Mertcan Bulak
@MBulak
1180 okur puanı
Ağustos 2020 tarihinde katıldı
Şu anda okuduğu kitap
In one important respect Zwingli followed the Bible even more stringently than did Luther. The Wittenberger would allow whatever the Bible did not prohibit; Zwingli rejected whatever the Bible did not prescribe. For this reason the Reformation in Zurich tended to strip away more traditional symbols of the Roman church: candles, statues, organ and choir music, and pictures. Later, in England, this spirit was called Puritanism.
Reklam
Like the missionary monks of the Middle Ages, the Anabaptists wanted to shape society by their example of radical discipleship—if necessary, even by death. They steadfastly refused to be a part of worldly power, including bearing arms, holding political office, or taking oaths. In the sixteenth century that sort of talk was inflammatory, revolutionary, and even treasonous.
In spite of Luther’s stress on personal religion, Lutheran churches were “established” churches. They retained an ordained clergy who considered the whole population of a given territory, whether devout or totally uninterested, as members of their church. The churches looked to the state for salary and support. Official Protestantism seemed to differ little from official Catholicism. Doctrinally they were different; structurally they were very similar.
Today the direct descendants of the Anabaptists are the Mennonites and the Hutterites. Americans probably think of them as bearded farmers and their bonnet-covered wives driving their horses and buggies across some Pennsylvania or Indiana countryside. No automobiles; no buttons; no zippers. In fact only one section of the Mennonites, the Old Order Amish, holds tenaciously to the old ways.
After 1530 the emperor, Charles V, made clear his intention to crush the growing heresy. In defense, the Lutheran princes banded together in 1531 in the Schmalkaldic League, and between 1546 and 1555 a sporadic civil war raged. The combatants reached a compromise in the Peace of Augsburg (1555), which allowed each prince to decide the religion of his subjects, forbade all sects of Protestantism other than Lutheranism, and ordered all Catholic bishops to give up their property if they turned Lutheran.
The effects of these provisions on Germany were profound. Lutheranism became a state religion in large portions of the empire. From Germany it spread to Scandinavia. Religious opinions became the private property of the princes, and the individual had to believe what his prince wanted him to believe, be it Lutheran or Catholic.
Reklam