When Martin Luther distributed his 95 Theses on indulgences on October 31, 1517, he set in motion a chain of events that profoundly transformed the face of Western Christianity. The 500th anniversary of the 95 Theses offered an opportunity to reassess the meaning of that event. The relation of the Catholic Church to the Reformation that Luther set in motion is complex. The Reformation had roots in the late-medieval Catholic tradition and the Catholic reaction to the Reformation altered Catholicism in complex ways, both positive and negative. The theology and practice of the Orthodox church also entered into the discussions. A conference entitled "Luther and the Shaping of the Catholic Tradition," held at The Catholic University of America, with thirteen Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant speakers from Germany, Finland, France, the Vatican, and the United States addressed these issues and shed new light on the historical, theological, cultural relationship between Luther and the Catholic tradition. It contributes to deepening and extending the recent ecumenical tradition of Luther-Catholic studies.

Expanding a hypothesis the author first developed in his earlier publications, this is an examination not merely of the extent to which ministers of the Church of Scotland, depending on their factional loyalties, sharply differed in the messages they sought to convey to their own congregations (and through the medium of print to the wider world) on a wide spectrum of contemporary issues, but also of how their own personalities impacted on their sermons, often revealing their innate political as well as their theological leanings. In a wide-ranging and thoughtful Introduction, Crawford argues that politics and the pulpit have been inter-dependent from the middle ages - but more especially since the Reformation when political preaching became synonymous with the preaching of men like Luther, Calvin and, in Scotland, Knox. Subsequent chapters analyse key Enlightenment issues including the stance of the Kirk - and of individual ministers - on patronage, the stage, heresy, political reform, patriotism, America, popery and slavery, as articulated from the chair of verity. Additionally, and unusually in an Enlightenment historian, the author is able to deploy an impressive understanding of legal history in order to extend the scope of his study, specifically to cover the related (but imperfectly understood) issue of pulpit censure.