The Christendom s Decline And The Secularization Of The West

Our World Response The six watershed events that led to Christendom’s decline and the secularization of the West are as follows: First, secularization began with the Renaissance, an intellectual and cultural movement. The Renaissance represents the West’s rediscovery of ancient Greek philosophy, science, and literature. It affected people in three ways. First, it drew people away from God. Second, it gave people another way of thinking, no longer relying on the Church’s worldview, but adopted pluralism. Third, they embraced humanism turning their backs on Christian truth claims and ethics. Second, the Christendom’s decline continued with the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation removed Church by dividing the Church and by turning the Church’s attention away from management of society and inward toward renewal, reorganization, and theological matters. Third, the declined continued with the rise of Nationalism and the rise of proud independent nations. The naturalistic spirt killed Christendom as a political entity. Nationalism led to unprecedented warfare between the peoples of Europe, and two world wars took root because of it. Fourth, the rise of Science challenged Christendom’s prescientific assumptions about the universe and human life. The study of science led to many questioning the unknown, which caused a disruption of God creating everything, to science having an explanation on everything. Fifth, was the Enlightenment, some consider this the mainShow MoreRelated A Theological Perspective of the Clash of Civilizations Essay7154 Words   |  29 Pagesplanet in several ways, including â€Å"zones of peace† (the West and Japan, or 15% of the world’s population) and â€Å"zones of turmoil (everyone else),†10 the rich North and Francis Fukuyama, â€Å"The End of History,† The National Interest 16 (Summer 1989):Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky, The Real World Order: Zones of Peace, Zones of Turmoil (Chatham, New Jersey: Chatham House, 1993). the poor South, or the distinctive cultural entities of the West and East. While these basic distinctions may reflect reality