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Protestants: The Radicals Who Made the Modern World
Alec Ryrie
Protestant Christianity began with one stubborn monk in 1517. Now it covers the globe and includes almost a billion people. On the 500th anniversary of Luther’s theses, a global history of the revolutionary faith that shaped the modern world.Five hundred years ago an obscure monk challenged the authority of the pope with a radical vision of what Christianity could be. The revolution he set in motion inspired one of the most creative and destructive movements in human history. It has toppled governments, upended social norms, and transformed millions of people’s understanding of their relationship with God. In this dazzling global history of innovation and change, Alec Ryrie makes the case that Protestants made the modern world.‘Protestants’ introduces us to the men and women who defined and redefined this quarrelsome faith. Some turned to their newly accessible Bibles to justify bold acts of political opposition; others to support a new understanding of who they were and what they could and should do. Above all, Protestants were willing to fight for their beliefs. If you look at the great confrontations of the last five centuries, you will find Protestants defining the debate on both sides: for and against colonialism, slavery, fascism, communism, women’s rights, and more. Protestants have also fought among themselves. What unites them all is their passion for God and a vital belief in the principle of self-determination. Protestants are people who love God and take on the world.Protestants have set out for all four corners of the globe, embarking on courageous journeys into the unknown to set up new communities and experiment with new systems of government. Protestants created America and defined its special brand of entrepreneurial diligence, but they also can be found behind the brutality of apartheid and Nazi Germany. They are resourceful innovators, making new converts every day in China, Africa, and Latin America. Whether you are yourself a Protestant, or even a Christian, you live in a world, and are guided by principles and ideas, shaped by Protestants.
Copyright (#u19635248-762f-5973-bff5-a6118205b18f)
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com (http://www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com)
This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017
Copyright © Alec Ryrie 2017
Alec Ryrie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Map by Martin Brown
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780007465033
Ebook Edition © March 2017 ISBN: 9780008182137
Version: 2018-02-09
Praise for Protestants:
‘Ryrie offers an admirably “long view” of the development of the Protestant faith’
Literary Review
‘A treat. Ryrie has a gift for showing how the history of religion is the history of the people … This book’s scholarship showcases one of the leading historians of Protestantism writing today, but the delight of it is the crisp prose, cool wit, wise judgements and sheer scope from the gates of Wittenberg to the streets of Seoul’ DIARMAID MACCULLOCH
‘Informative and stimulating’
Financial Times
‘This is a book of breathtaking range and penetrating insight. It will shape our perception of the Reformation and its long shadow for years to come’
ANDREW PETTEGREE, author of Brand Luther
‘Remarkably open-minded and delightfully light-hearted’
The Times
‘To cover the history of Protestantism in just 514 pages might seem a reckless task [but] Ryrie … has succeeded magnificently … A learned, humane and entertaining book’
Sunday Times
‘Ryrie guides us sure-footedly along the broad paths of Protestant history without neglecting its many fascinating by-ways. He writes with empathy but without illusions; his trademark combination of wit and erudition makes the journey as enjoyable as it is enlightening’
PROFESSOR PETER MARSHALL, University of Warwick
‘Ryrie’s agile mind, pithy style and energetic narrative bring 500 years of Protestant history to life and into the present global era. Profound and capacious, Protestants is scintillating, shrewd, incisive and proceeds at an astonishing pace. If you wish to buy one book to understand the impact Martin Luther has had on the modern world, this is it’
