Alister McGrath
Protestantism designates a form of Christianity that is distinguished from Roman Catholicism on the one hand, and Eastern Orthodoxy on the other. Historically, Protestantism emerged within the Western church during the early sixteenth century, initially as a reforming movement or tendency within the church. The movement gained momentum and became increasingly diverse in the sixteenth century. Patterns of European emigration and cultural expansion led Protestantism to become a global movement in the nineteenth century, and remained a highly significant element of global Christianity in the twenty-first century.
Protestant narratives of identity emphasize the continuity of the movement with the early period of Christian life and thought. This narrative identifies Protestantism as representing a renewal or retrieval of an authentic vision of early Christianity, especially during the apostolic period. While most Protestants regard their faith as representing a recovery of the life and thought of the church from its distortion or corruption during later periods, there is disagreement within the movement about when this period of distortion began.
Mainline Protestant writers of the sixteenth century – including Martin Luther (1483–1546), Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), and John Calvin (1509–1564) – regarded apostolic Christianity as having been compromised by developments in the Middle Ages. They tended to use the language of “reform”, holding that Christianity had taken a series of wrong turns during the medieval period, which were in principle capable of being corrected. More radical Protestants, especially within the Anabapt movement, took the view that Christianity was corrupted much earlier – for example, as a result of the entanglement of the church and state during the Constantinian age. Such was the extent of this corruption that Christianity needed to be recovered, rather than reformed.
Most scholars suggest that the origins of Protestantism lie primarily in the western European Renaissance, with its emphasis on the renewal of culture through a return to the glories of the classical period. The slogan ad fontes (“back to the sources”) encapsulated a program of cultural and religious renewal, using classical Rome (and to a lesser extent, Athens) as the foundation and criterion of authenticity. The image of a stream was widely used to justify a return to the fountainhead of Western culture. A stream was at its purest when it emerged from its source; the renewal of Western culture therefore depended on returning to its sources for inspiration and guidance. Culturally, this led to a resurgence of interest in classical architecture and Ciceronian Latin; religiously, it led to a new interest in the New Testament, which was seen as a witness to, and expression of, a vibrant and authentic Christianity.
Humanist writers such as Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus of Rotterdam argued for the reformation and renewal of Christian life and thought through a return to the New Testament. Although Valla and Erasmus primarily emphasized the need for a reformation of the life and structures of the medieval church in the light of the simpler models of the New Testament, their approach implicitly pointed to the need for a reformation or reformulation of at least some Christian ideas. For Erasmus, the Middle Ages represented a period of unnecessary and inappropriate theological inflation and complexification; it was time to return to simpler theological formulations.
Protestantism emerged, at least in part, from these reforming trends in the later Renaissance. It is significant that most of the major Protestant reformers of the first generation – especially Zwingli and Martin Bucer – emerged from within the humanist movement. For Luther, however, the Middle Ages distorted, rather than merely obscured, the theological heartbeat of the Christian gospel: correction, not merely simplification, was called for.
The term “Protestantism” emerged during the late 1520s. The term Protestantes (“protesters”) was used to designate delegates to the second Diet of Speyer (1529) who were opposed to the curtailment of religious liberties within the Holy Roman Empire. The term gradually came to be adopted to refer to the emerging factions in many parts of Europe campaigning for reform and renewal of the church. Early Protestants did not use this term, preferring such terms as “evangelicals” (i.e., someone who wished to return to more authentic forms of Christianity).
Protestantism gradually came to refer to a group of originally independent movements, especially in Germany and Switzerland, characterized by broad programs of reform, based on the New Testament. The most important such movement emerged in the German city of Wittenberg during the 1520s, based on Luther’s demands for a form of Christianity that gave a higher profile to the Bible, which recognized the priority of the grace of God in the Christian life, and which campaigned for church liturgies and sermons to be in the vernacular.
Other reforming movements gained sway around the same time, sometimes essentially independent of Luther, sometimes inspired by his approach. Zwingli’s reformation in Zurich paralleled Luther’s in some ways, although not placing quite the same emphasis on the need for the reformation of the church’s teaching. In Strasbourg, Martin Bucer tried to reform both the city and church on the basis of the New Testament. Calvin’s reformation in Geneva, which was consolidated during the late 1540s, shows evidence of being influenced by the model of Strasbourg, where Calvin resided briefly during a period of exile from Geneva in the early 1540s. Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion became a theological landmark for Protestantism, and is generally seen as one of the most important religious works of the sixteenth century.
