Unit 3.3 - Belief System

key terms/events and significance

Protestant Reformation

• Definition:

  • Corruption of the Church → Church councils & reformation

  • Reform efforts were not really successful

  • Theological disagreements

• Significance:

  • People lost faith in the Church & Church lost influence

  • Division of the Catholic Church → individual, establishments of Churches & new sects

Martin Luther & 95 Theses

• Definition:

  • A German monk

  • Luther's complaint or disagreement about the Church's doing

• Significance:

  • Sparked a religious revolution that split the Catholic Church in Western Europe into several new sects

Indulgences

• Definition:

  • Documents that people bought to forgive sins or allow them or family members to go to heaven

• Significance:

  • Shows the Church's corruption and exploitation for profit + violation of Biblical teachings

Lutheranism

• Definition:

  • Luther advocated for the theological stance of "sola fide" or faith alone as the basis of salvation for the Christian believer

• Significance:

  • New teachings spread & created a religious sect known as Lutheranism

Calvinism & Predestination

• Definition:

  • Founded by John Calvin, and believed in predestination

  • Belief that only those "selected" or "predestinated" can go to heaven

• Significance:

  • Important socioeconomic impact because Calvinists were encouraged to work hard

Anglicanism & Henry VIII

• Definition:

  • "Church of England" founded by Henry VIII after the Pope refused to annul his marriage

  • King of England (1509 - 1547)

• Significance:

  • Free of control by the Pope in Rome

  • One of the three major figures of Reformation

Counter Reformation

• Definition:

  • Fight against the Protestant attack

• Significance:

  • The Roman Catholic Church's effort to push back reformation and regain their power

Inquisition & Jesuits

• Definition:

  • Allow the use of torture to achieve the Church's ends + root out and punish non-believers

  • Society of Jesus / a religious order founded in 1540 by Ignatius Loyola / opposed to Protestantism

• Significance:

  • Strategies that help the Catholic Church remain the largest denomination in the world

  • Undertook missionary activity throughout the Spanish Empire + Japan & India

Council of Trent

• Definition:

  • Attempt to correct the Church's wrongdoing (1545 - 1563)

  • Published Index of Prohibited Books (a list of writings that the Church banned, such as Protestant Bibles & Copernicus's writings)

• Significance:

  • Corrected some of the worst abuses of the Church

  • Reaffirmed rituals (marriage) and other sacraments, improving the priests' education

Thirty Years' War

• Definition:

  • Final great religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants

  • Initially was a religious conflict within the Holy Roman Empire → gradually turned into a general conflict involving European powers

• Significance:

  • Economic catastrophe for most of the continent

  • Widespread famine, starvation, and disease

  • Peace of Westphalia: allowed each area of the Holy Roman Empire to select its sect → political effects (autonomy)

Sikhism

• Definition:

  • A new religion developed from Hinduism and may have been influenced by the Islamic mysticism

  • Monotheistic but recognized other faiths as well

• Significance:

  • Mughal's tolerance of all religions

  • Received land grants from Akbar

  • 5th most popular religion by the 21st century

Scientific Revolution

• Definition:

  • Gained popularity as Renaissance ideas, curiosity, and discovery spread / reason over faith

  • Empiricism: Francis Bacon / data to support a hypothesis

  • Science shows the world is ordered & rational / natural law applies to the government & society

• Significance:

  • Monumental historical change

  • Challenge traditional ideas accepted for centuries → replaced with those that can be backed up by evidence

  • Key to the Enlightenment

Explain how belief systems changed and stayed the same from 1450 - 1700.

Due to the Church's abuse of power, many reformations emerged to escape the Church's control and establish new sects that incorporated their own beliefs, such as Anglicanism and Calvinism.