THE RIGHT REVEREND DR GRAHAM KINGS,
Mission Theologian in the Anglican Communion
‘A learned, lively look at the various faiths lumped together as Protestant, from Martin Luther in the sixteenth century to today’
Kirkus Reviews
Dedication (#u19635248-762f-5973-bff5-a6118205b18f)
In memory of Bill Ryrie (1928–2012)
Contents
Cover (#ua56bd910-efa6-5c4f-b495-e00a78519909)
Title Page (#ufbc15b9b-c9df-5681-86a8-64febf2f4f4b)
Copyright
Praise (#u6f664735-79ee-5ae3-9fd8-279e47c13633)
Dedication
Map (#u5a05266b-b5eb-5c41-b134-ddc6427f3401)
Introduction
PART I: THE REFORMATION AGE
Chapter 1. Luther and the Fanatics
The Call of Reform (#ulink_32267fe0-0599-50a4-acfe-ab427d7b972e) • An Accidental Revolutionary (#ulink_4a3dfdbc-3368-53e8-b473-c2e08f7545c8) • “Captive to the Word of God” (#ulink_0218e9dc-206a-5f0a-9a20-8047aef3fbd0) • The Fanatics’ Reformation (#ulink_1ec02d9b-592f-5394-97eb-b9a8c531e948)
Chapter 2. Protectors and Tyrants
Taming the Reformation (#ulink_f0b8c331-dc36-5c75-8895-4c136880c724) • The Two Kingdoms (#ulink_003a70e4-3e5a-5bd6-ac04-0cff796be78c) • Chaos and Order (#ulink_1782635c-1dce-53a1-8b0a-1eb0535ce3ab) • Revolutionary Saints
Chapter 3. The Failure of Calvinism
Parallel Reformations • Calvin’s Contribution • Lutheranism in Search of Concord • Dreams of Union • The Unravelling of Calvinism
Chapter 4. Heretics, Martyrs and Witches
Martyrdom and Heresy • Turning the Tide • The Luxury of Intolerance • The Devil’s Minions
Chapter 5. The British Maelstrom
An Unlikely War • Winning the Peace • Journeys into the Unknown • Quakers and Anglicans
Chapter 6. From the Waters of Babylon to a City on a Hill
An Age of Exiles • American Pilgrimages • Preaching to the Nations
PART II: THE MODERN AGE
Chapter 7. Enthusiasm and Its Enemies
The Pietist Adventure • Moravian Riders • Methodism: Pietism’s English Stepchild • The Revivals’ New World
Chapter 8. Slaves to Christ
The Emergence of Protestant Slavery • Living with Slavery • The Road to Abolition • The Gospel of Slavery • Slavery’s Lessons
Chapter 9. Protestantism’s Wild West
Big-Tent Protestantism • The Communitarian Alternative • The Narrow Way • Witnessing for Jehovah • Latter-Day Protestants
Chapter 10. The Ordeals of Liberalism
The Liberal Project • God’s Successive Revelations • The Book of Nature • Liberalism in the Trenches
Chapter 11. Two Kingdoms in the Third Reich
Making Peace with Nazism • Dejudaizing Christianity • Shades of Opposition • The Limits of the Possible
Chapter 12. Religious Left and Religious Right
Saving Civilization in the Age of the Second World War • The Gospel of Civil Rights • Prophetic Christianity in the 1960s • The Crisis of the Religious Left
PART III: THE GLOBAL AGE
Chapter 13. Redeeming South Africa
Settlers and Missionaries • Blood River • “Separate Development” • The Trek to Repentance • The Independent Witness
Chapter 14. Korea in Adversity and Prosperity
Missionary Beginnings • Revival and Nationalism • South Korea’s Journey • Full Gospels • Northern Fears and Hopes
Chapter 15. Chinese Protestantism’s Long March
Dreams and Visions • Protestants and Imperialists • Death and Resurrection in the People’s Republic • Believing in Modern China • China’s Protestant Future
Chapter 16. Pentecostalism: An Old Flame
A Tangle of Origins • The Pentecostal Experience • Becoming a Global Faith • The Politics of Pentecostalism
Epilogue: The Protestant Future
Old Quarrels and New • Protestants in the World
Plate Section
Glossary
Notes
Illustration Credits
Index
Acknowledgements
Also by Alec Ryrie
About the Author
About the Publisher
Introduction (#u19635248-762f-5973-bff5-a6118205b18f)
In 1524, Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote a blistering attack on a fanatical new cult that was spreading across northern Europe like a plague. These people claim to be preaching the Bible’s pure message, he said, but look at how they actually use the Bible, twisting it to mean whatever they want:
They are like young men who love a girl so immoderately that they imagine they see their beloved wherever they turn, or, a much better example, like two combatants who, in the heat of a quarrel, turn whatever is at hand into a missile, whether it be a jug or a dish.
