Speaking before the Commission d'étude sur les laics et l'Église (Commission Dumont) in 1970, Jean-Paul Gignac articulated the feelings of many when he stated that although the church had greatly furthered the survival of French Canadians, the men and women of his own generation had been “strangely traumatized” by Catholicism. At one level, their perplexity can be read as but the obvious response to the travails of Quebec Catholicism in the 1960s. For many decades prior to 1960, the Catholic Church had been successful in imposing on most of Quebec society what appeared to be a unanimity of social and cultural values. But after the mid-1960s, an increasingly evident decline of religious practice, the abandonment of the priesthood by many clergy, the indifference of young people to Roman Catholicism, marked the rapid erosion of the church's social and cultural authority. That erosion was marked in many ways: the deconfessionalization of many Catholic educational and social welfare institutions; the creation of a new pluralist society through state intervention; the rise of a secular “neonationalism“ baserd upon economics, language, and the power of the state instead of a common religious faith; and, at a popular level, the replacement of Christianity by the secular values of a mass-market, North American consumer society. Together these developments, termed the “Quiet Revolution” by historians, decisively marginalized the social and cultural role of Catholicism within Quebec society.

Already famous for his best-selling books on Christian devotion and increasingly infamous for his attempts at a theological synthesis of Calvinist and Arminian perspectives on salvation—which (no surprise) pleased hardly anyone—Richard Baxter (1615–91) nearly succeeded in redefining English pastoral practice before the Restoration brought his experiment in pastor-led, parish-based reformation to a frustrating end. At the core of his efforts to bring reformation to Kidderminster lay his efforts to establish a parish-based system of church discipline that would preserve the integrity of the sacraments and thus rob separatists of one of their primary excuses for abandoning the parochial system. This article seeks to place Baxter's effort to develop a strategy for an effective church discipline in its historical context. In particular, I will first consider the precedents to the system which Richard Baxter developed for St. Mary's parish. Special attention will be given to Martin Bucer's Reformation-era prescription for reforming the discipline of the church and the intriguing possibility that Baxter's strategy was actually a recovery of Bucerian pastoral emphases. Second, I will trace the evolution of Baxter's own program for discipline. Finally, I will discuss the impact Baxter's discipline had on his wider goal of reformation, both in his parish and beyond.

In the 1539 edition of the Institutes and in each succeeding edition Calvin calls justification by faith “the main hinge on which religion turns” and the “sum of all piety.”2 Yet, invariably, in 1539 as well as in subsequent editions, justification is not treated until well into the Institutes,3 as if to belie the centrality which is expressly attached to it: justification appears to be at most one doctrine among others.4 Interpreters who have wanted to explain both Calvin's very high regard for justification by faith and the relatively minor place it is accorded in the various revisions of his magnum opus have generally maintained that it is the fact, the Erlebnis, of justification which is central for Calvin rather than the doctrine.5 The force of such argumentation is not to be denied, but there is reason to suspect that it may not encompass the whole truth. For in his 1540 Romans commentary Calvin has a comprehensive doctrine of justification which has largely been overlooked. This doctrine is a product of the same period during which Calvin published his first and, in a sense, his most significant revision of his Institutes.6 The relation between the 1539 nstitutes and the 1540 Romans commentary is very close. This is indicated, in part, by the fact that Calvin apparently prepared both works for publication at the same time.7 Whether the doctrine of justification delineated in the commentary is of formative significance for the 1539 Institutes, however, and therefore in some sense formative for all subsequent editions, is a question which cannot concern us here. We must be content to describe the doctrine in the commentary. This procedure should at least keep open the question of the doctrinal-systematic centrality of justification in the formation and final shape of Calvin's thought (the religious centrality of justification is not in doubt).8

In the present discussion within the Roman Catholic Church over the requirement of clerical celibacy, the arguments generally center on the ascetical value of the practice. Pope Paul VI speaks of celibacy as a “precious jewel” leading to a life of selflessness for the man who seeks to follow Jesus Christ in the priesthood. When priests themselves talk about the subject, it is often in terms of its symbolic value as a total commitment to the service of the Lord. It is further seen as a practical measure, following Saint Paul's view that the married state frees the ordained minister from the cares of personal family life so that he may devote himself entirely to the concerns of the whole Christian community.

