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hand_carved
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 111

Posted 11/22/2002 3:45 AM (GMT -6)

While doing research for a paper on the integration of faith and music in the band U2, I discovered that Bono has a theory that the Protestant Reformation was the beginning of Modernism: lower view of the arts, emphasis on independence and individuality, loss of a sense of the “mystical” with more emphasis on reason….

As I think about it, I find this incredibly convincing. What do you think?

handcarved

"I'm beside myself!" C-3PO, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 11/22/2002 11:56 AM (GMT -6)

That's an interesting topic. Having read portions of Arnold Hauser's classic, The Social History of Art, Volume 2: Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque (during my years in graduate school) I'll be interested to see where this thread leads.

I'm wondering where Plutarch enters into this. (Western art historians generally say that he invented the Renaissance.')

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 11/22/2002 12:10 PM (GMT -6)

I did a simple google search using: +"Protestant Reformation " +"beginning of Modernism". This is what I found.

Articles seem to fall into two groups. Some treat "modernism" as a liberal reaction to scritpural authority. Others say something like this link below does about individualism, ala what handcarved mentions from Bono:

quote:
...What Schleifer calls modernism, and others in American academe have called "the early modern," could equally plausibly be said to have begun in 1492 with Columbus's discovery of the New World, which resulted in a new geopolitical paradigm. Or one could choose 1517, when Luther mailed his 95 theses on the church door at Wittenberg, ushering in the Reformation. Protestantism's tenet of the priesthood of the believer led to the led to the individualism which governs life in industrial democracies today. Jacques Barzun begins From Dawn to Decadence: "The Modern Era begins characteristically, with a revolution. It is commonly called the Protestant Reformation." (3)

Whatever we call that period, which culminated with the Enlightenment, I would argue that it ended around 1910. I would also argue that the period that began in 1910 is still going on. Its present phase, the post-modern, began in 1945 and was less of a rupture, to use Foucault's phrase (217) than an extension and modification.

Seriously, if you want an article that says the same thing as Bono, go see this: colloquium.upol.cz/coll01/01-velie.htm

It gives names of author/scholars who present this view. One THEN must figure out whether to believe these people, or not. And begin to place them according to their perspectives and biases. Hauser who I mention above, is a Marxist. That makes him a materialist too (by defalt).

Happy researching!

Fred

hand_carved
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 111

Posted 11/25/2002 12:18 PM (GMT -6)

Thanks fred. I'm glad you took interest in it. Really all that Bono said in the book I read was referring to the lower view of art. But it logically follows that individuality, rationality, etc. all come out of that as well.

It is interesting, something I had never really considered before. I am a protestant, but I sometimes wonder just how beneficial the protestant reformation really was. Indeed, if it would have reformed the church rather than divided it, it might have been more beneficial. But the consequences that it brought.... it makes me shudder. Many things that the Catholic church did through history makes me shudder as well. This sin in my own life makes me weep.

How long? How long until we are unified at the Parousia? We all long for that day.

"I'm beside myself!" C-3PO, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 11/25/2002 6:01 PM (GMT -6)

An article I read a few years back, when I started reading on the Web.'

I found it challenging.

www.trosch.org/for/moore-un.htm

quote:
PREFACE

PART I CHRISTIANITY IN CRISIS
Chapter 1: HOW DID CHRISTIANITY GO OFF THE RAILS?
Chapter 2: THE PROBLEM WITH PROTESTANTISM
Chapter 3: RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION
Chapter 4: THE END OF CATHOLIC CULTURE
Chapter 5: THE SPIRIT OF SKEPTICISM
Chapter 6: SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE REFORMATION
Chapter 7: LIBERAL HUMANISM
Chapter 8: THE LONG ROAD BACK TO CHRISTIAN UNITY
Chapter 9: The strange case of how 2,000 protestant Evangelicals ended up joining the Orthodox church
Chapter 10: ONE LORD, ONE FAITH, ONE BAPTISM
Chapter 11: What the Church Is Not: Liberal Mainline Protestantism and "Protestantized" North American Catholicism

PART II DIFFICULTIES
CHAPTER 12: AUTHORITY
Chapter 13: SACRAMENTAL GRACE
Chapter 14: THE EUCHARIST
Chapter 15: THE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION
Chapter 16: CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION
Chapter 17: LITURGICAL WORSHIP
Chapter 18: VENERATION OF MARY AND THE SAINTS
Chapter 19: PRAYERS TO MARY AND THE SAINTS
Chapter 20: MANDATORY CELIBACY IN THE PRIESTHOOD
Chapter 21: "CALL NO MAN FATHER"
Chapter 22: PURGATORY
Chapter 23: ICONS, RELICS, AND IMAGES
Chapter 24: THE TRADITION

Part III WHAT IS THE CHURCH?
Chapter 25: THE TASK

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