All Things Made New: The Reformation and Its Legacy

Church history in general and the English Reformation in particular are no strangers to MacCulloch (church history, Oxford Univ.; Thomas Cranmer). Here the author presents an anthology of previously published essays, articles, and book reviews from the past 25 years. This disparate collection still manages to be remarkably coherent as a whole. There is a general flow in the articles, from the background of the Reformation to the Reformed (as opposed to Lutheran) churches to a focus on the English Reformation and its transformation into the Anglican Communion. Throughout, MacCulloch is at pains to drive home a few themes. He argues that the religious affections and theological convictions of the players had at least as much to do with outcomes of the Reformation as with social or political pressures. Another theme is that those outcomes were not nearly as inevitable as we wish to think. MacCulloch finishes with a brief summary of what animates Anglican Christianity and its peculiar dynamic that insists on carrying its tradition forward.