Other movements in western Europe took their lead from these models. For reasons that are not entirely understood, Protestantism appears to have been particularly attractive to the imperial cities of western Europe. At this stage, Protestantism was based around a number of centers and individuals, lacking central direction and a common program. The divisive debate between Luther and Zwingli over the “real presence” in 1529 highlighted divisions within the movement, which often paralleled national dividing lines.
After the death of Calvin in 1564, Protestantism entered a new phase. Lutheranism and Calvinism had emerged as two quite distinct implementations of the Protestant vision, and were in open competition for influence, especially in Germany. A more radical form of Protestantism, generally known as “Anabaptism”, gained relatively little influence, partly because of its critical attitudes towards secular authority, and its tendency to reject the idea of private property. As a result, pressure grew to define boundaries between Protestantism and Catholicism on the one hand, and between the various forms of Protestantism on the other.
The most important outcome of this was the development of “Confessions of Faith”, such as the famous Heidelberg Catechism (1562), a Calvinist statement of faith which distinguished Calvinism from its religious alternatives. These newer confessions of faith were subordinate to the earlier Christian creeds, marking off Protestant movements as specific forms of Christianity, with their own distinct sets of beliefs.
In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, different forms of Protestantism began to establish regional strongholds. Lutheranism took hold in many parts of Germany and Scandinavia; Calvinism in the Low Countries, and parts of Germany. The increasingly close link between regions and religion was an important contribution to growing religious and national tensions, which eventually led to the Wars of Religion of the seventeenth century. The formula cuius regio, eius religio (“your region determines your religion”) was useful as a means of achieving social cohesion within a specific locality, but inevitably created tensions with neighboring regions with differing religious commitments.
This period also witnessed the development of “Protestant orthodoxy” within both Lutheranism and Calvinism. These codified theological systems, paralleling works such as Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, reflected a need to provide theological justification for Lutheranism and Calvinism, defending their intellectual merits in the face of competition and criticism from Catholic and Protestant alternatives. These over-intellectualized forms of Protestantism proved unattractive to many. Pietism, which placed an emphasis upon the experiential aspects of Christian faith, began to become a significant presence in Germany in the seventeenth century, stimulating the rise of Methodism in England in the eighteenth century.
A distinct form of Protestantism emerged in England. Although religious tensions had been building up within England since about 1500, the precipitating cause for the emergence of Protestantism in England was Henry VIII’s desire to have a male heir. His first wife, Catherine of Aragon, failed to produce such an heir; Henry then sought to divorce her. Meeting papal resistance to this move, Henry began to distance himself from Rome, asserting the autonomy of the English Church, with the monarch as its head. By the time of his death, England had moved in a more Protestant direction, although there is evidence to suggest that Henry was reluctant to abandon Catholicism in its entirety.
Henry was succeeded by his son Edward VI, who was under the age of majority, and initially had to govern through advisers. The English church now moved in a more explicitly Protestant direction. Martin Bucer was appointed to the Regius chair of theology at Cambridge University, to facilitate a more Protestant outlook within the church. Yet Edward’s health was poor. His early death meant that his program of redirection of the English church was only partially implemented. His successor, Mary Tudor, sought to reverse it, and restore England to Catholicism. This process of re-Catholicization became unpopular, partly on account of its associations with Spain, and partly through the martyrdom of Thomas Cranmer and other senior Protestant churchmen. Mary’s premature death in 1558 brought an end to this process.
Elizabeth I sought to end simmering religious tensions within England through a “Settlement of Religion”, which can be seen as a via media (“middle way”) between Protestantism and Catholicism on the one hand, and between Lutheranism and Calvinism on the other. England’s identity as a Protestant nation was consolidated significantly through a failed attempt by Spain to invade England and overthrow Elizabeth.
