Status Updates From The Reformation: A History

seems promising

"The [child abuse] crisis places a question-mark against the imposition of compulsory celibacy on the Church's ministry as formidable as any posed by Protestants in the four decades of the Reformation" the HELL did you just say???????? No, MacCulloch, I can assure you that one can either succeed or fail at celibacy equally well without PREYING ON CHILDREN

MacCulloch argues that it was inadvertent and unwilling, but the Reformation produced greater religious tolerance in western Europe as a byproduct of its greater religious diversity. He also gives medieval Islam credit for being more tolerant, but imo that's giving them a bit too much: Even the Latins were forced to be more tolerant by the greater religious diversity in the East.

Into the final chapter, "Outcomes", and it's fascinating to me that one of the effects of the confrontation between Protestant and Catholic in the 1500s-1700s was a strengthening of state power, which stemmed obviously from a desire to have the state enforce a unified religion on all its subjects. Areas with religious diversity and toleration were also areas where decentralised secular power structures survived.