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I'm not sure if you mean me, but I know the Reformation was not about "freedom of conscience." I refer to the Enlightenment because that is generally regarded as the period in which the church lost much of its grip on state power. (Yes, I know it's more complicated than that, yes, I know "the Enlightenment" is a term like "Dark Ages" and the "Middle Ages" that doesn't neatly define a time period or movement.) The point is that Islam has never had any real subordination to civil authority. Muslim countries controlled by secular authorities generally need to use pretty brutal suppression methods and still give lip service to being Islamic.
Of course the Reformation is something different. Islam has had several (arguable) equivalents. Certainly it's had many schisms, the Shia/Sunni one being only the most notable.
No, I didn't. But it was a popular view in media articles a few years back, and I got dizzy from simultaneously shaking my head and rolling my eyes. Part of that is down to the lingering anti-Catholicism which swallowed the view of "heroic Reformers standing up against a dictatorial Church" and imagined that carried over to modern Christianity, where now the "dictatorial Church" wasn't the Pope any more but the Evangelicals, and the liberalised mainline Protestant denominations were the 'heroic Reformers'. "Hey, this lady clergyperson from one of the Seven Sisters denominations is wearing a rainbow stole and marching for abortion rights, now that's what the Reformation was all about and that's why Islam needs one!"
Yeah, I would love to see the faces of Luther, Calvin, etc. when looking at that example 😁
No you wouldn't. Cruelty helps no one.
Why would it be cruel? The denominations that went liberal have Good Biblical Justifications for their decisions (mainly "Jesus is all about love") and the Reformers based their demands on "the unmodified word of Scripture (as we interpret it)". They certainly never envisaged the day of lesbian lady clergypersons marching for abortion, but that's what you get when "every man has a pope in his own belly", as they found out quite soon. That's not what the Reformation was about, but it's what the modern view of the Reformation thinks it was about.
Isn't it Catholics who are usually accused of cannibalism (based on transsubstantiation)?
Generally! But y'know, if you're going to do the "sacrifice a god" thing, you should commit fully to it!
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