How Did The Protestant Reformation Impact Society

The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century marked a division from the Roman Catholic Church. This division resulted in a significant impact on the world as it helped to develop the groundwork for multiple important aspects of modern society. The Reformation brought a development to education, economy and church practices and in such, effects the everyday lives of people today.
Prior to the Reformation, education was not a key component in society. There existed no education system in most countries and teaching was limited only to the children of wealthy merchants and the rulers of cities (Faber). Early reformers were the first to express the principles of reformed education and to develop objectives and methods (Faber). In doing so, they provided an important basis upon which later educators were to build. One of those reformers who expressed the importance of education was a German priest named Martin Luther. During the Reformation, Luther’s ideas began to develop more and more of the right way to practice faith and live life, in general, but many of those ideas centered around education and how it could be used to improve society
German sociologist Max Weber published a study called The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism at the start of the 20th century which looked at how the seeds of capitalism were planted in the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. In this study Weber proposed that only Protestantism provided a moral compass that led its followers to restrain their material consumption while at the same time chasing after wealth (Weber). Weber argued that prior to the Reformation restraint on consumption was invariably linked to asceticism, which was a lifestyle that encouraged abstinence from pleasures for spiritual reasons. One of his other main arguments was that the pursuit of wealth was seen as a careless and foolish waste of money