During these years, Christians were experiencing change and uncertainty as well. The Black Death had just killed 1/3 of the population of Europe. Constant war had exacted its toll. The Ottomans had taken Byzantium in 1453. The Great Schism found the Catholics with 2 popes. Modern times were birthing. A constant stream of mechanical inventions were rapidly changing daily life. Astronomy was establishing itself as an independent science. The new world had been discovered and its wealth was funding European progress.

Invention included increases in agricultural productivity, sanitation, medical discovery, optics, navigation. Clock regulated time replaced sun regulated time. Efficiency became a measure. The accumulation of invention led to the industrial revolution.

People began to require evidence and were less accepting of authority. Education was required of more and more people to take part in industrial society. There was an increasing trend to democracy. These severe disruptions created a challenge for religion. Logos was eclipsing mythos. Europe was replacing old limits and old ways with an open attitude and discovering a new prosperity. These things initiated a distrust of religion by modernity that has grown 'til the present.

A pragmatic spirit of progress was accompanied by much revolution and destruction. Over 300 years Europe and America ruthlessly modernized their society. Today other societies are similarly experiencing painful upheavals as they modernize.

Armstrong suggests that the emergent qualities of democracy, human rights and toleration are more the consequence of this general and gradual modernization than the result of any particular thing. Democracy was partly a more efficient way to organize society than earlier draconian structures. Religion needed modernizing too, but the “conservative spirit” was still operative. The leaders of the Reformation all looked rearwards “al fontes”. Luther replaced Roman authority with that of the Bible. The reformation was new yet rooted in the old.

In what would become a theme of modernism, mythos gave way to logos. The reformers saw the relics of the church not as aids but impediments to religion. They transformed the mass from a ritual ceremony of deep mystery with God present, to a simple memorial meal. The reformers began to see much Biblical allegory as fact, so turning mythos into logos.

A characteristic of rapid change is disorientation and great anxiety. Luther suffered great depressions, and bouts of rage. Zwigli and Calvin experienced “utter impotence”. After reformation, all three felt “born again” and that God was all-powerful and sovereign. Reformation was a declaration of independence. People could (should) interpret the Bible for themselves. This was made possible by both the printing press and by a growing literacy. Such private interpretation free of church supervision caused society to necessarily be aware of more interpretations. Truth began to be subjective, not absolute.

Of course, all 3 reformers had little tolerance for people who disagreed with them. They burned books and killed dissidents. Luther was intolerant of reason and helped drive it from religion. He secularized reason. He advocated separation of church and state. He felt God as absent from the world. He thought the Catholic church was antichrist. Calvin and Zwigli however did not feel God was absent from the world. They saw Christian obligation to engage the world. Calvin turned upside down the notion of work as punishment for sin (garden of eden). Rather, Calvin created the “work ethic” of protestantism by seeing work as honouring God. Calvin saw science and religion in harmony.

Scientists of the time experienced their discoveries as divinely inspired. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton. But their disposition to verifiable facts increasingly led them to literalize myth, and in many cases dismiss that part that made no sense when so considered.

Francis Bacon wrote Advancement of Learning in 1605 which was a declaration that science alone could lead to truth. This was science as we know it now. Rene Descarte – “I think therefore I am”
has epitomized the focus on rationality. But he also experienced the uncertainty of a world without any “why” or meaning. Thomas Hobbes agreed with Luther that the world was empty of the divine. God created and now God waited for the end to come. Blaise Pascal found “terror” in this empty world. John Locke turned this angst around. “His faith in life and human reason was serene and confident.” An attitude that set the tone of the Enlightenment, for theologians, philosophers and historians. Immanuel Kant issued another “declaration of independence” - saying that people should throw off dependence on authorities and seek truth for themselves, but he also expressed that we are captives of our own thinking. For Kant divine law was a barbarous denial of human autonomy. There was no point to ritual, prayer, mysticism.

While this Age of Reason was birthing, extreme religious irrationality was occuring. Witchcraft was seen and feared everywhere through the 16th and 17th centuries. Destructive un-reason has also been characteristic of modernism. And war was a part of it too. The Reformation divided the West. England. France. Civil war. Revolution. War of Independence. 2 centuries of violence. During this disruptive time many examples of “antinomianism” are recorded by Armstrong. This was the exchange of good behaviour for bad – an “incoherent sense that old restraints no longer applied in the world.” New ideals found new religious expression. George Fox founded the Quaker “Society of Friends” advocating equality and independent understanding. John Wesley the founder of Methodism advocated the application of scientific method to spirituality. This emancipated faith from reason. Wesley said religion was not a doctrine in the head but a light in the heart.

Christians were becoming divided. Rationalization on the one hand and complete mistrust of reason on the other. Religion in the American colonies became a serious concern and all denominations flourished. Increasing central authority was balanced by a grassroots independence characterized by a “tumultuous spirituality”. Mysticism in religion had traditionally always required great discipline. It was never for the masses. It tapped a mysterious power that could easily run amok. And indeed it did. “Emotional excess became a feature of American religious life during the 18th century.” The First Great Awakening occurred in Connecticut in 1734. It was characterized by a new enthusiasm for the “born again” experience and being a mass movement, was somewhat anti-intellectual. This led to a split in the Presbyterians - “New Lights” and “Old Lights”. The old were rationalists and establishment. The new were a more emotional and a less prosperous group. The New Lights broke away in 1741 and established their own synod and colleges – including Princeton, which would become important later in the emergence of 19th century fundamentalism.

