To what extent was the Protestant reformation a political movement for greater individual freedom?

Question

How did it contribute to the development of democratic governments?

Answer 1

The reformation challenged the pope's authority. Some churches, the presbyterian ones, created a system where the local church elders gained control over the church. Others, such as the Baptists and Quakers (who came much later), created a system where the meetings governed themselves collectively, by consensus. But those were not the sorts of reformers the kings and princes liked to ally with against the pope.

The kings and princes preferred Lutheran churches and the Anglican, which granted them a lot of control over church affairs. Luther's theory of the two domains of life, the secular and the worldly, actually strengthen the Princes' control over their populations. When the radical protestant Thomas Müntzer led a peasants' revolt, Luther wrote that the Princes had every right to slaughter all those peasants, which incidentally they did.

So it was a democratic movement in some of its variations, and not at all in others. Luther claimed spiritual freedom, but no political freedom. Calvin claimed neither: under his Geneva executed heretics just like any Catholic state. And eventually also Lutherans came to the conclusion that freedom of religion was only for Calvinists, Catholics and Lutherans, not for Baptists, Socinians, etc. More than anything, not the reformation's success but the limit of its success created the possibility of political reform. After the reformation the European monarchies were divided against each other, and in time that worked to the advantage of movements that were not Lutheran, Catholic or Calvinist at all.

Answer 2

Ask yourself, to what extent does your religion affect you as a person? Consider that oppression can sometimes come in no greater form than that of controlling what someone must believe.

Consider these two things:
1) Ancient Rome worked pretty well for the most part (aside from slavery and a few crazy emperors). One reason that people wanted to be Roman citizens was that the Roman stance on religion was basically, believe in something: we don't care what.
While a republic Rome was great in this way. Even when it went imperial again, it kept this one thing that gave people as individuals more freedom.
2) China in the 1950's said that religion was basically the worst thing for humans.

Consider the government systems of these two different societies.

Stay with me

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry. What became the USA was one of the greatest successful democratic experiments in the world, ever. A chain reaction that started in about 1215 with the Magna Carta removing powers from the king, moving to taking more powers away in the 1260's kept rolling and this thing called absolute power became a bad word. Fast forward a couple hundred years when Martin Luther (not the only or first one to feel this way, but became the figurehead of the movement), who didn't by any means want to start a new church, brought a public debate to the local populus by calmly nailing the 95 theses to the door of the church. His actions didn't instantly get him canned from the church. He felt it was an okay way to take a look at what the church was doing that needed correcting because of the ideas that had been circulating in Europe for a couple of centuries.

This also led to the Bible being printed in the peoples' language instead of just latin. This gave the people access to the Bible and a means to interpret it for themselves. Nothing will affect a person's politics like his religion. When a person is opened up to religious freedom, he will support whatever system allows that freedom. What better system to allow for religious freedom that democracy, where everyone has a say?

Answer 3

it opened up the gate to freedom of relgion, during the high middle ages Europe was mainly dominated by the christian religion.....In the struggle to regulate religion and moral life, Catholics and Protestants battled to conquer the institutional structure that was established during the late medieval ages. Unfortunately, the new religious reforms depended greatly on the political situations. With the old religion (Catholics), political leaders were granted limited power of governing and in the new religion (Protestants) political leaders had a greater influence as a dominant leader. Because both parties had opposing views and believes, a reformation of religions came into place and divided the empire altogether. The penitential system that was considered the core of the medieval church was no longer accepted in the Protestant church. They believed that confession was not necessary and that they needed to be liberated from economic and spiritual oppression. The idea of being liberated from the strict religious structure of medieval times brought relief to the Protestant community and resulted in a religious uniformity within their territories.
The structures of the Protestant and Catholic churches became very apparent in differences. The theological separation was the greatest symbol of unification of religions. Protestants were now practicing Holy Communion with not only just clergy but also distributing to the laity. Altars were facing the congregation and all forms of holy art (statues, paintings, etc.) were taken out of the church and destroyed. A major separation, as a result of the reformation age, was the religious music, which was a major role in the Catholic Church before the birth of the reformation. Other very apparent distinctions between the Catholic and Protestant church was architecture and art.

Answer 4

It was very true that the secular inspired protestant reformation was very much politically inspired rather than theologically inspired; since the German princes put up the lunatic Martin Luther to defy the Catholic Church in the advantage of the Hanseatic League than for anything else.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12700b.htm#I

The German princes protected the mad monk from the righteous wrath of holy mother Church in order to form their own economic system and laws. The German princes wanted to break away from the Catholic Church for economic reasons and used a drunken crazy Catholic monk as their dupe (just like martin luther king jr. was used by the communist party for the civil rights movement in the 1960s).