For the contemporary historian, whether male, gray-haired and ensconced in the ivory tower of an old-fashioned political or intellectual history, or female, young, and happily dismantling the tower by the seige-machine of social history, Carolingian society is a source of continuing wonderment. For those with a love of order and of the enjoyment of the fruits of their labor, Carolingian society especially in the years just preceding and following Louis the Pious's death in 840, mirrors all the anxieties of a committed band of representatives of high culture surrounded by the rising seas of low culture. For those riding the crests of the sea, Carolingian society speaks of the possibilities open in a society of little structure and much mobility to those of imagination, not tied to the past.

Europeans who came to America from the sixteenth century on, came not to discover a new world but to re-create their own versions of Europe. Whether Spanish conquistador or Virginia planter, each hoped to make America and native Americans into the shape of idealized Europes and Europeans. Of all those who made such plans, it was the Society of Jesus that had sufficient authority and manpower to put its visions into practice. Jesuits who came to New France in the 1630s brought not only Christianity but a whole complex of European social and political values. To examine Jesuit “civilization planning” in New France is to see in microcosm a significant part of early European-Indian relations.

The Ranter counter culture was a phenomenon of Puritan England. It was a movement among lower-class people numbering several thousands—we do not know exactly how many—widely distributed in London and rural England. In describing this phenomenon as a movement, however, one must be cautious since this was not a movement towards a goal: it was a movement of repulsion away from English society as represented by the Puritans. It implied a rejection of the Puritan Establishment—its ethics, its values, and its goals.

Current attitudes of religious organizations toward the civil rights movement prompt the raising of various historical questions. These concern, among others, the attitude of the churches toward the slave trade and the use of slave labor in the American colonies. Did the churches ignore slavery or did they object to it but were unable to change it because of vested economic interests? Were there any individual clergymen who raised particularly loud voices of protest against the use of slave labor and the buying and selling of human beings? Did the churches make any effort to convert the Negroes to Christianity? The examination of such questions with reference to a specific religious denomination, the Dutch Reformed Church, sheds light on this subject.

Several scholars, including Workman, Cragg, Dreyer, and now Henry Rack, have called attention to Wesley's endorsement of Locke's philosophy (within limits) and, more broadly, to the debt which he owed to empiricist psychology and theories of knowledge. Wesley read the Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1725 during the interval between his commencement as a Bachelor of Arts and his election to a Fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford. The book made a favorable impression which endured to the end of his life. During the decade of the eighties, for instance, Wesley published a series of extracts from the Essay, books I and II, in his Arminian Magazine (volumes 5–7, 1782–1784). He also praised The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Human Understanding and Things Divine and Supernatural Conceived by Analogy with Things Natural and Divine, books written by Peter Browne (died 1735), an Irish bishop and philosopher whom Locke had influenced to a considerable degree. Indeed, at one juncture, Wesley expressed a preference for Browne over Locke. He wrote in his journal for 6 December 1756, “I began reading to our preachers the late Bishop of Cork's Treatise on Human Understanding, in most points far clearer and more judicious than Mr. Locke's, as well as designed to advance a better cause.”

Nearly everything that is recorded about the early history of Alexandrian Christianity lies in the Church History of Eusebius. Many Alexandrian theological writings are preserved, but as might be expected they cast little light on historical events. Now the basic difficulty with Eusebius' work is that it has to be classified as “official history.” It therefore contains a judicious mixture of authentic record with a good deal of suppression of fact and occasional outright lies. He wrote it in defence of himself and his friends and their outlook toward the nascent imperial church establishment under God's messenger Constantine.

The historian Presniakov has characterized the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the reign of Alexander I, as “Russia at the crossroads” (Rossiia na rasput'i). No longer content with slavish imitation of Western Europe, Russia now began to develop a culture which would be admired and emulated by the West. Once beyond the fringe of European diplomacy, the Empire now moved to the center of that arena. Shaped by her national traditions, but involved increasingly in continent-wide trends, the Russia of Alexander I was confronted by a varied and complex set of problems, both domestic and foreign, which demanded resolution. The destruction of the Napoleonic threat, the assimilation of subject nationalities, the establishment of efficient techniques and procedures of government, the articulation and implementation of national policies in education and in economic life were among the countless tasks which faced Alexander I and his advisors. Educated Russians of the day heatedly debated the most effective means of solving the myriad dilemmas.

