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Show Jacob Trapp Winning of Our Birthright: Unitarian Beginnings in Europe The 23 1941 February My SUBJECT how it TODAY was is our Renaissance European "Renaissance" Unitarian Unitarianism won. means and the rebirth. birthright of freedom and in the time of the arose Reformation. Protestant In the time so-named came a rebirth of art, science, philosophy, and literature a rebirth of humane, this-worldly, practical, and intellectual pursuits. The most significant rebirth, however, was the rebirth of the - spirit of human freedom. Consider how sometimes freedom; rights things call the Dark the of stood Holy spiritual Roman and near the end of what There was Ages. Empire, the divine temporal rulership, no we political and absolute held complete sway. There was very little economic freedom; the dynamics of the industrial revolution and of a new world commerce was still to come. There was no freedom of publishing; even after the Dark Ages and after the discovery of printing, only that which was licensed and approved could see the light of day. There was no freedom of thought shackles of medieval scholasticism, a - thought curious wore the blend, stiffened theology and Aris rigidity, dogmatic totelian logic and abstract science. There was no freedom of religion: one believed or professed to believe only according to utter to the one of Christian ecclesiastical dictation. It is not my purpose to review the stirring and thrilling 253 |