During the Renaissance, for instance, such holdovers derived
from studies of the Bible, which led to the Reformation. Ideas
not rejected as heresy were usually within the scope of the
church. These ideas were expressed by men and women who founded
orders. They were put into practice by religious activists or
made into new theologies.
There is no religion that does not go through its internal
revisions and through the pain of dividing schisms. On today's
list of religious denominations, one can find everything, from
paganism to cyberfaith. The rational explanation for this
multiplication into infinity is not different from the
explanation of any human experience. Multiplication of choices,
as innate human characteristic, applies to religious experiences
as it does to any other form of pragmatic human
self-constitution. The practical experience of science,
diverging more and more from philosophy and from religious dogma,
also followed many paths of diversification. So did the
unfolding of art, ethics, technology, and politics. The
unifying framework offered by the written word, as interpreted by
the monolithic church, was progressively subjected to
distinctions that the experience of literacy made possible. When
people were finally able to read the Bible for themselves-a book
that the Catholic church did not allow them to read even after
the Reformation-protest started, but it started after the
Renaissance, when political entities were strong enough to defy
the papacy with some degree of success.
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