Steven Ozment’s, “Turning the World Upside Down” (from Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution), asks the question, “was the Protestant Reformation a Revolution?” In order to properly answer that question, the author states that we must first ask, “why so many Germans had become so mad at the Church of Rome in the early 16th century?” The German people experienced years of unanswered requests for limitations on the clergy that had taken advantage of papal authority, prior to the reformation began in the 1520’s. Many clergy openly broke the doctrine of celibacy with minimal punishment, while simultaneously making German Christians stand trial in Church Courts under the threat of excommunication. The Church perpetuated the cycle of corruption at the expense of the German tax payers by appointing generous “livings” for clergy unfit for Priestly duty. Commonly, the rich could “afford” to pay for absolution, but “not the poor Germans,” due to corruption within the clerical hierarchy. From the view of the average German lay person, the Catholic Church had begun to lose its way when it began taking money from German Christians to fund the visible corruption throughout its ranks. That corruption involved abuse of Church power with bribery and extortion that extended from granting absolution to avoiding excommunication. Also, using funds to fund lavish and easy lives for Priests in towns where 10 percent of the population was clergy. Besides for social, political, and economic suffering, the German laypeople suffered spiritually as well. With unfit spiritual institutions, they suffered a short of spiritual crisis prior to the reformation. An example of disconnection between the German people and the Church was the unwillingness of the Catholic Church to move masses from Latin to the indigenous language.
Ozment make a good point that when historians look at the Protestant Reformation, they largely overlook the spiritual side of the reformation in an effort to try and separate religion from the political and social realm. The author warns that this is a mistake because then the reformation becomes portrayed as the least successful social movement in the early sixteenth century instead of the most successful spiritual movement. In part, the Protestant reformation was driven by social and political factors, such as the want for less Papal involvement in secular aspects of society including government and education. For example, the Protestants wanted more states’ rights and local control and less hierarchical authority of the Church. So even though money and power were important factors that does not mean that faith and piety did not play an important role in one of the biggest reformations in religious history. The the root of the issue was that many people viewed the practices and doctrine of the Catholic Church as incorrect and not how they wanted to worship their God. That extends far beyond the physical realm and goes into the spiritual idea of, “what is the correct way to worship our God?” We have to look at the reformation from a social and political perspective because of how the Catholic Church was intertwined with society in this time period, but the heart of the reformation was a theological revolution.
We have therefore established why so many Germans were mad at the Catholic Church, but we must now decide if the Protestant Reformation was a Revolution? If we are defining Revolution purely by politics and economics then, no, it was not a revolution because the Catholic Church did not have direct control over countries, just influence. If we define revolution in terms of spirituality, then yes, it was a revolution. It stopped direct influence of the Catholic Church in German governmental affairs and reduced hierarchical control of people’s daily worship to local control. The power then shifted to more secular entities in the form of Protestant councils, trading one hierarchical spiritual organization as the main authority for localized spiritual councils made up of Pastors and laymen.