Enlightenment worldview is the root of the "liberal social order," and is predicated on the belief in "the natural unfolding of human progress," (Kagan, 2012). Preceded by a Church-dominated orthodoxy, the Enlightenment directly threatened the political power of the Church, the main cause of rising fundamentalism in the defense of orthodoxy. However, the relationship between religion and the Enlightenment was not one of direct contract and opposition to create two binaries in the European consciousness. In fact, "recent studies of the Enlightenment suggest that its relation to religion is far more complex than a simple process of increasing secularization," (The German History Society, 2007, p. 422). One example of how the Enlightenment ironically bolstered, or at least reshaped, orthodoxy, was via the accessibility of the Bible due to the Gutenberg printing press. Making the Bible available in the common English and German languages, readable by a substantial portion of the...
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