The Reformation as Christianization: Essays on Scott Hendrix’s Christianization Thesis

Reformation historian Scott Hendrix has argued that, despite the divisions that occurred in Western Christianity in the sixteenth century, the various movements of the Reformation shared a vital commonality: They were all attempts to make sixteenth-century Europe more authentically Christian. While research on the Reformation has tended to emphasize the theological differences and disputes among the reformers, Hendrix sees a fundamental coherence in this common goal of Christianization. In this volume, nineteen Reformation historians respond by treating diverse aspects of Reformation scholarship and employing their own research to test the usefulness of the Christianization thesis. In their analyses of late medieval reform movements, Luther’s attempts at reform, changes in this epoch for women and the family, significant efforts to reform piety, and the theological controversies of the late Middle Ages and the Reformation, an interpretive debate develops about the viability of macrohistory and the significance of the Reformation as an epoch in European history and the history of Christianity. Contributors: Robert Bireley, S.J., Amy Nelson Burnett, Gerald Christianson, Irene Dingel, James M. Estes, Berndt Hamm, Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Russell Kleckley, Robert Kolb, Volker Leppin, Carter Lindberg, John A. Maxfield, Elsie Anne McKee, Austra Reinis, Ronald K. Rittgers, Risto Saarinen, James M. Stayer, Timothy J. Wengert, Merry Wiesner-Hanks