The great historian of the reign of Justinian (A. D. 527–565) was Procopius of Caesarea in Palestine. He wrote a history of the wars of Justinian, an account of the Emperor's building activities, and a slanderous Secret History, designed to be published after his own death, in which he made a vicious attack on Justinian and Theodora.

The history of Congregationalism in early eighteenth-century Boston has long been dominated by the figure of Cotton Mather (1663–1728), the learned pastor of Boston's Second Church. From Benjamin Franklin's notice of Mather's “do-good” campaign of Christian charitable works to recent scholarly studies of Mather's closet piety, historians have measured the religious mood of the period by the yardstick of ideas, joys, and complaints in Mather's voluminous writings. In the process, some questions about the history of Congregationalism have been answered, but historical understanding of the period has been hindered by the relative lack of scholarly attention to the theology of other members of the clergy who served Boston congregations in the decades leading up to the Great Awakening. Given the fact that the Boston clergy was divided between two parties, namely the Matherians1 and those opposed to them, it should be obvious that any assessment of this stage of Congregationalism that is based primarily on the testimony of one party will be untrustworthy. My purpose here is to outline the thinking of that other party, the “catholicks,” with particular attention to how they addressed Congregationalism's most pressing issue, the nature of public piety.

In the 1860s the controversy over the widespread revival of such African customs as “lobolo” (bridewealth) and the development of concubinage among the Christian converts almost destroyed the American Board Mission (AZM), which had been founded in 1835. Suddenly—or so it seemed to the American missionaries—the obedient converts of the previous decades began to defend customs that, from the beginning of the mission, had been denounced as “heathen” by the missionaries.

The morning of April 8, 1348, began on an ominous note. Milling and shouting thousands covered the area of St. Peter's and surrounded the palace where the cardinals had entered into conclave the day before to elect the successor of Gregory XI, who had chanced to die before returning to Avignon. The Romans were desperate. For nearly seventy years they had lost to Avignon the revenues that had handsomely supported Rome. The city was poverty-stricken; churches and monasteries were in ruins, papal properties dissipated, and rebellion was smoldering. During the customary nine days elapsing between the death of the former pope and election of a new one, citizens and municipal officials of Rome had visited individual cardinals to inform them that they must elect a pope who would reestablish the Holy See in Rome, making it clear that they could not answer for the safety of the cardinals if the latter acted contrary to their wishes.

“Lord God, now we praise you, you worthy Holy Spirit! The church in unity honors you, the mother of Christendom. All the angels and the host of heaven and whoever serves the honor of the Son; also the cherubim and seraphim, sing with a clear voice: ‘Divine majesty, who proceeds from the Father, who praises the Son as the creator and points to his suffering.’ … Daily O Mother! whoever knows you and the Savior glorifies you because you bring the gospel to all the world.” These lines are from the Te Matrem, a prayer to the Holy Spirit that for nearly thirty years was a regular part of worship for a German Protestant group known as the Brüdergemeine. The Brüdergemeine, commonly called the Moravian Church today, was an international religious community that developed an elaborate and creative liturgical life for its carefully regulated communities. The Brethren's intense devotion to the suffering of Christ is the most famous aspect of their worship, but in the mid-eighteenth century their leader, Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, actively encouraged the Brüdergemeine to worship the Holy Spirit as the mother of the church. Surprisingly, though, this aspect of Zinzendorf's theology has been largely overlooked or downplayed by historians and theologians in the past two hundred years. When it has been discussed, it has been dismissed as a brief aberration or experiment that was discarded after the so-called Sifting Time (Sichtungzeit.) The Sifting Time was a period of liturgical and social excess in the community, the details of which remain quite obscure. The Brethren used the word Sichtungzeit to refer to a time when the community was in danger of becoming a fanatical sect. Dates for the Sifting Time range from a high of 1736–52 to a low of 1746–49, but the most common dating is 1743–50. This article will show that the use of maternal imagery for the Holy Spirit was not a tangential or quixotic aspect of Zinzendorf's theology, but thrived for more than thirty years and was, in Zinzendorf's words, “an extremely important and essential point … and all our Gemeine and praxis hangs on this point.”

