A House Divided: Protestant schisms and the rise of religious tolerance
This paper is concerned with the irony of unintended consequences. In contrast to those explanations of the rise of religious tolerance which stress the deliberate desire to promote religious liberty, I wish to suggest that, at least in the case of Scotland, the freeing of civil rights from religiou...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
1986
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| In: |
Sociological analysis
Year: 1986, Volume: 47, Issue: 1, Pages: 21-28 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This paper is concerned with the irony of unintended consequences. In contrast to those explanations of the rise of religious tolerance which stress the deliberate desire to promote religious liberty, I wish to suggest that, at least in the case of Scotland, the freeing of civil rights from religious affiliation was inadvertently produced by people acting to preserve Calvinist orthodoxy. Schisms intended to purify a corrupt religious establishment in order to impose orthodoxy on the population created the very conditions which encouraged increasing tolerance of religious diversity, secularization in the shape of state intervention in what had previously been church business, and the relatively painless accommodation of a substantial Roman Catholic population.A preliminary qualification is required. Although in general terms this account illustrates the part played by Protestantism in secularization, it is initially confined to Calvinist settings because it begins with a religious culture which believes that the state has an obligation to impose righteousness on the ungodly. The account starts at a point where sectarianism (in Wallis' sense of believing that one has a unique access to the one true religion; Wallis, 1975:35–40) is combined with the impositional view that the “civil magistrate” should actively suppress false worship. In non-Calvinist cultures it is quite possible for a group of believers to be conservative in their theology, exclusivist in membership tests, and yet entirely indifferent to the state and the wider population. Thus, although this account expresses the core dilemmas of Protestantism, it is primarily concerned with the rise of toleration in a Calvinist culture. |
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| ISSN: | 2325-7873 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Sociological analysis
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/3711274 |