2

Chapter 16: In the early modern era religions experienced great changes and this period also saw the rise of modern science. Christianity was divided between the Roman Catholics of Western and Central Europe and the Eastern Orthodox of Eastern Europe and Russia. The Muslims defeated the Crusaders and had expanded into parts of Europe. In the early fifteen hundreds Martin Luther began of movement against Catholicism that grew into the development of Protestantism. A powerful challenge within Christianity to the Catholic Church. Instead of the Pope and the Church controlling the religion Protestants believed that the Bible could be understood by individual Christians and they could receive Gods grace through their own belief. The Protestant faith spread through Germany into France and England and was the cause armed conflict. At the same time Christianity spread outside of Europe along with the growth of the European colonial Empires. The Puritans brought Protestant Christianity to North America and Catholic Missionaries spread Catholicism through Latin America, Africa and Asia and even as far as Siberia. In some places the religion of the Native peoples got mixed in and became apart of Catholicism such as in Mexico and Latin America and slaves combined their African religious traditions with the Christianity taught by their masters. The Christians tried to spread their faith to China through Jesuit Missionaries. They learned about China's ancient culture and tried to be respectful of it. Many fewer Chinese did become Christians. The missionaries really could offer little to China which had such a developed religious tradition of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism. Along side the European efforts to spread Christianity there was another development in Europe, the Scientific Revolution. The origins of the spread of modern science in the West were it independent Universities in places like Paris, Bologna, Oxford and Cambridge. Withing these Universities there was freedom to explore the Scientific teachings of Greek and Roman classical thinkers and to develop new ideas. The big idea that was challenged and finally accepted was that Earth was not the center of the Universe but that it was a planet that revolved in an orbit around the sun. Kepler and Newton made the biggest advances in this. Some of the early scientists such as Galileo were forced by the Catholic Church to go back on his belief that the Earth moved around the sun and rotated on its access. Other great enlightenment figures felt that the Scientific Revolution came out of the belief that their own knowledge and study could change human society. Once ideas and experiments started to replace blind belief in religion then all kinds of concepts were up for grabs. For example, instead of believing that Kings ruled through divine right the English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) offered "principles for constructing a constitutional government" and a contract between the rulers and the ruled that was created by human beings not God. Some of the enlightenment philosophers were Deists  They believed that God created the world but not a personal God who took apart in history, peoples lives or interfered with natural law. Progress was the central theme of the enlightenment. It is surprising to think that science was undergoing a revolution at the same time millions of Africans were being sold into slavery.