The increasingly complex religious situation in western Europe made conflict of some kind inevitable. In the later sixteenth century, major confrontations took place between Catholics and Protestants in Germany and France. The Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547) and the French Wars of Religion (1562–1598) presaged more complex and destructive conflicts on a wider scale. The most important of these was the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), which was the most destructive and prolonged war yet seen in Europe. The English Civil War can also be considered to be a “war of religion”, although on a smaller scale, in which two variants of Protestantism – Anglicanism and Puritanism – fought for the religious soul of England.
These conflicts achieved little politically, and were widely regarded as demonstrating the need to curb religious influence in order to secure social and political stability. While the origins of the Enlightenment are complex, one significant contributing factor is known to have been a desire to find a basis for authority that was independent of religious texts and institutions. As the conflicts between Catholicism and Protestantism made painfully clear, the Bible was open to multiple interpretations. Why not appeal to reason as a universal human resource, and use this as the basis of social and political discourse?
In England, Deism emerged as a form of Protestant rationalism. Although its origins can be traced back to the early 1600s, the movement gained influence after the Civil War. During the “Augustan Age”, Deism emerged as a rationally prudential form of Protestant Christianity, well adapted to sustaining political and social cohesion. Growing interest in Deism is evident in France in the decades prior to the Revolution of 1789, and in Germany from about 1720. It is often suggested that the Enlightenment influenced Protestantism; perhaps it would be more accurate to suggest that Protestantism and the Enlightenment were essentially symbiotic. The Enlightenment had relatively little impact on Catholicism until the nineteenth century.
The discovery of the Americas soon led to leading European sea powers establishing colonies in the region. Most of these were Catholic nations, including France, Portugal, and Spain. However, England rapidly established a colonial presence in the northeastern parts of America, especially in the Massachusetts Bay area. The rise of religious tensions in England, especially during the reigns of James I and Charles I, led to many Protestants emigrating from England to find a new life in the American colonies. Many of these – including the “Pilgrim Fathers”, who set sail in the Mayflower in 1620 – were Puritans.
By the opening of the eighteenth century, American Puritanism was becalmed, having lost much of its original energy. The situation was transformed by a religious revival, traditionally known as the “Great Awakening”, which began in New England in 1740–1741 (foreshadowed in 1734–1735), and which had ripple effects throughout New England. In some ways, there are parallels with the “Evangelical Revival” in England around this time, which centered on the emerging Methodist movement. By 1760, it was clear that the revival was bringing about significant changes in American Protestantism. It was not simply that people were returning to church, or that religion was playing an increasingly significant role in public life. The revival brought about a changed perception of the relationship of the individual, congregation, and state.
The American Revolution of 1776 was not primarily motivated by religious concerns, although there was much opposition to making the Church of England the “established church” of the region. The constitutional separation of church and state is best seen as an expression of the principle that no denomination should have ecclesial privileges, rather than of any attempt to exclude religion from public life.
Further Protestant emigration from Europe continued in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with specific regions of North America in effect becoming émigré communities. Dutch forms of Protestantism became established in Pennsylvania, and Swedish in Minnesota. The “Second Great Awakening” (1800–1830) was a diffuse series of localized revivals over about three decades that affected nearly all areas of the newly-established United States. A well-known revival broke out in rural Kentucky in 1801, taking the form of large camp meetings. The most famous of these was the “Cane Ridge” meeting, which lasted a week, and was attended by at least 10,000 individuals. These set a precedent for a wave of revivalist meetings throughout the frontier territories, making an appeal primarily to common folk, emphasizing the emotion rather than intellect. The outcome was the transformation of antebellum America, leading to the emergence of the Protestant “Bible Belt”.
The American Civil War brought to a head simmering tensions within Protestantism in the region, especially over the issue of slavery. Many Protestant denominations found themselves facing major fissure over whether to support the abolition of slavery. The abolitionist movement gained considerable headway in northern states, especially as a result of the rise of the “Holiness” movement within Protestantism. This movement’s distinct emphasis on “holy living” came to be linked with support for the abolition of slavery in the antebellum period. Oberlin College, Ohio became a stronghold of abolitionism, even advocating “civil disobedience” in the face of the fugitive slave laws, designed to force runaway slaves to return to their servitude.
Protestant supremacy in the United States was challenged by the rise of Catholicism, primarily through the arrival of émigré communities from Ireland and Italy, which changed the religious dynamic of many cities, including Boston and St. Louis. Yet by the opening of the twentieth century, Protestantism was seen by many as defining the religious establishment of the United States.
