; and it stood for the doctrine of "justification by faith," which cost nothing. The connection between Protestantism and the rise of commerce It should be observed that the mediaeval Catholic church is not to be identified with the modern Catholic church. There is, of course, a historical continuity between the two; and the “official” position of that church is about the same now as in the Middle Ages. But the facts here pointed out with reference to the Catholic church at the time of the Reformation are not peculiar to the church. They are facts of human nature as displayed in that particular situation. |