reformation and reading

Emily,

I am still reading The Reformation. It is often the last thing I read at night if only for a few pages. There is something comforting about how right those folk felt as they decided the issues that divided them, as they reacted to these divisions, as they improvised and changed in reaction to the times. Sort of like today, something we have said before in our reading together.

I particularly enjoyed reading the parts about Queen Elizabeth and the English Church, but frankly, I had never studied or read about the context of the Dutch Reformed in codifying Calvinist theology, or appreciated the Lutheran/Reformed distinctions, antagonisms, competitions.

And now I am reading about the Catholic south (in Europe), how the Jesuits persuaded southern Italy to embrace post Council of Trent Catholicism.

As MacCulloch said in his introduction, the Reformation was about innovation followed by arbitrary wall-building, defining and limiting Christian practice.

What a bad student I am. But I am sticking with it, getting my second wind.

Slow reader in Indy