Good Review of Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World

[HereIStand]

I had a bit of wait at the doctor's office today, so I managed to read James Nuechterlein's review of the book Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World by Alec Ryrie. It's a long article, but it's a good history of Protestants in itself. One portion which stood as especially good was this,

Ryrie defends the progressives against their conservative critics. They were malleable, he admits, but hardly less so than their accusers. “All Protestants adapt,” he says, “the difference is that liberals admit it.” That attempt at evenhandedness seems empirically dubious. Protestant conservatives and liberals are not, as Ryrie here suggests, equidistant in their beliefs from where Protestantism began. Whether they are right or wrong to do so, progressives virtually by definition concede more to their ambient circumstances than do traditionalists.

 

[RC1970]

Only God has the right to be a progressive. For humans it is sheer rebellion.

 

[Tolworth John]

An interesting read.
another equaly interesting article, that you will need to down load, is 'The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy'
found at The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy