The Protestant Reformation: Religious And Social Movement

The Protestant Reformation was a religious and social movement that spread far across Europe among many groups of people. Particularly, several events throughout the 16th and 17th centuries furthered the reformation of closely-knit religion and society, with many people drifting away from a Catholic monastic lifestyle and absolute obedience to papal authorities. Instead, these people valued faith and freedom from religious beliefs and institutions that seemed foreign to Christian faith. Many protestants were of lower social classes, in favor of freeing themselves from the higher institutions controlling them and hopeful with the possibility of eventual social mobility. Protestant ideas in favor of the lower classes led to an uprising of peasants
against their lords, the peasants using protestant religion to demand the return of their rights.