HOW REVOLUTIONS IN
RELIGION,
TECHNOLGY,
IDEOLOGY,
AND
POLITICS
EMERGE SIMULTANEOUSLY
Jill Stiemsma
July 31, 2001
AS INSTITUTIONS CHANGE….
Consider that one of the Performance Standards for this unit reads: “Learner
determines how changes in one institution impact other institutions.” This is
indeed a fundamental principle of Social Change. Many people, for example,
suggest that we must return to “traditional family values.” What they fail to
appreciate is that changes in one institution – be that technology and science or
politics – necessitate changes in other institutions. Herein, let’s examine the
relationship among institutional changes as we marched toward the industrial
era.
Never did we see such important social change occurring simultaneously
within institutions as the era preceding the industrial revolution (when
humankind moved from late agricultural – beginning about 400-500AD – to
industrial, 1750+).
Writes author Jack Weatherford in Indian Givers:
Despite all this coming and going, the
way of the life of the villagers changed very
little for thousands of years. Once the Neolithic
hunters settled down to farm crops, life took on
a fairly consistent form. The daily routine for
the villagers during the Roman times differed
little from the life under the Holy Roman
emperors or the archbishop of Mainz. The
peasants grew their crops, paid their taxes to
the lords clerical and secular, and sent their
sons to fight in the wars of both lords. The
names of the rulers changed from century to
century, but little else did. Great intellectual
movements passed them by, and even the
great religious changes of the world had
minimal impact on their lives. …
Farm life in Kahl, Germany, remained much the
same regardless of whether the village was
inhabited by the Celts, the Chatten, the
Romans, or the Franks. …
What happened in the 1700s and 1800s after
thousands of static years of technological
stability?
If you think about it, this transformation is an amazing story, especially in
light of all the changes that occurred in just the last 500 years! So, let’s examine
the changes occurring to the heart and soul of religious, technological,
ideological, and thus political life preceding the industrial era.
The Religious Reformation
Why did we call it the “Holy Roman Empire” rather than simply the
“Roman Empire”? The answer, plainly, lay in the “divine rights of kings.” That
is, Middle Ages Christian theologians determined that the king ruled in God’s
place; thus was it the duty of the king’s subjects to be loyal to him (and to pay
their taxes!). “To disobey the king was to disobey God! In some areas of the
world, kingdoms went a step further by decreeing that the leader was God. The
religion of ancient Egypt held that the Pharaoh was a god. The Emperor of
Japan was similarly declared divine. If this were so, who could even dare to
question his decisions?” (Henslin, Fifth Edition, 370)
In the Holy Roman Empire, then, the reigning monarch and the pope
constantly vied for power: Was the king the head of the church or did the church
hold power over the king? Therefore, who could choose the bishops: the king
or the church? By Catholic doctrine, papal power was invested by God himself
since the pope’s authority directly descended from the Apostle Peter.
By no means, then, was this church-state relationship an easy one. Popes
and rulers, alike, were routine victims of assassination. But the bottom line was
this: The church and the lords owned the vast stores of loot, consistently
impoverishing the masses.
So imagine when Monks dared to suggest that the Catholic Church had
lost its way! Yet in the first 400 years of the second millennia, “Christians” had
waged four bloody Crusades – killing, raping, burning, and plundering as they
went. When some began to question the ethics of such Crusades, the church
responded with the Inquisition. Charged with heresy for speaking against either
the church or state, tens of thousands were burned at the stake, beheaded, or
otherwise tortured. In the face of this tragedy, monks -- among them Martin
Luther -- could no longer remain silent. Now, why did Martin Luther avoid
torture and death for preaching “heresy” when others before him did not?
In two words:
INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
…brought about by…
TECHNOLOGICAL REFORMATION
Oh, boy. In the mid-1400s, Gutenberg invented the printing press! “So?”
you query. Well, for the first time, ordinary people could read the Bible for
themselves (heretofore, the Bible was available exclusively in Latin and Greek,
learned only by the elite). And if one could read the Bible, one could interpret
the Bible for oneself. Heresy, heresy, heresy!!! For this, Tyndale, who
translated the first Bible (the King James Version) into English, was burned at
the stake.
