Getting to know the Long Reformation, its composition and its legacy.
Ep. 1 Intro & Long Term Reformation with Dr. Mark Quanstrom
For its inaugural episode, the Rev. Dr. Mark Quanstrom joins Hear the Voice and Prayer to discuss the implications and history of the Long Reformation. Dr. Quanstrom and host Dr. Robinson also examine the status of Reformation history in the contemporary local church and explore the model that Luther’s life provides for Protestant academia. They also delve into the legitimacy of the idea of the “Long Reformation” as a form of historical periodization and the role of John Wesley in that chronology.
John Wesley preaching on his fathers grave: in the church yard at Epworth Sunday June 6th 1742
For Further Reading
Carlos M. N. Eire. Reformations: The Early Modern World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.
Brad S. Gregory. The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University. 2012
Brad S. Gregory. Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts that Continue to shape our World. New York: HarperOne, 2017.
Henry D. Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism. 2nd ed. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992.
David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.
How can we study belief? What are the longer term implications of religious change in society? These connected questions form the core of our course and our investigation of Early Modern Europe (c. 1450-1789). Indeed, the meaning of belief was the central issue of contention in Europe from the dawn of the Renaissance until the twilight of the eighteenth century and its Revolutions.
The shattering of the Christian consensus and the rise of the empirical frame was a pathway cleared with the twin swords of Humanism’s cry of ad fontes and Luther’s injunction of sola fide. The route uncovered was a journey to the “Modern” in all its beauty and ugliness. Yet, stones lay upon this trail, rocky reminders whose pain and obstacle convey the irony that Europe’s greatest religious revolution resulted in the ultimate secularization of the continent and of the West in general. Still, secularization, caught as it is in a dialectic with Christianity, is a form of belief, and belief remains central.
The effort to experience, define, and understand both acceptable and unacceptable beliefs will be our compass to map Europe’s Early Modern world, the world of unfolding Reformations. This course will consist of primary and secondary readings, lecture, classroom discussion, as well as multiple student writing assignments culminating in a final research based student podcast.
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