Although Cromwell always maintained a primarily political outlook on general affairs, there is consensus among scholars that at least while he held power he was a Protestant, with a Lutheran mindset. For him, the Henrician Reformation was certainly more than a jurisdictional revolution masquerading in religious garb. For instance, in the mid-1530s, he promoted Protestant ideas to forge an alliance with German Lutheran states, but his support for the Protestant cause is too general to be accurately explained in narrow political terms.