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To: walford; Gamecock
My interpretation, based upon history and theology, is that Christianity underwent a Reformation, which affected the Western World socially and politically as well as theologically. No longer did political leaders hold power by Divine Right. No longer were Christians permitted to kill in the name of God or conquer and plunder the non-believer.

Sorry, this is a wrong interpretation.

The Reformation did not start the separation of church and state, it did not end power by Divine Right and did not do the other things you say.

The Reformation was about bringing Christianity back to what the reformers believed were fundamental practices

The 1700s onwards was the time when what you post happened.

Islam has undergone its reformation with the creation of the Wahabbis -- and while Christians can go back to a peaceful Christianity in the 1st century, islam in the 1st century was bloody

10 posted on 12/04/2015 12:18:55 AM PST by Cronos (Obama�s dislike of Assad is not based on Assad�s brutality but that he isn't a jihadi Mosl)
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To: Cronos

“The Reformation did not start the separation of church and state, it did not end power by Divine Right and did not do the other things you say.

The Reformation was about bringing Christianity back to what the reformers believed were fundamental practices

The 1700s onwards was the time when what you post happened.”


Certainly it’s a matter of interpretation, but I am not the only one who holds that it is not a mere coincidence that the Renaissance and Reformation overlapped, which arguably then led to the subsequent Enlightenment to which you refer.

Regardless of the original intentions of Martin Luther and his contemporaries, the Reformation had a strong political element — because the Catholic Church at the time was arguably a political entity first and foremost.

So when the Great Schism took place and political leadership no longer saw itself as being subject to the approval of the Holy See, the general populations also began to question whether their rulers were entitled to hold power by Divine Sanction.

Hence, there was growing turmoil socially, economically and politically in the Western World as a direct consequence of the Reformation and its aftermath.

The genie could not be put back into the bottle once the very core of what held Europe together was split apart.


16 posted on 12/04/2015 12:36:19 AM PST by walford ("In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell)
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To: Cronos

“The Reformation was about bringing Christianity back to what the reformers believed were fundamental practices”

And that is interesting because the “original practices” or classical Christianity was utterly destroyed by Mohammad and his Disciples during their 100 year (628-728 AD) rampage on classical western civilization, which they came close to utterly erasing from history.

Islam did not exist in the 1st Century, but in the 7th.


31 posted on 12/04/2015 1:42:51 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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