Modernization Of Christianity Research Paper

The Modernization of Christianity With over two billion adherents, Christianity is by far the largest religious group on the planet, and the religion has gone truly global over the past century. Europe was the clear center of Christianity one hundred years ago, but today Christians are spread out throughout the world, everywhere from the United States to Brazil to Ethiopia to China. Many people believe that Christianity would not have thrived or even survived this long had it not been for the modernization and the transformation of the religion throughout its history. Throughout the two thousand year time span that Christianity has existed, there have been countless social changes, historical figures, and technological developments that have

This is the beginning to the time period known as the Renaissance. Universities began to arise and there were new dimensions in learning due to the contact with Muslim intellectuals that was not present during the medieval ages. With new texts from Aristotle, Europe saw rapid growth in its pursuit of philosophical knowledge, ethics, and metaphysics. People of learning were known generally as “humanists” and sought after the revival of classical learning. Humanism, in the time of the Renaissance, was the idea that humans were of the utmost importance and that there should be an emphasis placed on human nature, individual autonomy, and reason and intellectualism. Thomas Aquinas, arguably the most notable Christian theologian of the era, made Aristotle a saint of the church. Aquinas taught that intellectual thought and reason were compatible with teachings of grace and the Bible. Aquinas considered it very important to use historical context when reading Biblical text and to examine the text with rational scrutiny. Aquinas’s teachings during the time of the Renaissance modernized Christianity by urging people to read Biblical text using intellectual thought and to study the Bible individually rather than only hearing teachings from church

The Enlightenment saw mathematical, scientific, and metaphysical advances like no other period. This had a dramatic effect on the modernization of Christianity. As people started to look towards their own intellectual power, they started to question tradition, myth, miracles, superstition, and any other carrier of authority - including religion. Efforts were even made to disprove the Scriptures. This proved to be an obstacle to the growth of Christianity. Those who continued to practice Christianity felt the effects of the Enlightenment as well. Christians began to think in a more subjective, less rigid manner when it came down to matters of teachings in Scripture and they were more skeptical of taking what the religious leaders said as plain