Liberatarian/Progressist/Proto-Enlightened Protestantism in 16th century?

Although Protestantism arose in Europe to break with the liturgy, dogmas and traditions from Roman Catholicism during 16th century, admittedly it didn't take much of a progressist approach on society in a whole. Antisemitism, antiislamism, witch burnings, the pitiful position and role of women in society, human sexuality, Biblical criticism, laicism/secularity were topics that found little - if any - room to be discussed at the time and still met large disapproval. Luther himself was an ardent antisemitic, and John Knox for instance wrote a very mysoginistic book criticizing harshly the power of female rulers.

How many (and which) PODs would it take to make the 16th century Protestantism a highly progressist/libertarian movement promoting the rupture of traditions - inside and outside the Christian sphere - in order to bring Europe to an earlier outset of what would IOTL be 18th century's Enlightenment?
 
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It's really unlikely that it would last. Protestantism depended hugely on prince and elites support (that and the fact Protestantism appeared amongst elites) to live on. Without that, it would have been only but a poor's people religion fought up to the death by nobility and urban elites.

Radical Reformation is a bit what you're talking about, and you can see its impact was really limited eventually in lack of these and depsite a popular support (or, as well, because of this popular support)
 
That's why I'm asking for some PODs or events that could have led, prior to the first Protestant events, to a more enlightened approach by nobility and elite themselves.

Elizabeth I, for instance, had a great chance to do many reforms in what concerns the topics cited in the first post, but due to the circumstances of the day, she had to act like any other conservative male king in power.

Maybe earlier events, dunno, a massive (and well succeded) European Peasant Revolt. In times where information took days, weeks or even months to arrive in its destination, probably we could only count on an absurd coincidence.
 
That's why I'm asking for some PODs or events that could have led, prior to the first Protestant events, to a more enlightened approach by nobility and elite themselves.
I don't think you'll have a PoD that could both reverse deep tendencies of the time, and make nobility oblivious of its own interests at the point to support a radical religion.

I'm not sure what enlightened means in this context actually. It's certainly hard to reach in a context of religious crisis, where tolerance, libertinism, free-thinking (basically everything marking OTL Englightement) then even with a PoD.
If only one of these actually took place for some reason, it could have butterflied Reformation in first place, as it would have given background to another reglement of religious crisis of Late Middle Ages.

Elizabeth I, for instance, had a great chance to do many reforms in what concerns the topics cited in the first post, but due to the circumstances of the day, she had to act like any other conservative male king in power.
I fail to see why Elizabeth would have done that unless you mean she had the opportunity to do so, as any late medieval ruler had the opportunity to do so.
That the religious coexistance that she tried to impose was genuine or not isn't relevant : it was an actual policy because it fit her interest eventually (Nobody wanted to go trough an actual War of Religion, and going against Elizabeth too vehemently would have given room to Catholics)

She couldn't have went against the historical context and tendencies of its time, not without creating resistances even if they couldn't existed at first.

For instance.

- Antijudaism (rather than antisemitism that is rather a nationalist and/or racist stance rather than religious) of Luther was directly issued from medieval anti-judaism (especially in its post-Latran form) even if it was admittedly particularly insulting and violent. It was a feature of western Christianism and its violence was actually directly issued from the radicality of Reformation : that Jews didn't converted to Catholicism made sense, as it was Antichrist religion. But refusing to convert to the True Religion tm. showed that they were depraved.

- Political Misogynism
It's another direct legacy of late Middle-Ages, with the introduction of Roman Law trough Justinian's that had a clear bias against women. Given the spirit of european Renaissance, that literraly put everything Roman as the best, it would be hard to remove that from the historical context.

Maybe earlier events, dunno, a massive (and well succeded) European Peasant Revolt.
The problem with peasant revolts (Bagaudae, Jacquerie, Tuchinat, Great Rising, etc.) is that they tend to be spontaneous, epidermic and "headless". They had no program, no clear goal, etc. explaining why they were eventually used as scarecrows or manipulated by someone else that had the means to exploit their uprising.

Without a catastrophic collapse of late medieval or Renaissance society (something so big that it would probably compromise your OP), I don't see a peasant revolt "succeeding" (again, success is a bit hard to use there, as it implies objectives they didn't had).

In times where information took days, weeks or even months to arrive in its destination, probably we could only count on an absurd coincidence.
You really oversetimate the time an information used to travel. We're talking of a matter of days, maybe a week for anything between Rome and London by exemple.
Granted, in our age of information, it looks like prehistory, but "months" is inaccurate.
 
Oh, I really understand the depth of the situation right now, thanks a lot for your patience to explain and your collaboration to the thread :) As I see I have much to learn yet.

I'll try to study further about Renaissance and maybe in the future I'll have foundations to substantiate Alternate Timelines of an hypothetical deeply radical reformation just as the one I proposed in OP.

If anyone has any other thoughts on the subject, feel free to express yourselves.
 
The core problem I see here is with the nature of what it was most of the Protestant thinkers set out to do; restore the "true" Church. This necessitated a move away from the introduced traditions of the Latin Church and towards a more "fundamentalist" view of scripture. Given the times and context of biblical authorship, the timeframe in which Protestantism evolved, and the male-centered scholarship of the time, it's actually impossible to have "socially progressive" protestantism gain much traction in any period after 800 and before 1700.
 
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