America had few Catholics then and the Pope was seen as anti-christ. Indeed there was an annual holiday “Pope's Day” where effigys of the Pope were burned. Hatred and violence have ever been a part of modernity's arrival. Religious ritual traditionally provided a safeguard to such extremes and when that was abandoned people could “fall prey to all manner of delusion”. This Awakening was in the Christian community a parallel development for similar reasons, to Lurianic Kabbalism and the processions mourning Hussain.

The American Revolution was of course a secular event led by rationalists of the enlightenment. But in the main, the American people aspired to different ideals than this elite. They were Calvinists, who had come to America to preserve their heritage free of European persecution. They formed a brilliant alliance. The lofty ideals of the founding fathers were coupled with the biblical myths that inspired the people – liberty, freedom, grace, kingdom of God, chosen people. England was condemned for its political and economic tyranny, but also demonized in religious language as well. Wars tend to be seen as between Good and Evil.

After the revolution, the new nation created a “wall of separation” between religion and politics with the agreement of the Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians. The First Amendment made it so. But by the middle 19th century secular America had become passionately Christian. America began to see the success of the Republic as from God. Modernism however is “pushed forward by impersonal processes”. The people came to believe, especially on the new frontier, in the qualities of independence and self reliance that had been the rally cry of the revolution. The second Great Awakening under leaders like Lorenzo Dow, “worked to shape society and religion in a way that was very different from anything envisaged by the Founders.” Unlike the first Great Awakening that was interested in saving souls, the second became a grassroots rebellion against eastern authority.

The recasting of Christianity included torch light parades and huge tented revival meetings. The Gospel Song was invented at this time with its ability to move people most deeply. Education was not required of its leaders. They could with common sense read and interpret the scriptures themselves.

A more radical religious event was the emergence of the Mormons. Armstrong sees the Book of Mormon as “one of the most eloquent of all 19th century social protests”...”a fierce denunciation of the rich, the powerful, and the learned.” His new community found their eventual home in Utah.

It is another paradox that this desire for “independence, autonomy and equality should lead large numbers of people to obey religious demagogues implicitly.” It was in reaction to the upheavals of their time, that their opposition to the ruling classes and their learned rationalism, caused distrust in rationalism. We should not expect anything else when in our own time fundamentalist populist movements arise in response to their own circumstances and in opposition to their own elites.

In 1831 William Millar, a farmer, analyzed the book of Revelation in a new way, and predicted the return of Jesus in 1843 by careful calculation. Again we see the application of logos to mythos. In modern context, when the virtue and meaning of mythos are unfamiliar, what else could people do, but read Revelation as a literal prophesy of things to come? And as usual, failed prophesy is no impediment to it's continued confidence. Many new sects came along and recalculated the eschatological timetable. Many it seems, looked forward to knowing the end of time.

In the 1840's Charles Finney brought this new enthusiastic and personal experience of conversion to the middle classes helping create “Evangelical Christianity” and making it the dominant religion of America by mid 19th century. He helped focus on social reform: abolition of slavery, temperance, and women's rights.

At the revolution, Catholics were 1% of the population. By 1840 there were 2.5 million Catholics and they were the largest Christian group. It was a difficult adjustment for many. Anti-Papal feelings continued. Even temperance took on an anti-Catholic tone, since the countries from which the Catholics had come had established drinking traditions.

In America then the religious were strong and vibrant. In Europe it was not so. Ideologies of this time were not religious but secular. Friedrich Hegel said the Universal Spirit found its true nature in the human mind. One should reach forward not rearward, with full engagement of human dialectic. Progress brings variety. Opposites clash. A new synthesis is arrived at. And again and again. Fuerbach thought the idea of God held man back. Marx thought religion the opiate to numb a sick society.

Darwin's “Origin” in 1859 was a blow to human self-esteem. Atheism was taking “the high moral ground”. A year later 7 Anglicans publicized German “Higher Criticism” - the application of standard rules of literary and historical criticism to the Bible as to any other work (is this a pattern or what?). And again, mythos gave more way to logos. This Higher Criticism would become a focus of antagonism for those who understood the Bible literally. On the other hand it was major help in allowing religion to be “scientific”.

The first shots in the science vs religion war were fired by the secularists who took an aggressive tone. Thomas Huxley, Karl Vogt, Ludwig Buchner, Jakob Moleschott and Ernst Haeckel all toured on behalf of Reason. “Reason alone was truthful, and myths of religion truthless.” Many people wanted to hear that science had finally disproved religion. In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed God was dead in the Gay Science. His proclamation was in a sense very true. The God that logos made of mythos had been easily killed. Modern people “were experiencing the truths of religion as tenuous, arbitrary, and incomprehensible.”