Protestant culture

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Although the Reformation was a religious movement, it also had a strong impact on all other aspects of life: marriage and family, education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy, and the arts.[1][2]

Protestantism has promoted economic growth and entrepreneurship, especially in the period after the

experimental science,[8][9][10] and the development of the state system.[11]

The role of families, women, and sexual minorities

All Protestant churches allow their clergy to marry, in contrast to the Catholic Church. This meant that the families of many members of the Protestant clergy were able to contribute to the development of intellectual elites in their countries from about 1525, when the theologian Martin Luther was married.[12]

Historically, the role of women in church life, the Protestant clergy, and as theologians remained limited. The role of women expanded over time and was closely associated with the movements for

universal education and women's suffrage. Political and social movements for suffrage (voting rights) and sobriety (see temperance movement and Prohibition
) in the English-speaking world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were closely associated with Protestant Christian women's organizations.

While particular Protestant churches such as the

Methodists involved women as clergy or assistants since the late 1700s, the ordination of women as clergy dates from the 1940s in the Lutheran churches, and from the 1970s in the Anglican Communion. Since about 1990, many more women have assumed senior leadership roles (e.g. as bishops) in several Protestant churches, including the Anglican Communion and the Church of England
.

Since the 1990s Protestant churches have encountered controversy regarding the Church's response to persons of minority sexual orientations. The sometimes divisive nature of these discussions was exemplified by the formation of dissenting groups within the Anglican Communion that rejected reforms that were intended to make the Church more inclusive (see related article Homosexuality and the Anglican Communion).

Education

Since Reformers wanted all members of the church to be able to read and study the

catechisms, support for education at all levels increased over time in Europe, the Americas, and in other parts of the world that were influenced by contact with European educators and missionaries. Compulsory education for both boys and girls was introduced. For example, the Puritans who established Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1628 founded Harvard College only eight years later. About a dozen other American colleges followed in the 18th century, including Yale University (1701). Pennsylvania also became a centre of learning.[13][14]
By initiating translations of the Bible into various national languages, Protestantism supported the development of national literatures.

Some of the first colleges and

universities in America, including Harvard,[15] Yale,[16] Princeton,[17] Columbia,[18] Dartmouth,[19] Williams, Bowdoin, Middlebury,[20] and Amherst
, all were founded by mainline Protestant denominations.

Thought and work ethic

See also: Protestant work ethic
Cover of the original German edition of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

The Protestant concept of God and man allows believers to use all their God-given faculties, including the power of reason. That means that Protestant believers are encouraged to explore God's creation and, according to Genesis 2:15,

industrial revolution. This idea is also known as the "Protestant ethic thesis."[29]

Some mainline Protestant denominations such as

Vanderbilts[30] and Astors,[30] Rockefellers,[34] Du Ponts, Roosevelts, Forbes, Whitneys,[30] Mellons, Morgans[30] and Harrimans are Mainline Protestant families.[30][35]

According to a 2014 study by the

post-graduate degree, followed by Episcopalians (56%) and Presbyterians (47%).[37]

Science

See also:
Merton Thesis
Columbia University was established by the Church of England.

Protestantism had an important influence on science. According to the

ascetic Protestant values and those of modern science.[40] Protestant values encouraged scientific research by allowing science to study God's influence on the world and thus providing a religious justification for scientific research.[38]

According to

Protestant background.[41] According to Zuckerman, Protestants featured among the American laureates in a slightly greater proportion (72%) than their prevalence within the general population (about 2/3). Overall, Protestants have won a total of 84.2% of all the American Nobel Prizes in Chemistry,[41] 60% in Medicine and 58.6% in Physics between 1901 and 1972.[41]

According to 100 Years of Nobel Prizes (2005), a review of Nobel prizes awarded between 1901 and 2000, 65.4% of

Protestant in its various forms (208 prize).[42]
although Protestant comprise 11.6% to 13% of the world's population.