This book is about that cult and how it became one of the most creative and disruptive movements in human history. At present, around one-eighth of the human race belongs to it, and it has decisively shaped the world in which the other seven-eighths live. My aim is to convince you that we cannot understand the modern age without understanding the dynamic history of Protestant Christianity.
It turns out that Erasmus was right: Protestants are fighters and lovers. They will argue with anyone about almost anything. Some of these arguments are abstruse, others brutally practical. If we look at the great ideological battles of the past half millennium – for and against toleration, slavery, imperialism, fascism, or Communism – we will find Protestant Christians on both sides.
But Protestants are also lovers. From the beginning, a love affair with God has been at the heart of their faith. Like all long love affairs, it has gone through many phases, from early passion through companionable marriage and sometimes strained coexistence, to rekindled ardour. Beneath all the arguments, the distinguishing mark of a Protestant is the feeling and memory of that love, one on which no church or human authority can intrude. It is because Protestants care so deeply about God that they have been willing to fight one another and take on the world on his behalf.
So this is both an interior and an exterior story, a spiritual and emotional drama with practical and political implications. The spirituality at Protestantism’s centre sends out waves that sometimes crest into tsunamis as they encounter the ordinary stuff of human life. This book will tell the stories of the changes they have left in their wake. Protestants have faced down tyrants, demanded political participation, advocated tolerance, and valued the individual. Equally, they have insisted on God-given inequality, valorized state power, persecuted dissenters, and placed the community above its members. They have fought religious wars against each other and have turned secular struggles into crusades. Some have tried to withdraw from the secular world and its politics altogether, and at times they have been the most revolutionary of all.
The Protestant Reformation was clearly an important event in world history, but that does not mean that it can take the credit or the blame for everything that has happened since. Nor does it make Martin Luther a prophet of individualism or a hero of self-determination. He and the Protestants who succeeded him were not trying to modernize the world, but to save it. And yet in the process they profoundly changed how we think about ourselves, our society, and our relationship with God. This book tells the story of that transformation: a story, in outline, of how three of the key ingredients of the world we live in are rooted in Protestant Christianity.
The first is free inquiry. Protestants stumbled into this slowly and reluctantly, but Luther’s bedrock principles led inexorably in that direction. The insistence that all human authority in religious matters is provisional, and that the human conscience, constrained only by the Bible and the Holy Spirit, is ultimately sovereign, means that Protestants who try to police the boundaries of acceptable argument have in the end always failed. Protestants have always been divided among themselves both in their religious and in their political leadership, making it easy for new and dissenting ideas to find spaces both at home and across borders.
Protestantism is not a paradise of free speech, but an open-ended, ill-disciplined argument. How it has come to continuously generate new ideas, and revive old ones, is a recurring theme of this book. Protestants’ bare-knuckle style of public debate wore down print censorship, and Protestant universities and scholars led the way in the emergence of the new natural sciences in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Slowly and reluctantly, one notion which a few radical Protestants put about – that religious difference and free speech ought to be accepted as matters of principle, rather than merely tolerated as unavoidable necessities – became a new orthodoxy.
This is linked to Protestantism’s second, more dangerous contribution: its tendency towards what we are compelled to call democracy. Virtually all Protestants before the nineteenth century, and many since, regarded that word with horror, yet the undertow was there. Protestants regularly found themselves having to deal with governments that did not share their beliefs. They asserted not a right to choose their rulers but a solemn duty and responsibility to challenge them. In performing that duty, the Scottish radical John Knox wrote in 1558, “all man is equal”
