The unintended Reformation : how a religious revolution secularized society / Brad S. Gregory.
| Author/creator | Gregory, Brad S., 1963- |
| Format | Electronic |
| Publication Info | Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012. |
| Description | 1 online resource (574 pages) |
| Supplemental Content | Ebook Library |
| Subjects |
| Contents | Introduction : the world we have lost? -- Excluding God -- Relativizing doctrines -- Controlling the churches -- Subjectivizing morality -- Manufacturing the goods life -- Secularizing knowledge -- Conclusion : against nostalgia. |
| Abstract | In a work as much about the present as the past, Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Reformation for the modern condition: a hyperpluralism of beliefs, intellectual disagreements that splinter into fractals of specialized discourse, the absence of a substantive common good, and the triumph of capitalism's driver, consumerism. |
| Abstract | In a work that is as much about the present as the past, Brad Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation and traces the way it shaped the modern condition over the course of the following five centuries. A hyperpluralism of religious and secular beliefs, an absence of any substantive common good, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, consumerism--all these, Gregory argues, were long-term effects of a movement that marked the end of more than a millennium during which Christianity provided a framework for shared intellectual, social, and moral life in the West. Before the Protestant Reformation, Western Christianity was an institutionalized worldview laden with expectations of security for earthly societies and hopes of eternal salvation for individuals. The Reformation's protagonists sought to advance the realization of this vision, not disrupt it. But a complex web of rejections, retentions, and transformations of medieval Christianity gradually replaced the religious fabric that bound societies together in the West. Today, what we are left with are fragments: intellectual disagreements that splinter into ever finer fractals of specialized discourse; a notion that modern science--as the source of all truth--necessarily undermines religious belief; a pervasive resort to a therapeutic vision of religion; a set of smuggled moral values with which we try to fertilize a sterile liberalism; and the institutionalized assumption that only secular universities can pursue knowledge. The Unintended Reformation asks what propelled the West into this trajectory of pluralism and polarization, and finds answers deep in our medieval Christian past. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Language | In English. |
| Source of description | Print version record. |
| Issued in other form | Print version: Gregory, Brad S. (Brad Stephan), 1963- Unintended Reformation. Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012 9780674045637 |
| Genre/form | Electronic books. |
| Genre/form | History. |
| LCCN | 2011016131 |
| ISBN | 0674062582 (electronic bk.) |
| ISBN | 9780674062580 (electronic bk.) |
| ISBN | (alk. paper) |
| ISBN | (alk. paper) |
| Standard identifier# | 10.4159/harvard.9780674062580 |
| Stock number | 22573/ctt2f2vks JSTOR |
Availability
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electronic Resources | Access Content Online | ✔ Available |