One of the more significant controversies within American Protestantism broke out during the 1920s. The “Fundamentalist” controversy reflected a perception that American culture was moving away from its traditional Protestant moorings. Fundamentalism arose as a religious reaction within American conservative culture to the development of a secular culture during the 1920s, in an attempt to safeguard the Christian heritage. The movement reaffirmed Christian “fundamentals,” based on a direct reading of the Bible, to counter this process of cultural drift. Yet “Fundamentalism” rapidly became a reactive movement, defined by what it opposed as much as what it affirmed. A siege mentality became characteristic of the movement. Fundamentalist counter-communities saw themselves defending their distinctive beliefs against an unbelieving and increasingly secular culture, often withdrawing from cultural engagement to avoid being contaminated by a corrupt culture. After the Second World War, fundamentalism gradually gave way to what was initially known as a “New Evangelicalism”, which retained an emphasis on the authority of the Bible, while encouraging public engagement.
Protestantism became the religious establishment in many parts of western Europe in the late sixteenth century. At this time, Protestantism showed little interest in missionary activity, despite the growing realization that there were parts of the world – such as the newly discovered Americas – which had no Christian presence. The establishment of Christianity in North America took place primarily through the emigration of European Christians, rather than through missionary work among the indigenous peoples. The situation in Latin America was very different. The Catholic church took missionary work seriously, and sought to establish Christianity among the native peoples through mission stations and various forms of outreach.
The rise of the missionary movement within Protestantism was a relatively late development. By 1790, Protestant missionary societies were actively promoting missions throughout the world. Protestantism was spread through a complex amalgam of trading links, colonial activity, and intentional outreach. The rise of Protestant maritime powers, such as Holland and England, led to growing confidence amongst Protestant missionary agencies. England would play an especially important role in Protestant missionary work, as it began to become a global power, establishing colonies throughout the world.
Yet missionary work tended to be undertaken primarily by voluntary organizations, rather than by the leadership of Protestant churches. In the second half of the eighteenth century, missionary leadership passed into the hands of entrepreneurial individuals, who created dedicated missionary societies which focused specifically on the objective of overseas mission. These societies arranged their own fundraising, created support groups, and identified and recruited missionaries. The Baptist Missionary Society (founded 1792, and initially known as “The Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Heathen”) and the Church Missionary Society (founded 1799, and originally known as “The Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East”) developed a particular focus on specific regions of Africa. The Baptist Missionary Society focused on the Congo basin, and the Church Missionary Society on West and East Africa.
Missionary expansion on the part of nations such as England and Holland in Asia (especially India and China), Africa, and Australasia led to the entanglement of Christian outreach and colonial concerns, particularly commercial interests. David Livingstone (1813–1873), for example, declared his intention to go to Africa “to make an open path for commerce and Christianity.” While it is a simplification to suggest that missionaries were covert agents of colonialism, it was difficult to avoid the political realities which led to at least a partial convergence of missionary, commercial, and colonial agendas.
By the end of the twentieth century, Protestant churches in Latin America, Asia, and Africa had grown substantially, so that the numerical epicenter of Protestantism was in the process of shifting from its original heartlands in the West to the developing world. This process of expansion has often been accompanied by various forms of cultural assimilation, in which Protestant denominations came to reflect some aspects of the values and practices of its social context. This is particularly evident in Southern Africa.
With the departure of the colonial powers in the decades following World War II, African Christianity underwent significant changes. Leadership within the churches gradually devolved from Europeans to Africans, resulting in a growing adaptation of the colonial churches to local customs and traditions. Many indigenous churches began to emerge, without any historical connection with European denominations. These “African Initiated Churches” (AICs) are strongest and most numerous in Southern Africa, West Africa, the Congo Basin and Central Kenya.
The rise of Pentecostalism has had a significant impact on transforming the shape of Protestantism in the developing world. Although the movement had its origins in the United States in the early years of the twentieth century, since the 1960s the movement has become especially influential in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The rise of Pentecostalism in Latin American has transformed the religious dynamic of the region. In Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, Pentecostals now far outnumber all other Protestant groups, and on some projections may soon constitute the majority of the population. Pentecostals are also growing rapidly in areas adjacent to Latin America, such as the Caribbean, where Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Haiti have seen large increases in Pentecostal congregations.