Government

Signing the Mayflower Compact 1620, a painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris 1899

In the Middle Ages, the Church and the worldly authorities were closely related.

church elders, presbyters) in his representative church government.[45] The Huguenots added regional synods and a national synod, whose members were elected by the congregations, to Calvin's system of church self-government. This system was taken over by the other Reformed churches.[46]

Politically, John Calvin favoured a mixture of aristocracy and democracy. He appreciated the advantages of democracy: "It is an invaluable gift, if God allows a people to freely elect its own authorities and overlords."[47] Calvin also thought that earthly rulers lose their divine right and must be put down when they rise up against God. To further protect the rights of ordinary people, Calvin suggested separating political powers in a system of checks and balances (separation of powers). Thus he and his followers resisted political absolutism and paved the way for the rise of modern democracy.[48] 16th century Calvinists and Lutherans developed a theory of resistance called the doctrine of the lesser magistrate which was later employed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Besides England, the Netherlands were, under Calvinist leadership, the freest country in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It granted asylum to philosophers like René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle. Hugo Grotius was able to teach his natural-law theory and a relatively liberal interpretation of the Bible.[49]

Consistent with Calvin's political ideas, Protestants created both the English and the American democracies. In 17th-century England, the most important persons and events in this process were the

Congregationalists were convinced that the democratic form of government was the will of God.[55] The Mayflower Compact was a social contract.[56][57]

Protestants have always played the decisive role in British and American politics. The Act of Settlement stipulated that all British monarchs and their spouses must be Protestants. Except for John F. Kennedy and Joe Biden, both Catholics, all presidents of the United States have been members of Protestant churches or have had a Protestant background.

Rights and liberty

A Short Declaration of the Mistery of Iniquity (1612) by Thomas Helwys. For Helwys, religious liberty was a right for everyone, even for those he disagreed with.

Protestants also took the initiative in creating

Marquis de Lafayette, an ardent supporter of the American constitutional principles. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was mainly based on Lafayette's draft of this document.[68] The Declaration by United Nations and Universal Declaration of Human Rights also echo the American constitutional tradition.[69][70][71]

Democracy, social-contract theory, separation of powers, religious freedom, separation of church and state – these achievements of the Reformation and early Protestantism were elaborated on and popularized by

equality of the genders ("Adam and Eve"), from Genesis 1, 26–28. As all persons were created equally free, all governments needed the consent of the governed.[74] These Lockean ideas were fundamental to the United States Declaration of Independence, which also deduced human rights from the biblical belief in creation: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” These rights were theonomous ideas (theonomy). They were not derived from a concept of autonomous man.[75] In colonial America, there was "the broadly accepted notion of equality by creation."[76]

Also other human rights were initiated by Protestants. For example,

Red Cross.[81]

Social teaching

Most Protestants have always felt obliged to help people. They have founded hospitals, homes for disabled or elderly people, educational institutions, organisations that give aid to developing countries, and other social welfare agencies.

GOP
on cultural rather than economic issues.

Arts

Further information: Hymnody of continental Europe, Anglican church music, Church architecture § The Reformation and its influence on church architecture, and Lutheran art
Hans Holbein the Younger's Noli me tangere.

The arts have been strongly inspired by Protestant beliefs.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, Matthew Arnold, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Theodor Fontane, Washington Irving, Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Galsworthy, Thomas Mann, William Faulkner, John Updike
, and many others.

