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Utopia And Utopia

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It is difficult to point out that religion, though very significant, was an issue accounted for among each of these novels. Because of the societal corruption within the author’s realities, they were given the opportunity to recreate the religions, the beliefs, and values their utopians strove for. Sargent states that many Utopian communities “have been religious and they tried to lead a way of life that their members believed their faith required”(Sargent 35). Utopia offers its readers a sense of what More was personally feeling during the time he wrote his novel. More was a Catholic Humanist and because of this, through his writings, he strove for the improvement of the Christian society. Because More was writing Utopia during the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation, he incorporates many of these desired betterments through the indirect criticisms of Lutheranism and Protestantism. He nearly entered the priesthood, living for four years of his life within a monastery, thus incorporating in him the values and beliefs he lived by throughout his political and literary life. He was eventually beheaded for resigning from his duties to the king because he disagreed with the elevation of the King through the combining of church and state. His Utopian’s religious beliefs were the same in that they each believed in only one true God. They believe in the mortality of man’s soul, that “God of His goodness has designed that it should be happy; and that He has therefore appointed

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