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New Perspectives on the English Reformation
Author(s) -
CAPERN AMANDA L.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of religious history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.117
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 1467-9809
pISSN - 0022-4227
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9809.2009.00796.x
Subject(s) - protestantism , historiography , english reformation , confessional , thriving , context (archaeology) , calvinism , history , politics , conformity , perspective (graphical) , religious studies , sociology , law , political science , philosophy , social science , art , archaeology , visual arts
The historiography of the English Reformation has been driven by several key themes for three or four decades: the chronology of religious change and the success or failure of Protestantism to establish itself, the position of Puritanism vis‐à‐vis Church conformity, the role of Arminianism (anti‐Calvinism) in doctrinal and ecclesiological debates and its impact on ecclesiastical politics and, more latterly, the continuities of ideas and beliefs between medieval Catholicism and Reformation Protestantism. This survey article on six new books in the field of Reformation studies argues that while the current historiography is generating very exciting work on the religious mentalité of early‐modern English people and the transmission of ideas across the Catholic‐Protestant divide, as well as generating a thriving debate on Calvinist consensus (or not) and the rise of Arminianism (or not), there are further rich seams to mine that incorporate gender into the analysis and that add the Atlantic World perspective to that of the European context for Reformation.