Missiologists and mission-oriented folks have been invited to reflect on topics that touch on the transforming power of God's Spirit. This series of essays has been produced as one way of celebrating the fascinating, missional career of Dr. Eugene Bunkowske, long-time missionary to Africa, long-time linguist and Bible translator, long-time seminary professor, life-long sharer of the Good News of Jesus the Christ. This volume offers plenty of "meat" to engage the serious student of missions - but also a number of "gems" that will enlighten any Christian with a commitment to outreach or an interest in the church's mission. Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod readers will be especially interested in some of the pieces, though any student of Sacred Scripture will benefit from many of the essays.

A new critical edition of Henry VIII's 1526 public letter to Martin Luther, enabling readers to examine how Henry VIII wanted his subjects to regard the German heresiarch. A modern critical edition of Henry VIII's second published work against Martin Luther. This open letter to Luther, printed at the king's command in December 1526, was in reply to a private letter addressed to him by Luther the previous year. Its particular interest lies in the fact that, unlike his better known Assertion of the Seven Sacraments, published five years before, Henry's open letter was released not only in Latin but also in an official Englishtranslation, with a special English preface added by the king for the edification of his subjects. This edition thus enables modern readers to hear what Henry had to say about Luther in his own words, and how he wanted his subjects to regard the German heresiarch. This critical edition is based on a previously unrecognised presentation manuscript which furnishes the earliest surviving text of both letters. In addition, it offers editions and newtranslations of a range of related texts, including Luther's reply to Henry and further contributions to the burgeoning controversy from several of the most prominent Catholic opponents of Luther in Europe. For Henry's letter, like his earlier book, became for a while a European sensation, reprinted in towns and cities from Cologne to Cracow. This fully annotated edition includes a substantial introduction which for the first time tells the full history of Henry's second controversy with Luther, and which sets that story in the broader context of the lengthy and fractious relationship between the two men from the time of Luther's emergence in 1517 until his death in 1546.

In Imitatio Christi: The Poetics of Piety in Early Modern England, Nandra Perry explores the relationship of the traditional devotional paradigm of imitatio Christi to the theory and practice of literary imitation in early modern England. While imitation has long been recognized as a central feature of the period's pedagogy and poetics, the devotional practice of imitating Christ's life and Passion has been historically regarded as a minor element in English Protestant piety. Perry reconsiders the role of the imitatio Christi not only within English devotional culture but within the broader culture of literary imitation. She traces continuities and discontinuities between sacred and secular notions of proper imitation, showing how imitation worked in both contexts to address anxieties, widespread after the Protestant Reformation, about the reliability of "fallen" human language and the epistemological value of the body and the material world. The figure of Sir Philip Sidney-Elizabethan England's premier defender of poetry and internationally recognized paragon of Christian knighthood-functions as a nexus for Perry's treatment of a wide variety of contemporary literary and religious genres, all of them concerned in one way or another with the ethical and religious implications of imitation. Throughout the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, the Sidney legacy was appropriated by men and women, Catholics and Protestants alike, making it an especially useful vehicle for tracing the complicated relationship of imitatio Christi to the various literary, confessional, and cultural contexts within and across which it often operated. Situating her project within a generously drawn version of the Sidney "circle" allows Perry to move freely across the boundaries that often delimit treatments of early modern English piety. Her book is a call for renewed attention to the imitation of Christ as a productive category of literary analysis, one that resists overly neat distinctions between Catholic and Protestant, sacred and secular, literary art and cultural artifact.

Dewey Wallace tells the story of several prominent English Calvinist actors and thinkers in the first generations after the beginning of the Restoration. He seeks to overturn conventional cliches about Calvinism: that it was anti-mystical, that it allowed no scope for the ''ancient theology'' that characterized much of Renaissance learning, that its piety was harshly predestinarian, that it was uninterested in natural theology, and that it had been purged from the established church by the end of the seventeenth century.
In the midst of conflicts between Church and Dissent and the intellectual challenges of the dawning age of Enlightenment, Calvinist individuals and groups dealt with deism, anti-Trinitarianism, and scoffing atheism--usually understood as godlessness--by choosing different emphases in their defense and promotion of Calvinist piety and theology. Wallace shows that in each case, there was not only persistence in an earlier Calvinist trajectory, but also a transformation of the Calvinist heritage into a new mode of thinking and acting. The different paths taken illustrate the rich variety of English Calvinism in the period.
This study presents description and analysis of the mystical Calvinism of Peter Sterry, the hermeticist Calvinism of Theophilus Gale, the evangelical Calvinism of Joseph Alleine and the circle that promoted his legacy, the natural theology of the moderate Calvinist Presbyterians Richard Baxter, William Bates, and John Howe, and the Church of England Calvinism of John Edwards. Shapers of English Calvinism, 1660-1714 illuminates the religious and intellectual history of the era between the Reformation and modernity, offering fascinating insight into the development of Calvinism and also into English Puritanism as it transitioned into Dissent."

This handbook provides a comprehensive survey of current scholarship on Anabaptist and Spiritualist history and theology from 1521 to 1700. Since the last half of the twentieth century, the historiography of the Radical Reformation has been the focus of vigorous and creative debate. The volume-broadly cast in terms of geographic scope and topical coverage-carefully untangles the fluid boundaries of Spiritualism and Anabaptism in Early Modern European history. In addition to a narrative summary, each chapter also provides a bibliography of sources and current scholarship, and concludes with suggestions for future research. This handbook will serve a generation of students as the standard reference work on Anabaptism and Spiritualism. Contributors include: Geoffrey Dipple, Michael Driedger, Hans-Jurgen Goertz, Brad Gregory, Sigrun Haude, Ralf Kloetzer, John D. Rempel, John D. Roth, Martin Rothkegel, C. Arnold Snyder, James Stayer, Piet Visser, and R. Emmet McLaughlin. Originally published in hardcover.

This is an upper-level introduction to the German Reformer Martin Luther, who by his thought and action started the Reformation movement. Martin Luther was one of the most influential and important figures of the second millennium. His break with Rome and the development of separate Evangelical churches affected not just the religious life of Europe but also social and political landscapes as well. More books have been written about Luther than nearly any other historical figure. Despite all these books, Luther remains an enigmatic figure. This book proposes to examine a number of key moments in Luther's life and fundamental theological positions that remain perplexing to most students. This book will also present an introduction to the primary sources available to a student and important secondary works that ought to be consulted. "Continuum's Guides for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging - or indeed downright bewildering. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material.

Fundamentalists in the City is a story of religious controversy and division, set within turn of the century and early twentieth-century Boston. It offers a new perspective on the rise of fundamentalism, emphasizing the role of local events, both sacred and secular, in deepening the divide between liberal and conservative Protestants. The first part of the narrative, beginning with the arrest of three clergymen for preaching on the Boston Common in 1885, shows the importance of anti-Catholicism as a catalyst for change. The second part of the book deals with separation, told through the events of three city-wide revivals, each demonstrating a stage of conservative Protestant detachment from their urban origins.

Scottish Puritanism, 1590-1638, is a portrait of Protestantism in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Puritanism produced a community of like-minded ministers and lay people, bound together in a similar experience of conversion and Christian pilgrimage. The book also addresses the relationship between this religion and the political revolution embodied in the National Covenant.