See also

References

  1. ^ Karl Heussi, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte, 11. Auflage (1956), Tübingen (Germany), pp. 317–319, 325–326
  2. ^ The Protestant Heritage, Britannica
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  9. ISBN 978-0-226-11280-0. Google Print, pp. 320–321
  10. ISBN 978-0-8018-7038-5. Google Print, p.125
  11. ISSN 2572-1496
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  12. ^ Karl Heussi, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte, p. 319
  13. ^ Clifton E. Olmstead (1960), History of Religion in the United States, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, pp. 69–80, 88–89, 114–117, 186–188
  14. ^ M. Schmidt, Kongregationalismus, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band III (1959), Tübingen (Germany), col. 1770
  15. ^ "The Harvard Guide: The Early History of Harvard University". News.harvard.edu. Archived from the original on 2010-07-22. Retrieved 2010-08-29.
  16. ^ "Increase Mather"., Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, Encyclopædia Britannica
  17. ^ Princeton University Office of Communications. "Princeton in the American Revolution". Retrieved 2011-05-24. The original Trustees of Princeton University "were acting in behalf of the evangelical or New Light wing of the Presbyterian Church, but the College had no legal or constitutional identification with that denomination. Its doors were to be open to all students, 'any different sentiments in religion notwithstanding.'"
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  19. ^ Childs, Francis Lane (December 1957). "A Dartmouth History Lesson for Freshman". Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. Retrieved February 12, 2007.
  20. ^ W.L. Kingsley et al., "The College and the Church," New Englander and Yale Review 11 (Feb 1858): 600. accessed 2010-6-16 Note: Middlebury is considered the first "operating" college in Vermont as it was the first to hold classes in Nov 1800. It issued the first Vermont degree in 1802; UVM followed in 1804.
  21. ^ "Genesis 2:15 NIV - - Bible Gateway".
  22. ^ Gerhard Lenski (1963), The Religious Factor: A Sociological Study of Religion's Impact on Politics, Economics, and Family Life, Revised Edition, A Doubleday Anchor Book, Garden City, New York, pp. 348–351
  23. ISBN 978-0-19-516247-9
    , p. 52
  24. ^ Jan Weerda, Soziallehre des Calvinismus, in Evangelisches Soziallexikon, 3. Auflage (1958), Stuttgart (Germany), col. 934
  25. ^ Eduard Heimann, Kapitalismus, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band III (1959), Tübingen (Germany), col. 1136–1141
  26. ^ Hans Fritz Schwenkhagen, Technik, in Evangelisches Soziallexikon, 3. Auflage, col. 1029–1033
  27. ^ Georg Süßmann, Naturwissenschaft und Christentum, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band IV, col. 1377–1382
  28. ^ C. Graf von Klinckowstroem, Technik. Geschichtlich, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band VI, col. 664–667
  29. ^ Kim, Sung Ho (Fall 2008). "Max Weber". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, CSLI, Stanford University. Retrieved 21 August 2011.
  30. ^ a b c d e f B.DRUMMOND AYRES Jr. (2011-12-19). "THE EPISCOPALIANS: AN AMERICAN ELITE WITH ROOTS GOING BACK TO JAMESTOWN". New York Times. Retrieved 2012-08-17.
  31. ^ Irving Lewis Allen, "WASP—From Sociological Concept to Epithet," Ethnicity, 1975 154+
  32. S2CID 146933599
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  33. ^ Baltzell (1964). The Protestant Establishment. New York, Random House. p. 9.
  34. ^ Ron Chernow, Titan (New York: Random, 1998) 50.
  35. ISBN 9781469626987
    . The names of fashionable families who were already Episcopalian, like the Morgans, or those, like the Fricks, who now became so, goes on interminably: Aldrich, Astor, Biddle, Booth, Brown, Du Pont, Firestone, Ford, Gardner, Mellon, Morgan, Procter, the Vanderbilt, Whitney. Episcopalians branches of the Baptist Rockefellers and Jewish Guggenheims even appeared on these family trees.
  36. ^ "How income varies among U.S. religious groups". Pew Research Center. 2016-10-16.
  37. ^ "The most and least educated U.S. religious group". Pew Research Center. 2016-10-16.
  38. ^
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  39. ^ Gregory, Andrew (1998), Handout for course 'The Scientific Revolution' at The Scientific Revolution
  40. ^ Becker, George (1992), The Merton Thesis: Oetinger and German Pietism, a Significant Negative Case, Sociological Forum (Springer) 7 (4), pp. 642–660
  41. ^
    ISBN 978-1-4128-3376-9
    . Protestants turn up among the American-reared laureates in slightly greater proportion to their numbers in the general population. Thus 72 percent of the seventy-one laureates but about two thirds of the American population were reared in one or another Protestant denomination
