2: Religious Revolutions
Religious Revolutions as a Means to Understand Political Revolutions
A political revolution is about propagating beliefs about the way a society should be governed, and the relationship between a citizen and his government. A religious revolution is about propagating beliefs about the way a society should worship and the relationship between a person and supernatural forces.
The two are entirely similar in their fundamental nature: regardless of the specific details they are about propagating beliefs. And more specifically, they are about the balance between a man's ability to decide to do as he sees fit, and the degree to which he must obey the commands of those who claim to represent a higher power that cannot speak for itself.
Thus considered, we can see how the two are essentially similar: the precise identity of this higher power and the particulars of who holds authority to issue commands on its behalf are entirely incidental.
Thus considered, the interests, methods, and mechanisms of politics and religion are identical.
The Beginnings of the Protestant Reformation and Its First Disciples
The Protestant Reformation was a religious revolution, significant in that the beliefs it sought to establish would have a significant influence on the sentiments and moral ideas of western culture.
Its beginnings were modest: it was a protest against the beliefs expressed by the existing clergy from a practical point of view. It did not originally seek to replace the Roman Catholic Church, but merely to compel church leaders to compromise their demands of the congregation to accommodate worldly concerns.
It was in 1520 that Martin Luther, a leader in the rebellion, began recruiting his firs supporters, and it took about fifteen years before he had gathered enough to be considered a threat to the church.
Naturally, the church's reaction was to suppress this rebellion by rejecting these suggestions and attempting to rectify those who had gone astray from the church's doctrines, or to dispose of those who resisted their attempts at rectification. In this way, it was attempting to maintain the existing order of things and preserve its own power.
As the rebellion grew, the beliefs that constituted the platform of its proposed changes evolved. It attracted many followers who saw the rebellion as a means to dispense with the church doctrines that got in the way of the fulfillment of their lust and their greed. And to secure their support, the values of Protestantism adjusted themselves to accommodate the desires of the masses.
The Doctrines of the Protestant Reformations
The Protestant Reformation is referred to by historians in the singular, as if it were only one group of people, and who were united around a singular set of ideas. This was not so: various groups emerged across Europe, each with its own notion of which of the church's doctrines should be abandoned and which new doctrines should be introduced.
(EN: This is likely the reason there is not one "protestant church" today, but a plethora of churches that are based on different beliefs - whose only common bond is that they are different to Catholicism.)
The fact that the beliefs of various factions differed so dramatically is in itself proof that beliefs eschew rational thought. Rational men use logic to debate and negotiate facts, whereas men of belief simply state their beliefs and support them with passion, refusing to submit proof or a structure of evidence that lead to a rational conclusion. This is to say that there is no rational basis on which differences in beliefs can be resolved - they are either accepted or rejected without rational examination. Hence, their potential for variety is infinite.
In essence, the protestants sought to achieve the same goal as the church of their time: they feared damnation and wished to achieve salvation - but to achieve it by easier and more convenient means. Their belief was that their behavior was inconsequential in earning salvation, that they could do as they pleased in this life and still receive salvation in the next. No logic was tendered for this thesis, it was merely to be accepted.
What passed for logic was the ability to correlate any belief to some passage in the bible, a book that was poorly understood at the time, and which is so full of contradictions that a passage can be found to support any notion. Anything that a protestant wished to do could be justified, and anything a protestant wished to avoid doing could be exempted. There are very few matters in which the bible is clear, consistent, and unequivocal.
For example, the notion of predestination became highly popular among protestants: it maintained that from the beginning of time, God selected certain men to be saved and certain men to be damned, and their behavior in the present life is of no consequence. In essence, this overthrew the very principle that religion had any connection to human behavior.
However, this did not suffice to form a platform for a movement that would unite men behind a singular purpose, so a separate morality was cobbled together, a patchwork of so many verses taken out of contest and reinterpreted, to form a new system of beliefs to be substituted for the old, and as a means to reward the support of those who supported the rebellion with a promise of personal power afterward.
Such was the basis of the doctrines of the protestant reformations.
Propagation of the Protestant Reformation
The protestant reformation was not a movement with a single set of beliefs nor a single set of leaders. There were multiple leaders of multiple factions and each faction negotiated, compromising upon its original beliefs, to attract a sufficient following. There were further negotiations and compromises among factions to form a basis of alliance among them - effectively creating larger groups from smaller ones.
It's noted that the reaction of the Catholic Church was severe: those who demanded accommodation for worldly concerns were declared heretics, tortured, and executed - the grim spectacle of which was meant to discourage the rebellion, but only served to support the notion that the existing church was to be vilified.
As such, the early sixteenth century marks a period in which there were a considerable number of protestant martyrs, whose conviction even in the face of horrific punishment caused others to be "hypnotized by their faith" and drawn to the protestant movement, swelling the congregations of reformed churches and fueling the progress of the protestant reformation.
Intolerance and Atrocity in Conflicts of Belief
Intolerance invariably accompanies powerful beliefs, and religions and political revolutions provide numerous proofs of this fact. Anyone who holds his beliefs strongly bears a hatred of anyone who does not in equal measure. Since reason holds no power over his thoughts, he can only react emotionally to a binary perception of humanity: allies who share his belief and enemies who do not.
The most shockingly violent atrocities in history have been perpetrated by those whose motivation was the "defense" of their beliefs. There has never been a massacre perpetrated based on logic or reason.
As such, the conflict between Catholicism and protestant reformers are marked by bloodshed and murder, even of the elderly and very young; and not satisfied with that, to the defilement of the bodies of the dead.
(EN: Hereafter multiple accounts are given of various acts of violence committed by each faction upon the other at various times during the reformation.)
The Results of Religious Revolutions
While the character of religious revolution is vicious and bloodthirsty, the events that occur after the conflict has been settled and the victor has not merely beaten but exterminated his foe, are characterized by a renewed sense of unity, partially out of fear of being victimized for disagreeing with a new regime that has only recently demonstrated its eagerness to do violence upon any opposition.
Those supporters of the revolution are repaid with material wealth and political power, and the people are resigned to submission to their rule. It would be incorrect to suggest that this renders people homogeneous, merely that those who disagree with the belief of the new regime are terrorized into silence and compliance.
This submissive sense of unity can be seen in history, when the Christian revolution overcame the previous pagan religions, and can be seen in the areas recently converted by force to Islam.
Aside of the terrorization of dissenters, those who supported the overthrow of the old regime must turn their fervor to creating a unity behind the beliefs of the new regime, to reestablish peace and prosperity as a justification for their former actions of warfare and genocide. To fail to do so would effectively undo the revolution, or lay groundwork for another, given that the beliefs now implemented had failed to do so.
In this sense, revolution is cyclical: the new regime has become the old and will, in time, become destructive of its ends and dysfunctional in its operations. Whether it is overthrown in years, decades, or centuries, it seems inevitable. The history of mankind has demonstrated a mere repetition of this cycle.