Pentecostalism’s emphasis on a direct experience of God and concern for personal transformation, especially when coupled with a vibrant, occasionally exuberant, worship style, has secured it a large following among those who find Protestantism’s traditional book-based services emotionally unengaging. A similar pattern can be seen in Korea, in which Pentecostalism has emerged as a leading religious force since World War II.
So what are the core ideas of Protestantism? We have already noted its refusal to acknowledge papal authority as an integral aspect of its self-understanding. But what other themes have been important, historically and more recently? Two themes are of particular importance to understanding the distinct identity of Protestantism. Both of these emerged during the sixteenth century, and are embodied in the confessional formulas of core Protestant communities. Although these have been subject to a certain degree of reinterpretation over the centuries, they continue to function as core themes within the Protestant self-understanding.
One of the core themes of the early reforming movements associated with Luther and Zwingli was a return to the Bible as the fundamental source of teaching and moral guidance. Despite some divergences over how the Bible was to be interpreted, both insisted that a right reading of the biblical text, unimpeded by the vested interests of the institution of the church, was essential to the renewal and reformation of Western Christianity. The Latin slogan “sola Scriptura (by Scripture alone)” expressed this idea of the supreme authority of the Bible for Protestantism.
Yet Protestantism rapidly developed subtly differing ways of conceptualizing the place of the Bible in Christian life and thought. Lutheranism and Calvinism developed approaches which interpreted the Bible alongside tradition and reason. Although the Bible was traditionally given supreme authority, other sources were used in ascertaining its correct interpretation. At the time of the Enlightenment, reason came to be given increasing importance as a theological resource, leading to the displacement of the Bible from its central theological position within some Protestant traditions.
Debates within Protestantism over biblical interpretation rapidly demonstrated that the movement had to come to terms with multiple readings of the Bible. The Copernican controversy of the sixteenth century raised questions about how to interpret biblical passages which spoke of the sun standing still. The Darwinian controversies of the nineteenth century raised questions about how the Genesis creation accounts were to be understood. The question of authority is implicit in these debates. If the Bible itself has supreme theological authority, who has the right to determine what is the correct interpretation of the Bible?
The reassertion of the centrality of the Bible in American Protestantism in the 1870s is of particular importance in understanding contemporary Protestant sensitivities. Apparently with the First Vatican Council’s declaration of papal infallibility in mind, conservative Protestant writers such as Charles Hodge asserted the “infallibility of Scripture”. This idea remains important within conservative Protestantism today, although it is increasingly recognized that declaring a text to be “infallible” does not evade the question of how that text is to be interpreted.
The Protestant emphasis on the importance of the Bible has always been linked with an insistence that the Bible ought to be available to all, to be read in their own language. Protestantism gave a new impetus to the translation of the Bible into the vernacular. This led to some biblical translations achieving the status of literary classics – most notably, the famous King James Bible (1611), which had considerable influence over the shaping of English literature for three centuries. Protestantism has given rise to a large number of organizations dedicated to the translation of the Bible into minority living languages, such as the Wycliffe Bible Translators.
The chief debate within Protestantism today concerns the interpretation of the Bible, not so much in doctrinal debates, but in shaping Protestant attitudes towards contemporary social issues, such as sexuality. Some interpreters of the Bible feel a sense of cultural distance between its original contexts and contemporary Western society. This has led to important debates about how the Bible articulates an ethical vision, and how this is to be applied to contemporary concerns.
Luther famously regarded the doctrine of justification “sola fide (by faith alone)” as standing at the heart of his reforming program. Luther was convinced that the church of his day had lapsed into some form of Pelagianism, holding that human beings could earn their salvation or purchase favor in the sight of God. The famous “indulgence controversy” of 1519 – widely seen as a tipping point in the origins of the Reformation – reflected Luther’s unease over the orthodoxy of the medieval church’s views on grace and salvation.
These views were, however, open to misunderstanding. Luther’s concern had been to ensure that good works were not the basis of acceptance by God. He soon found that he was being understood to have said that good works were not necessary within the Christian life. Luther tried to correct this misapprehension, insisting that goods works were to be seen as the appropriate outcome, not the cause, of acceptance in the sight of God.
