The Reformation for Women (and Men, too)

I have finished the third book in the Thursday Next series, The Well of Lost Plots, but I have said much on this series already and can only beg my invisible readers to please, please, please read Jasper Fforde!!!

But I did pick up a new book at the library on Friday, rather intrigued by the subtitle. The Reformation: How a Monk and a Mallet Changed the World by Stephen J. Nicholls.

This is a highly cursory glance at the major characters and movements of the Reformation, so it is not meant for a seminary text, not even a college text as there is not a great deal of pulling on the tangled web of European politics and inbreeding amongst the royal lines. But for a brief introduction for an overview class or bright high school student who want a place to start, or simply as a swift movement through the Reformation to see how it all played together, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Cranmer, and Women, too, then this book is well suited.

Indeed, I think it is the latter that is most well done by this book - we often forget that people did not live in vacuums, even as we pretend to do so today. No, Calvin and Luther, though never able to meet, did know each other. There was a great deal of interaction amongst these brilliant men and women.

The last chapter, which very briefly covers a few of the women of the Reformation, is provoking because I recognize that while the treatment of Luther and Calvin and Burroughs and Knox and Henry VIII and his daughters is all too brief, the material on women such as Katherina von Bora Luther ("Katie my rib") and Lady Jane Grey (a spunky girl of sixteen who knew her mind on the doctrine of justification by faith alone), among others, is all so unfamiliar that it is refreshing and new and I want more of it. Perhaps there is not much interest in the women of the Reformation becuase they did not preach sermons that can be read today, which makes it difficult for them to be as well known as their male counterparts, and few wrote theological treatises but rather corresponded in letters to family and parishoners or, like Anne Bradstreet, put their theology into verse in their poetry (our first American poet was not only a woman but a Reformed woman!).

There is much to be recommended in Nicholl's book: his pace is fast and his humour is evident; when writing about Knox (and I have often wondered how should like to find me sitting in a theological classroom, studying to take a Masters of Divinity) Nicholl's writes: " Contemporary chroniclers point out that a car park, as the British say - a parking garage - has been built over his [Knox's] grave near the Church of St. Giles. Pilgrims wishing to pay homage to Scotland's Reformer may do so at space numer 66." (p 97)

Perhaps the best merit in the book is not the laying out of historical fact, per se, but in his interpretation of it. Nicholl's reminds the reader many times that our great foreparents of the faith did not develop their theology in ivory towers but on the ground, in the midst of trench warfare and often when their own neck was on the chopping block - life was within their grasp, if only they would take Mass or swear allegiance to Rome, and by doing so, forswear the dear doctrines of the Gospel. I was struck by two quotes, one which summarizes the Puritan thought on the Communion of Saints (that is, the Church): "Church is not a social club but a group fo people brought together by a truly common union in Jesus Christ and in one's common standing at the foot of the cross." (p 106)

Another comes from Katie Luther, toward the end of her life, who described herself as "clinging to Christ like a burr to a dress." (p 119)

The Church is not a social club - we who come into the Body of Christ, who worship on Sunday mornings and pray on Wednesday evenings and love our brothers and sisters through the week - we who proclaim ourselves as belonging to Christ each week at 11 am - we also proclaim ourselves as sinners, who were once wretched, lost, and damned until we were given the love and mercy of our dear Savior! Nicholls writes that the Puritans "knew sin to be powerful, but they knew the gospel to be more so." (p 108) This makes me want to say with Katie Luther that I cling to Christ like a burr on a dress - I am clinging to my dear Savior, who has bought me with his blood by his death and has promised me the hope of Glory in his Resurrection!