The Reformation and the continuing battle for freedom

 The Reformation

I have recently been reading about Martin Luther and the period of the Reformation that divided the Catholic Church into the so many separate sects of Protestantism.  In those days, the Catholic Church was considered the “conservative” point of view, Luther and his followers were considered “Liberals,” and a third group of reformers, the Anabaptists, were the radical socialistic arm of the Reformation movement.

This whole period between about 1400 and 1500 is a fascinating time in world history when the Black Death (Plague) wiped out an estimated 30% to 60% of the population of Europe by the 1400’s, leaving the landowner Gentry in short supply of labor and giving the Serfs a better bargaining position.  The invention of the printing press and the printing of the Gutenberg Bible in common language (1450), further relieved the Serfs from dependence on the Catholic Clergy and they began to feel their muscle!  It was at that precise moment that the “man of the hour,” Martin Luther produced his Ninety-Five Theses (1517) and ignited a revolution of free thinking that changed the world.

Making comparisons with the world we find ourselves in today, I find it difficult to reconcile my mistrust of Liberals with the fact that Martin Luther’s movement to free the populace from the tyranny of the Pope was a “Liberal” movement.  Liberalism had always had negative connotations for me but I had always thought that Martin Luther’s movement had a positive effect on world history and now I began wonder.  Certainly, living under the despotism of conservative Catholicism was not a good thing in the 16^th century as it reduced the populace to serfdom, a modified form of slavery that existed under medieval feudalism.  Having said all that, it seems that a Liberal movement was necessary to change things and therein lies my conundrum.  Can a liberal movement have a positive effect?

Under these conflicting viewpoints it would appear that Liberalism is nothing more than the engine of “Change” and that Conservatism is a resistance to change.  In the final analysis it seems that the only relevant factor is what kind of change is taking place!  Today, it seems like all the change is undermining the world’s most free and advanced form of government, the American Republic, but in Martin Luther’s time the change was undermining the despotism of the Church sponsored feudal system which allowed for the growth of the many Royal Houses of Europe and their myriad of Kings, Dukes, counts, and Princes to oversee the Serfs.

The Catholic Church fought back against the Reformation by intimidating Martin Luther and his followers and, later, with the Spanish Inquisition that condemned many Protestant groups for heresy.  The radical Anabaptists were hunted down and exterminated wherever they could be found, (mostly in the Netherlands) and the Protestant followers of John Calvin (Calvinists) in France were subject to a massacre on St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1572 from which they never recovered.

From the singular event of the Reformation, sprang the likes of Baptists, Mennonites, Calvinists, Quakers, Lutherans, Methodists and many others including the Puritan Pilgrims who almost immediately began the population of the New World and what would soon become our American Republic.  When seen in this light, it can be seen that millions of people sacrificed and suffered for the right to be free from the tyranny of the “Old World” and Serfdom just a few years before this country was settled, and many more sacrificed during the Revolution of 1776.  Look up the word “Serf” and see how closely it represents your lifestyle today and you will soon realize that the battle still rages!  Freedom is not free and just because the battlefield is not apparent does not mean there is not a war raging against our freedoms!