Modern and Contemporary European History (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from Modern and Contemporary European History

The Protestant Revolution had broken up the religious monopoly of the Catholic Church, but it had by no means established religious equality, or even tolera The System tion. Indeed, Protestant theologians like Luther, of national Calvin, Knox, and Cranmer were as insistent on Churches conformity to the established religion as their Catholic opponents. The fundamental principle of the Protestant Revolution was religious independence rather than religious freedom, the idea that every nation had the right to estab lish its own type of Christianity. One World, one F aith, had been the demand of the Catholic. In the warfare of creeds in the seventeenth century, the futility of this ideal became apparent, and a new principle, one Nation, one F aith, took its place. But as the nation had not yet attained any adequate means of self-expression, the mon arch and the governing class were generally able to force upon it their own form of religion. Hence it came about that the religion of the king became by law the religion of the people, and official churches were organized to preach it. This is how we get the system of established churches.

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