CWC: An Overview

CWC is broken up into three chronological units. While there are common themes and questions running throughout the semester, each unit features its own distinctive personalities and stories. Here's an overview:

Unit Three: The Modern World

Key Stories

• Luther's "reformation" inspired new movements in Christianity, both inside and outside of what came to be called the Roman Catholic Church. While Lutheranism itself was largely limited to Germany and Scandinavia, Luther's ideas influenced a wide variety of other self-professed "Evangelicals" (or "Protestants"), who agreed with him that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone and that Scripture alone is authoritative. However, they disagreed with each other on what the Bible teaches on key issues, and the Protestant Reformation splintered into multiple denominations. Meanwhile, Catholic reformers like Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) brought new energy to that church, taking the Gospel to new parts of the globe through missionary work in North and South America, India, Japan, and China.
• Inspired by new scientific insights (and wearied by religious conflicts), some European thinkers sought truth in "laws of nature" rather than in Scripture or church teaching. Starting with a radical rethinking of astronomy (Copernicus' theory that the earth revolves around the sun), the Scientific Revolution led to a so-called "Age of Reason" in the 17th and 18th centuries. During the movement known as the Enlightenment, thinkers in Europe and North America sought "laws of nature" not just in physics, chemistry, and mathematics, but in economics, politics, criminology, and even religion itself. By the end of the 18th century, secularism and even atheism were increasingly influential in Western culture.
  

Key Witnesses

• John Calvin (1509 - 1564): While Luther provided the Reformation with its initial passion, it was the French lawyer John Calvin who provided Protestantism with structure and doctrine, primarily through his Institutes of the Christian Religion and his leadership in the church at Geneva. Though many still associate "Calvinism" with (double) predestination and the total depravity of humanity, Calvin's belief in the sovereignty of God also led him to believe that any calling (no matter how "simple, dull, or dirty") can redeem this fallen world and glorify its Creator.
  
• Menno Simons (ca. 1496 - 1561): Influenced by a group known as the Swiss Brethren, this Dutch priest came to believe that only adults who can profess their faith should be baptized. After leaving the Catholic church, he helped the "Anabaptist" movement to survive, and today the Mennonites are the largest group directly descended from the "radical" wing of the Reformation. They have championed missions, social justice, holy living, and pacifism.
• Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662): One of the most brilliant minds of the Scientific Revolution, this French Catholic mathematician and philosopher was also one of the greatest devotional writers in Christian history. After his death, a collection of his thoughts (in French, Pensées) were published. They remain widely read to this day, and stress both a heart-felt experience of God and the possibility of faith and reason working together.
• Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790): One of the few Americans we have time to study in CWC, Franklin was raised Presbyterian but grew skeptical of organized Christianity. Instead, he embraced Deism, an attempt at "reasonable religion" that affirmed belief in God, the soul, and the afterlife, but questioned much of Christian orthodoxy (e.g., the miracles and resurrection of Jesus). Like many Deists, Franklin was optimistic that humans could perfect themselves and their society -- though his own "virtues experiment" was not especially successful.

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