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In a work that is as much about the present as the past, Brad Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation and traces the way it shaped the modern condition over the course of the following five centuries. A hyperpluralism of religious and secular beliefs, an absence of any substantive common good, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, consumerism—all these, Gregory argues, were long-term effects of a movement that marked the end of more than a millennium during which Christianity provided a framework for shared intellectual, social, and moral life in the West. Before the Protestant Reformation, Western Christianity was an institutionalized worldview laden with expectations of security for earthly societies and hopes of eternal salvation for individuals. The Reformation’s protagonists sought to advance the realization of this vision, not disrupt it. But a complex web of rejections, retentions, and transformations of medieval Christianity gradually replaced the religious fabric that bound societies together in the West. Today, what we are left with are fragments: intellectual disagreements that splinter into ever finer fractals of specialized discourse; a notion that modern science—as the source of all truth—necessarily undermines religious belief; a pervasive resort to a therapeutic vision of religion; a set of smuggled moral values with which we try to fertilize a sterile liberalism; and the institutionalized assumption that only secular universities can pursue knowledge. The Unintended Reformation asks what propelled the West into this trajectory of pluralism and polarization, and finds answers deep in our medieval Christian past.
"In the past, scholars tended to treat the Reformation as a chapter in the history of ideas, emphasizing the thought of the major reformers and the changes in Christian doctrine. Today, however, more and more historians are asking how the revolution in theology affected the lives of ordinary men and women. Aware that religious faith is part of the larger cultural and material universe of early modern Europeans, these scholars have exploited hitherto neglected sources in an attempt to reconstruct the people's Reformation. The twelve essays commissioned for this collection represent the broad spectrum of recent scholarship in the social history of the German Reformation. Historians from various countries offer a panorama of different methodological approaches and thematic concerns. Some of the essays represent original research; others address current historiographical debates; still others offer concise syntheses of recently published monographs, including seminal works in German. The essays are centered around four themes: cities and the Reformation; the transmitting of the Reformation in print, ritual and song; women and the family; and lastly, the impact of the Reformation on education and other aspects of lay culture." -- Back cover.
The Reformation was the seismic event in European history over the past 1000 years, and one which tore the medieval world apart. Not just European religion, but thought, culture, society, state systems, personal relations - everything - was turned upside down. Just about everything which followed in European history can be traced back in some way to the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation which it provoked. The Reformation is where the modern world painfully and dramatically began, and MacCulloch's great history of it is recognised as the best modern account.
Sometimes one word is all that stands between the truth and a lie, between life and death. In the Reformation, that word was sola, "alone." At a time when leaders in the church claimed to speak for God, the Protestant Reformers reminded God's people that Scripture alone is our infallible authority. While many people sought to work their way to heaven, the Reformers boldly proclaimed the only true gospel: salvation is by God's grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. That word, "alone," made all the difference then, and the same is true today. Take up this devotional to spend ninety days with the five solas of the Reformation. These core biblical truths display the reliability of God's Word and the depths of His mercy, helping you grow in faith day by day.
This book celebrates the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. This book is designed to be prominently featured on a coffee table or bookshelf as a conversation starter; it's filled with images that enhance the historically accurate text and make this book a beautiful and educational statement piece.
This collection of essays from a distinguished scholar of medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation history examines one of the most fascinating and turbulent periods of human history from the perspective of the social history of ideas. Taking advantage of the windows offered by late medieval scholastic thought, the Modern Devotion, Johann von Staupitz, Martin Luther, Marian piety, and the escalation of anti-Semitism, Heiko A. Oberman illumines the social and intellectual context for the reform of church and society in the sixteenth century. These programmatic essays not only provide analyses of Reformation events but also contribute to the contemporary search for new methods and models that better capture the meaning of that period. Recognizing the distance between intellectual and social historians of the Reformation, Oberman seeks to bridge the gap by pursuing an innovative path. The impact of the Reformation is traced through everyday life as well as through individual programs for change.
Literature and the Scottish Reformation offers a full-scale reconsideration of the series of relationships between literature and Reformation in early modern Scotland. Previous scholarship in this area has tended to dismiss the literary value of the writing of the period - largely as a reaction to its regular theological interests. Instead the essays in this volume reinforce recent work that challenges the received scholarly consensus by taking these interests seriously, and argues for the importance of this religiously orientated writing through the adoption of a series of interdisciplinary approaches.
This book rescues three little-known bestsellers of the English Reformation and employs them in an examination of intellectual and religious revolution. How did sixteenth-century English Protestant manuals of private devotion - often to be read aloud - stream continental theology into the domestic contexts of parish, school, and home? Patterson elucidates ideological programs presented in key texts in light of evolving patterns of public and private worship; she also considers the processes of transmission by which complex doctrinal debates were packaged for cultivating an everyday piety in a confusing age of inflammatory, politicized religion. It is in the most prosaic challenges of daily realities, that the deepest opportunities lie for experiencing the divine. Intersecting issues of piety, rhetoric, and the devotional life of the home, this book brings to life reformists' endeavors to guide popular responses to the Protestant revolution itself.
"Superstition" is one of the most fought over terms in the history of early modern popular culture, especially religious culture, and is also one of the most difficult to define. This volume offers a novel approach to the issue, based upon national and regional studies, and examinations of attitudes to prophets, ghosts, saints, and demonology, alongside an analysis of Catholic responses to the Reformation and the apparent presence of "superstition" in the reformed churches. It challenges the assumptions that Catholic piety was innately superstitious, while Protestantism was rational, and suggests that the early modern concept of "superstition" needs more careful treatment by historians.
In recent decades, research on the impact of the Reformation on popular religious life in Germany has sparked a controversy challenging the traditional assumption that Protestantism had a deep and lasting effect on all levels of sixteenth-century life. This study uses previously neglected archival sources, the records of the Wurttemberg church visitations over a forty-year period, to investigate various areas of church life touched on by the debate. The author examines the social and cultural nature of the pastorate as a professional group, areas of conflict and agreement between representatives of the official church and the parishioners, the nature of the church visitations, and the standards and expectations of the visitors concerning lay religious life and discipline. Church visitations were conducted to inform higher ecclesiastical authorities about the conditions of religious life in individual parishes. The visitors interviewed and reported on members of the community from all walks of life: pastor, mayor, schoolmaster, folk-healer, shepherd, and, in some cases, village drunk. The visitations were used to discipline the clergy and laity through exhortations, warnings, fines, and, in rare cases, imprisonment. The author shows that the system of penalties, sanctions, and persuasions had only mixed success in inhibiting un-Christian behavior. When the church's interest in discipline coincided with the interest of village groups in restraining profligacy or laxity, the church had greater success. The Wurttemberg records reveal that parishioners showed only moderate zeal in attending the principal Sunday morning service and that weekday and Sunday afternoon services were poorly attended. For communion, many of the laity seem to have felt that an annual participation at Easter services fulfilled their religious obligation. Young people and single adults appeared most often negligent in their attendance at church, sometimes because of the demands of seasonal agriculture, but more often because of general indifference to the church or active resistance to the church's efforts to discipline such festive pastimes as dancing and berry picking. In the process of investigating the relationship between parishioners and the state church, the author presents information on the clergy's social and geographic origins, education and culture, and economic conditions. He analyzes the attitudes and behavior surrounding popular religious practices and evaluates the church's attempts to reform and regulate family life and social mores.