Russia, Germany, Romania, Serbia, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Vietnam, France have all succumbed to one degree or another in their history to dictatorship . . . while the Protestant lands have been largely untouched by totalitarian dictatorships. Wideawake pointed to Cromwell, a disputable point, and Prussia, which is not, except that I think Germany divided pretty evenly between Protestant and Catholic. I don’t understand Wideawake’s Norway and Belgian examples — I assume it was a Vichy type government after NAZI occupation in Norway and I thought Belgium was a mixed population. I think it’s the training and thinking of the people through their religion. In the Protestant tradition they can read the Bible and decide on their own . . . the individual is more “important” within the religious tradition . . . while in the Catholic tradition there is heirarchy ingrained in the population.
Understand that I don’t think that this points to an inherent superiority of Protestantism. The historical jury is still out regarding whether this freedom is a brief moment in history and the Protestant tradition is under constant and effective assault from the secular culture and the collapse of churches (as are Catholics in Catholic lands). The stability of the Catholic heirarchy is remarkable. How do you combine that with individual initiative and thought in the church and politically? That’s the long term question where you can get the best of both . . . reverse the question and ask how the Protestant gets the stability and staying power of the Catholic church . . .
Greg - I think this argument of Catholic vs Protestant is a bit simplistic. It would be more accurate to say that modern democracy and modern republicanism had strong beginnings in England with the Magna Carta, and that happened long before the Catholic-Protestant devision came about.
A more truthful analysis would be to give the Anglo-Saxon nobility & a few Normans too, some credit for insisting on representation before King John, who was a true despot. Somehow to get the religious thing in here seems a bit silly. Democracy certainly spread forth from England and it’s colonies and grew in wisdom and governing principles.
As an American with mostly German-Catholic ancestors, I can say that neither the Rheinland or Bavaria ever were militaristic or particularly repressive with Protestants. Of course, the Treaty of Westphalia was the primary mover of forward thinking!
Historically since the Thirty-Years War the Prussian Kingdom was the oppressor of other German lands and faiths. Not only Catholics and Jews, but more traditional Lutherans as well came under the oppressive laws of the Kaiser! Hence, the huge emigration out of Germany in the mid and late 19th century.