Protestant project: five hundred years later

Five hundred years ago, the Wittenberg monk Martin Luther posted his famous Ninety-five Theses on the door of All Saints’ Church, thus giving birth to the New Europe. That is, not even the New Europe, but simply Europe. For it is from this moment that humanity witnessed the formation of a unique European civilization and European values - values which have survived to this day. The Protestant project became part of a more fundamental process, namely, the process of the universal rationalization of all spheres of human existence, which heralded the beginning of the Modern Era. Capitalism emerged as a profit-based rational economic system. The ideas of John Locke were a rational liberal and political doctrine. And the philosophy of René Descartes offered a rational scientific worldview. Protestantism in turn became a rational system of values designed to overcome medieval theocentricism.