Thanks and hopefully all but adulation to betty boop. I have some reservations with what is depicted here, from Barzun, though. Having studied such things much, much less though, please put these reservations before a big, humble question mark:
I confess I find Jacques' depiction of the degree of congregational polity in Reformation church fellowhips to be exaggerated, compared to what else I've read. For example, these cited movement/denominations were in their time considered deviant and troublesome by Reformed denominations (and often persecuted, sometimes as vigorously as the RC hierarchy persecuted the Reformers):Anabaptists/Baptists, Puritans, Quakers (and even Methodists). But, to illustrate my comparative lack of education about it all, I don't recall the others listed (and of course I
vassn't der for any of them) Personally, I'd tend to distinguish these church movements as
supra-Reformation. Big-R Reformed orders, however remained pretty hierarchical in polity as well as high-church in worship.
As an example, this rings quite true,
"Consciously or not, some of the Puritans shared the scientists’ trust in experience, in results, in utility." but one recalls the Puritans were a somewhat short-lived minority in England (Cromwell's regime being discontinued and then hopes for purifying the Church of England petering out). Puritans and Presbyterians though, from what I've seen and heard, were perhaps the most aggressive and pervasive "equal opportunity" capitalists around and fed this blessing into the mainstream of the American
cultural revolution. (A big, big point that they maintained and one which should ever be shouted from the housetops is that for an authentic Regenerate in Christ, all aspects of life are to be
spiritual. The
profane in this understanding of Scripture and life is what is defeated at Salvation and ever afterward to be put to death (and/or never reassumed).
If I recall right... add to the Puritans (later aptly called Congregationalists) and Presbyterians (mainly immigrated Scots including those from Ulster) the greater numbers of the Calvinist movement (maybe big-R Reformation, but I think it seems a bit more like what Barzun seems to describe) and the later, fiery Great Awakening (more Methodist in orientation) and we have enough democratic-like people around to actually fulfill the prior "Reformation" thinkers' hopes!
Funny how such a thing would happen....
Howwwwwwever... a big "bump" for especially the Puritan grounds for the sentiments later found in the Declaration (given a big bump also by the aforementioned Great Awakening) although, lest my observations become a doctrinaire thesis, if I recall correctly some of the fine political philosophers who foreran the Revolution were of the Church of England (even a Catholic or two?).
Also, let's keep in mind that the motive of the "Protestants" was not to protest in the negative, but to "speak for" and not to speak chiefly for individuality, but for being "transformed by the renewing of our minds" and being (as one and any and all would understand) what the Lord intended, as revealed through the Scriptures, both individually and as the Church. Thankfully, such motives may still be found by those (in or out of any denomination) not willing to settle for the conservatism of the status quo, nor traditions where they are found to be "traditions taught by men."
BTW, this is not a knock the people of the RC and big-R Reformation denominations; we're not talkin' people here, but as ms. boop related, the cultural influences of teaching and church formation.)
BTW2, I think keeping the Bible from the darkened ones in the Dark Ages was probably more cause than effect of their illiteracy, judging from what the report(s) I've seen of the overriding motives of those who later educated themselves and/or their children.
BTW3, I suggest one will continue to find the separate influences of Roman Catholic hierarchy and Reformation/supra-Reformation/Evangelical in American politics and all you have to do to see it is to look at "The Map." (Yep, the famous red and blue map from the miraculous I think Bush election.) I live in the suburbs of Chicago, and I see it here.
?
I'll just end this by pulling this out from bb's post and individualistically bolding part of it:
The Reformation changed all this. Its spirit of emancipation had the effect of fostering the spirit of democracy as a political concept, and of democratizing thought. No longer was truth perceived as the deposit of faith under the protection of a professional elite. Truth was everyman’s, susceptible to individual reason.
...everyman's, to hold in earthen vessels that is, albet God will not give his glory to another.