  42. ^ a b Baruch A. Shalev, 100 Years of Nobel Prizes (2003), Atlantic Publishers & Distributors , p.57: between 1901 and 2000 reveals that 654 Laureates belong to 28 different religion Most 65.4% have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference. While separating Roman Catholic from Protestants among Christians proved difficult in some cases, available information suggests that more Protestants were involved in the scientific categories and more Catholics were involved in the Literature and Peace categories. Atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers comprise 10.5% of total Nobel Prize winners; but in the category of Literature, these preferences rise sharply to about 35%. A striking fact involving religion is the high number of Laureates of the Jewish faith – over 20% of total Nobel Prizes (138); including: 17% in Chemistry, 26% in Medicine and Physics, 40% in Economics and 11% in Peace and Literature each. The numbers are especially startling in light of the fact that only some 14 million people (0.02% of the world's population) are Jewish. By contrast, only 5 Nobel Laureates have been of the Muslim faith-0.8% of total number of Nobel prizes awarded – from a population base of about 1.2 billion (20% of the world's population)
  43. ^ Heinrich Bornkamm, Toleranz. In der Geschichte des Christentums in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band VI (1962), col. 937
  44. ^ Original German title: Dass eine christliche Versammlung oder Gemeine Recht und Macht habe, alle Lehre zu beurteilen und Lehrer zu berufen, ein- und abzusetzen: Grund und Ursach aus der Schrift
  45. ^ Clifton E. Olmstead, History of Religion in the United States, pp. 4–10
  46. ^ Karl Heussi, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte, 11. Auflage, p. 325
  47. ^ Quoted in Jan Weerda, Calvin, in Evangelisches Soziallexikon, 3. Auflage (1958), Stuttgart (Germany), col. 210
  48. ^ Clifton E. Olmstead, History of Religion in the United States, p. 10
  49. ^ Karl Heussi, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte, S. 396–397
  50. ^ Cf. M. Schmidt, England. Kirchengeschichte, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band II (1959), Tübingen (Germany), col. 476–478
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  52. ^ Clifton E. Olmstead, History of Religion in the United States, pp. 65–76
  53. ^ Christopher Fennell (1998), Plymouth Colony Legal Structure, (http://www.histarch.uiuc.edu/plymouth/ccflaw.html)
  54. ^ Hanover Historical Texts Project (http://history.hanover.edu/texts/masslib.html)
  55. ^ M. Schmidt, Pilgerväter, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band V (1961), col. 384
  56. ^ Christopher Fennell, Plymouth Colony Legal Structure
  57. ISBN 0-7894-8903-1
    , p. 61
  58. ^ Clifton E. Olmstead, History of Religion in the United States, p. 5
  59. ^ Heinrich Bornkamm, Toleranz. In der Geschichte des Christentums, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band VI (1962), col. 937–938
  60. ^ H. Stahl, Baptisten, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band I, col. 863
  61. ^ G. Müller-Schwefe, Milton, John, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band IV, col. 955
  62. ^ Karl Heussi, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte, p. 398
  63. ^ Clifton E. Olmstead, History of Religion in the United States, pp. 99–106, 111–117, 124
  64. ^ Edwin S. Gaustad (1999), Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America, Judson Press, Valley Forge, p. 28
  65. ^ Hans Fantel (1974), William Penn: Apostle of Dissent, William Morrow & Co., New York, N.Y., pp. 150–153
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  67. ^ Clifton E. Olmstead, History of Religion in the United States, pp. 192–209
  68. ^ Cf. R. Voeltzel, Frankreich. Kirchengeschichte, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band II (1958), col. 1039
  69. ^ Douglas K. Stevenson (1987), American Life and Institutions, Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart (Germany), p. 34
  70. ^ G. Jasper, Vereinte Nationen, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band VI, col. 1328–1329
  71. ^ Cf. G. Schwarzenberger, Völkerrecht, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band VI, col. 1420–1422
  72. ^ Karl Heussi, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte, 11. Auflage, pp. 396–399, 401–403, 417–419
  73. ISBN 978-0521-89057-1
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  74. ^ Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, pp. 21–43, 120
  75. ^ W. Wertenbruch, Menschenrechte, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band IV, col. 869
  76. ISBN 978-0-465-00235-1
    , 2010, p. 141
  77. ^ Allen Weinstein and David Rubel, The Story of America, pp. 189–309
  78. ^ Karl Heussi, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte, 11. Auflage, pp. 403, 425
  79. ^ M. Elze,Grotius, Hugo, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band II, col. 1885–1886
  80. ^ H. Hohlwein, Pufendorf, Samuel, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band V, col. 721
  81. ^ R. Pfister, Schweiz. Seit der Reformation, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band V (1961), col. 1614–1615
  82. ^ Clifton E. Olmstead, History of Religion in the United States, pp. 484–494
  83. ^ H. Wagner, Diakonie, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band I, col. 164–167
  84. ^ J.R.H. Moorman, Anglikanische Kirche, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band I, col. 380–381
  85. ^ Clifton E.Olmstead, History of Religion in the United States, pp. 461–465
  86. ^ Allen Weinstein and David Rubel, The Story of America, pp. 274–275
  87. ^ M. Schmidt, Kongregationalismus, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band III, col. 1770
  88. ^ K. Kupisch, Bismarck, Otto von, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band I, col. 1312–1315
  89. ^ P. Quante, Sozialversicherung, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Band VI, col. 205–206
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