Imagine: No longer must illiterate peasants and priests rely on the church
hierarchy for Biblical teachings!
Aside: Here again, we see how one institutional change forces other
institutional changes. With the Bible written in a language they understood,
peasants would learn to read so they could read the Bible…and, hence came the
first push toward a mass educational system.
But I digress. On October 31, 1517, outraged by the excesses of the
Catholic Church, Martin Luther posted his “95 theses,” protests against the
practices of the church (hence the term “protestants,” a radical new sect of
Christians). Think about what a threat this was to the powers-to-be: In that era,
how did they hold together diverse groups of people? Through religion. So a
threat to the established religion was a threat to the society as a whole. But,
according to Luther, the Catholic Church overstepped moral practice by selling
“indulgences” to the wealthy to fund the building of St. Peter’s in Rome; that is,
the elite could pay great sums of money to be granted redemption from sin
(“Oh, I fornicated with my neighbor’s wife; let me give the priest 100 pieces of
gold”). The masses who could afford no such payment were thereby doomed.
Consequently, argued Luther, the Church had lost its way, allowing money to
replace true penitence.
Though Luther was ex-communicated and declared an outlaw, the
Reformation had irrevocably begun as his and thousands of his followers’ efforts
began the process of building a modern society based on the powerful ideology
of the individual: “If I believe, I am saved.” So powerful is this idea of the
individual vs. the church/state that almost overnight hundreds of thousands of
Europeans broke with the Catholic Church. This could only have happened with
the power of the printing press, greater literacy, and a consequent revolution in
ideology.
IDEOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION
If as Martin Luther preached, all could gain entrance to heaven through
faith, think of the ideological shift! Carried a step further by John Calvin, initially
in Geneva, Switzerland, it is not by faith alone that one is saved. Rather, only
some are saved, but no one knows for sure who is who. Only God knows that.
Rather than becoming fatalistic, however, his followers “worked” for God as
instruments and vehicles for His word. Immoral people would not be saved by
faith alone, they believed. Building a new society in Geneva that was both civil
and religious, people had an incentive to work hard…and thus the birth of a new
middle class! No longer were peasants doomed to misery and poverty. Read
Henslin, Sixth Edition, pages 360-1, for a more complete description on this
ideological transformation now coined “the Protestant work ethic.” (Note: A
Protestant is a Christian, non-Catholic, today including Methodists, Baptists,
Episcopalians, Lutherans, Mennonites, Presbyterians, Assemblies of God, and so
on. Again, these folks “protested” the power and practices of the Catholic
Church.)
As hard as it may be to conceptualize, technological changes allowed for
religious change, which allowed for ideological change, which allowed, ultimately,
for political change….
POLITICAL REFORMATION
With renewed vigor of spirit, humankind entered the Renaissance, looking
beyond the Bible for explanations of life. New medical practices, new
understandings of human physiology and anatomy, and a willingness to go
beyond Biblical explanations for the design of the universe led to great leaps
forward in our knowledge base.
But perhaps most incredible of all is the leap forward in political thinking.
While clearly such did not occur overnight, the idea of representative democracy
emerges at the end of the agricultural/beginning of the industrial era. Writes
Henslin: “When the United States was founded, for example, this idea (of
universal citizenship) was still in its infancy. Today it seems inconceivable to us
that anyone on the basis of gender or race/ethnicity should not have the right to
vote, hold office, make a contract, testify in court, or own property. For earlier
generations of Americans, however, it seemed just as inconceivable that the
poor, women, African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans should
have such rights” (bottom of 288 to top of 289).
SUMMARY
Get it? We can’t have a change in one institution without forcing changes
in the others. We couldn’t have had a revolution in political thinking were it not
for a renaissance in scientific and artistic reasoning. We couldn’t have had a
renaissance in scientific thinking had it not been for the disempowerment of the
Catholic Church (who had, for example, imprisoned Copernicus for life for
suggesting that the earth revolved around the sun, not vice versa). And we
couldn’t have had a renaissance in church power had it not been for the power
of the printing press. And on it goes.
Ain’t life grand????