Protestant Reformation Dbq

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One of the major European movement during the sixteenth century was the Protestant Reformation. In the beginning, this movement intended to reform the practices and beliefs of the Catholic Church. Before the age of dissent and division, the church was viewed as the sole vehicle for salvation. However, with all the turmoil within the Catholic Church, the people has lost faith in the church’s ability to lead them into salvation. They have lost sight in its very core. This is the heart of the reformation movement. Although there were those saw the opportunity to widen their power at the expense of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church did respond in wake of the Reformation movement. The Protestant Reformation was set off by a German monk …show more content…

A wider range of dissenting Christians began to take root in the north. Different forms of Protestantism did surface. Zwinglianism was founded by Ulrich Zwingli. This reform was comparable to Lutherans of Germany with one difference: the “theology of the Eucharist” (Coffin, et. al., 410). Lutherans believed in the “real presence of Christ’s body in the sacrament” while the Zwinglians trusted that the Eucharist had no grace at all (Coffin, et. al., 410). This prevented the two groups from uniting and the Zwinglians were eventually realized by another Protestantism movement, Calvinism. John Calvin credited Luther for opening up the religious reform but the two men differed in many levels. Calvin was more “legalistic” than Luther (Coffin, et. al., 412). Calvin decreed that stricter rules and defied temporal authorities. Calvin also rejected the hierarchy structure within the church. He believed that “each congregation should elect its own ministers, and assemblies of ministers and “elders: were to govern the reformed church as a whole” (Coffin, et. al., 412). Calvin also stipulated simplicity: “simplicity in worship, prohibiting vestments, processions, instrumental music, and religious images of any sort” (Coffin, et. al., 412). Lutheranism and Calvinism did have some similarities. In Calvin’s Catechism of the Church of Geneva, Being a Form of Instruction for Children in the Doctrine of Christ, Calvin believed that “children should be duly instructed in the Christian religion” (Brophy, et. al., 437). Both Luther and Calvin saw the importance of fathers educating