see below

The Protestant Reformation changed many things for the world and those that live in it.  While one studies the reformation, it is clear to see that as the movement continued, it affected different cultures and people in different ways. As the reformation took place, the issue of government and church became deeply intertwined and they became associated with one another. When people were able to find religious freedom, which often meant that they understood how to read and study scripture on their own, it stretched them to realize more about other freedoms they had. Luther was known to stand for Individualism and this helped people to understand the freedom they could have in politics and religion. People were able to see shift their worldviews which lead to convictions about the ways they were living.

As you read deeper into these issues, you see that this changed everything to do with freedom, government and rights. As the Reformation movement continued, it enforced the idea of people making their own decisions for themselves. These means in political areas and in exercising their rights. The leaders of the reformation understood that in order to change people’s actions, the must change people’s worldview. By changing people’s worldview, that would allow for a change in the way people viewed politics, government, and rights. This is because we act out of the values we believe in. When people were given freedom, it meant they were able to fully express the way they felt about government, exercise their personal rights and live in many freedoms. When the individual realized that they could read and comprehend scripture for themselves, this changed everything. They were given of new self-awareness that they may not have had before. This awareness helped they realize that they can not only think for themselves in regards to the church, but also in regards to the laws and government, fully allowing them to exercise their rights. In today’s America, these things allow for people to believe freely in regards to the church which then changes things like how they vote, the way they use their freedom of speech, and the rights we have as US citizens. The Reformation ultimately changed everything for Americans today.

References

 Rawls, D. E. (2016). A Narrative of Western Culture (2nd ed.). Acton, MA: XanEdu.

Money102

For starters we can worship, study the Bible and perform the former in a group with no real fear of persecution in the states. That was not the case before the reformation, as people like John Huss demonstrated. The roman catholic church could not abide with people forming unsanctioned doctrine apart from the church, they rightly concluded, such a thing was damaging to their power and really made their entire organization obsolete. So a break from the catholics is something we gain, an unintended consequence that is discovered with individual readings is people now widely disagree on theology and what the text says. This has created many different denominations and offshoots of those denominations since the plain meaning on Scripture is a contentious and hotly debated topic. Along with freedom to worship and read the Bible individually we are also direct benefactors of being able to elect our government and have freedom to choose how our society is run. We are not bridled by a king or the church, we are free in how we select or governance and how we live our lives as individuals. The reformation was key to a break with the catholic church, yes, but it was also key to many individual freedoms and no doubt is responsible for were we are as Americans today. The people before the reformation really were hampered in their pursuit of individualism, the very basic right of being able to interpret the Scriptures, that the early church had, were stripped away and put into something of an ivory tower. Once the ability to read and comprehend the Scriptures was provided to the public it lead to an avalanche of individual freedoms and thoughts of new government to which we are the stewards of and have benefited from.