Protestantism drew a sharp distinction between “justification” as a declaratory event, in which a sinner was pronounced to be righteous; and “sanctification” as a transformative process, by which the sinner was internally renewed, and the process of “becoming righteous” was initiated. This forensic understanding of justification emerged in the 1530s, and became typical of Protestantism, particularly in the developed form associated with Calvin.
Since World War II, there has been an emerging consensus that Protestantism and Catholicism are not as widely separated by their respective understandings of justification as once seemed to be the case. In part, this reflects a growing appreciation of the complexities of the historical development of the doctrine of justification; in part, it is based on the realization that Protestantism and Catholicism used quite different theological frameworks to frame their discussion of the issues, leading to potential misunderstandings.
In more recent decades, Protestantism has had to come to terms with the fact that contemporary Western culture is generally uninterested in the core question that stood at the heart of Luther’s program of reform. “How do I find a gracious God?” does not resonate with contemporary cultural concerns in modern Western culture, leading some Protestant apologists to reformulate its core concerns in relational or existential form.The Cultural Impact of Protestantism
Finally, we need to consider the broader impact of Protestantism, which has left a significant imprint on history, particularly in the West. Many have noted the importance of Protestantism’s tendency to “desacralize” the world. Nature in itself cannot be seen as being sacred; at best, it can point beyond itself to the realm of the divine or transcendent. Nature is thus “disenchanted”; it can only play a symbolical role in reminding people of sacred realities, or acting as a signpost to where they may be found and encountered.
Protestantism can thus be argued to have played a role in laying the foundations for a secularization of culture. Many argue, however, that Protestantism’s most significant cultural impact lay in the areas of economics and the natural sciences.
One of the more noteworthy aspects of the rise of Protestantism is the stimulus the movement provided to the rise of modern capitalism, especially in Calvinist regions of Europe. Under Catholicism, the accumulation of capital was seen as intrinsically sinful; under Calvinism, it came to be seen as praiseworthy. The German sociologist Max Weber saw this fundamental change in attitude particularly well illustrated by a number of seventeenth-century Calvinist writers such as Benjamin Franklin, whose writings combined commendation of the accumulation of capital through engagement with the world, while at the same time criticizing its consumption. Capital was to be seen as something that was to be increased, not something that was to be consumed. Calvinism, according to Weber, thus generated the psychological preconditions essential to the development of modern capitalism.
A second link between Calvin and the rise of modern capitalism concerns usury – the practice of lending money at interest, with a view to making a profit on the loan, which was prohibited by the Old Testament. Throughout the patristic era and the Middle Ages, the entire consensus of the church was that usury was a mortal sin.
Calvin declared that money lending was legitimate, provided a fair rate of interest was charged. The new economic realities of the sixteenth century meant that interest is simply to be seen as rent paid on capital. For Calvin, the real concern about usury was the exploitation of the poor through high interest rates. This, he argues, can be dealt with in other ways – such as the fixing of interest rates at communally acceptable levels. Calvin’s willingness to allow a variable rate of interest shows an awareness of the pressures upon capital in the more or less free market of the age, and laid the foundations for modern economic practice.
The emergence of the natural sciences is often considered to be linked with the Christian intellectual environment of western Europe. In recent years, a growing body of scholarly work has emerged, arguing that the decisive contribution to the emergence of the natural sciences is not to be attributed to Christianity in general, but to Protestantism in particular. Protestantism created a new motivation for the scientific study of nature. A persistent theme throughout the works of John Calvin was that the wisdom of the invisible and intangible creator God might be discerned and studied through the created order. Calvin thus commended the natural scientists of his day, who were able to experience and appreciate the beauty and wisdom of God through what God had created and shaped.
This fundamental motivation for the scientific study of nature has remained characteristic of Protestantism. It can be seen in many confessional documents of the Reformed church in western Europe. For example, the Belgic Confession (1566) declared that reading the “book of nature” enhances the believer’s appreciation of what is known of God through the “book of Scripture.”
In both cases, Protestantism can be argued to have laid the groundwork for a positive religious engagement with the natural sciences. While this relationship has occasionally been complex – think, for example of conservative Protestant reaction to the theory of evolution – it remains of importance in understanding the historical development of the sciences in the West.