The Reformation and the Rise of the Nation State
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This is a continuation of my discussion with ‘Thomas More’. TM – you have said that Luther was not an important figure in the development of the English Reformation. However wasn’t he an important influence on Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer who are considered the architects of the English Reformation?
Cranmer was influenced more by Lutheranism than Cromwell. Cromwell kept his theological views to himself as chief hatchet-man for Henry, who burned both Catholics and Protestants.
Cranmer became more of an evangelical (Calvinist).
The two basic facts are, that protestantism, mostly of the Calvinist variety, was welcomed after Henry’s death and would only then influence the Church of England. But the expropriation of church lands, secession from Rome, and dissolution of the monasteries, with the mass eviction of the English peasantry, all took place in England BEFORE England became Protestant, under Henry VIII and his Church, which was NOT protestant until after his death.
Lutheranism prevailed in Scandinavia, but I don’t know any details on that.
Why do you think Calvinism was more to the taste of the English elite? It was supposed to be more systematic but what specific ideological differences (if any) appealed to the Puritans?
While Lutheranism also believes faith alone matters, and not deeds, Calvinism takes that further. It was even more suited therefore to the rapacity of the upstart class in England, where it had free rein.
Calvinism blames poverty on the poor. Bankruptcy used to get you excommunicated from the Presbyterian kirk in Scotland. The persecution of the propertyless after the Henrician enclosures, the Vagrancy Acts of Edward VI and Elizabeth I, are all justified in Calvinist theology, as was the terrorising of the working class via the “Protestant Work Ethic.”
It is the original root of even today’s guilt-tripping of the unemployed and benefit claimants.
Calvinism is the ultimate capitalist theology.
Even though capitalism developed in the Catholic world, Catholic monarchies prevented Calvinist protestantism from taking the helm – although Jansenism tried to “calvinise” Catholicism. The traditional “Christ friend of the poor” myth was just too strong in Catholicism, despite its own ferocity in other ways. The running of charity hospitals was also a strong medieval tradition bound up with monasticism – the first institution to be scrapped in England and Scotland. Elizabeth instead authorised workhouses, in which the poor could be worked to death.
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