The Reformation enabled the Enlightenment not because its doctrine was inherently progressive—early Protestantism was often fundamentalist—but because it broke the Catholic Church's intellectual monopoly. This fracture created a marketplace of ideas where different philosophies could compete, and forced societies to find ways to coexist with disagreement.

We fail to build beautiful neighborhoods because we lack the underlying shared beliefs in cooperation, toleration, and community. Vermeer's painting "The Little Street" depicts beauty emerging from a social fabric where everyone contributes to each other's homes—a lesson in collective faith, not just architecture.

Many of Vermeer's paintings were conceived as pairs, such as "The Milkmaid" (the active life of doing good) and "Woman with a Balance" (the contemplative life of self-reflection). These pairings visually represent the simplified, essential Christian tenets favored by his Remonstrant patrons.

Unlike painting, Dutch music failed to blossom because the dominant Orthodox Calvinist faith considered it dangerous to the soul, akin to idolatrous statues. It was seen as a distraction from pure faith, leading to churches that were stripped of both images and music, a void filled only by more tolerant sects like the Collegians.

Johannes Vermeer was forgotten for nearly 200 years not because his art was inaccessible, but because his major works were held by a single family. This prevented wider circulation and the establishment of his name as a recognized "brand," leaving his paintings to be sold under other artists' names.

A key transformative act of the Reformation was Martin Luther's push for clergy to marry. This dethroned the celibate monk as the pinnacle of Christian devotion and elevated the married pastor and his family as the new, accessible model for all believers to emulate.

The survival of Vermeer's work, despite having no recognized name or market value for centuries, suggests an objective aesthetic quality. People preserved the paintings simply because they recognized an inherent power within them, acting as a "proper miracle" against subjectivist theories of art.

Contrary to common interpretation, this painting is an allegory about the difficulty of reaching God through complex Catholic doctrine. From a Remonstrant perspective, the visual clutter and "trip hazards" symbolize the doctrinal complications that separate believers from a direct path to God.

The 17th-century Dutch Republic, born from revolt, pioneered stock exchanges, established a federal republic that inspired the US, and fostered a culture of religious tolerance that paved the way for the Enlightenment, becoming a key incubator of modernity.