The composite volume entitled Essays and Reviews, published in 1860, became the center of one of the major religious controversies of Victorian England—a crisis of faith contemporary with that provoked by Darwin's Origin of Species but more central to the religious mind. Essays and Reviews was at once the culmination and the final act of the Broad Church movement. The volume itself was modest in its pretensions and varied in the character and quality of its seven essays. The first, by Frederick Temple, was a warmed-over sermon urging the free study of the Bible. Rowland Williams wrote a provocative essay on Bunsen, denying the predictive character of Old Testament prophecies. Baden Powell flatly denied the possibility of miracles. H. B. Wilson gave the widest possible latitude to subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles and questioned the eternity of damnation. C. W. Goodwin (the only layman among the Essayists) wrote a critique of the attempted “harmonies” between Genesis and geology. Mark Pattison wrote a learned and cold historical study of the evidential theologians of the eighteenth century (perhaps the only essay of lasting value). The volume was capped by Benjamin Jowett's tremendous though wayward essay “On the Interpretation of Scripture,” in which he urged that the Bible be read “like any other book” and made an impassioned plea for freedom of scholarship. Little of all this was original, though it was new to most Englishmen. It was not the cutting edge of biblical scholarship; rather, it was the last gasp of an outmoded Coleridgianism, contributing little except a demand that somebody—somebody else—engage in serious biblical criticism. But this work touched off a controversy which lasted four years and mobilized the resources of both church and state.

Charles Hector de St. Georges, Marquis de Marsay (1688–1753), lived for the greater part of his life in the small and obscure principality of Wittgenstein in the upper Eder valley between the Rhineland and Hesse-Kassel. In his earlier years he was a disciple of the Flemish mystic, Antoinette Bourignon, and later came under the influence of the works of Madame Guyon. In Wittgenstein he attempted to put their teachings into practice by following an ascetic pattern of life. He attracted a number of followers, not only from the sectarian groups which had taken refuge in Wittgenstein, but also farther afield, notably in Switzerland, which he visited on a number of occasions. The fact that he was known in Britain to John Wesley and William Law, as well as by the group of mystically inclined gentry in north-east Scotland, is an indication of the contacts that existed between pietistic groups in different parts of Europe. The details of Marsay's life are not without interest is a considered attempt to practice the quietist spirituality of Madame Guyon in a Protestant context.

The preachers of the New Model Army during the 1640's and 1650's engaged in a three-pronged attack upon the educated people of Puritan England, i.e., upon the clergy, the university teachers, and the lawyers. Both the Levellers and the Diggers gave strong support to this anti-professional or anti-intellectual point of view. Most of the Army preachers, especially William Dell, John Saltmarsh, Thomas Collier, Walter Cradock, and William Erbery, were purveyors of that branch of Independent Puritanism (sometimes called Antinomianism) which stressed the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit rather than formal learning. Furthermore, despite the conclusions of R. H. Tawney about Puritanism in general, the Army preachers were generally concerned with the poor and uneducated members of society rather than the prosperous and educated. In the phraseology of H. Richard Niebuhr, they sought “the salvation of the socially disinherited.” An examination of this interest in social amelioration will help to clarify the anti-intellectual attack.

In 1875 the distinguished Unitarian minister and local historian Henry Wilder Foote preached a eulogy for his late colleague, the Reverend James Walker, philosopher and former president of Harvard University. It was an appropriate occasion to characterize the achievement of the antebellum generation of Harvard Unitarian leaders that Walker represented. “They were much more than mere denominationalists or founders of a sect,” Foote declared. “The whole tone of their teaching was profoundly positive in its moral and religious quality. Trained at our American Cambridge, they were really the legitimate heirs of that noble group of men nurtured at the Cambridge of England–the Latitude Men, as they were called–who blended culture and piety and rational thought in their teaching.” Building upon Foote's perceptive characterization, this article will explore the significance of the seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonists for the Harvard Unitarians of the mid-nineteenth century. In so doing it may illuminate other forms of New England religious thought that also drew upon Platonic or Neoplatonic sources, including Edwardseanism, Hopkinsianism, and the progressive orthodoxy of Horace Bushnell. In particular, I hope to shed light on the relationship between Unitarianism and Transcendentalism.