Reformation, The
towards a new history
By Lee Palmer Wandel
This groundbreaking exploration reveals how two pivotal moments in history - Europe's encounter with the Americas beginning in 1492 and the splintering of European Christianity in the sixteenth century - fundamentally reshaped human understanding of faith, identity, and existence itself.
Lee Palmer Wandel demonstrates how religious debates that might seem abstract today carried explosive power in their time, as terms like "idolatry" and "true Christian" became weapons that divided communities and nations. The author guides readers beyond these heated exchanges to uncover the profound philosophical questions they represented about the nature of divinity, the material world, and what it means to be human.
Through this lens, the Reformation emerges not merely as a religious dispute, but as a comprehensive reimagining of human experience. Marriage, family structures, political systems, and even concepts of space and time came under intense scrutiny. Passionate discussions about human nature and religious conversion forged entirely new ways of understanding spiritual identity.
The book illuminates how conflicting views of humanity's relationship to the physical world created deep divisions over the role of religious images and ritual practices. By century's end, Christianity had fractured into multiple, sometimes incompatible worldviews, each offering distinct perspectives on personhood, matter, time, and the very definition of religion.
For readers seeking to understand how spiritual transformation occurs on both personal and civilizational scales, this work offers profound insights into the forces that reshape human consciousness.
What You'll Discover
- ✓ Explore General
- ✓ Explore HISTORY / Europe / General
- ✓ Explore Reformationen
- ✓ Explore Church history
- ✓ Explore HISTORY
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Topics
Details
- Published
- 2011
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- ISBN-13
- 9780521889490
- ISBN-10
- 0521889499
- Pages
- 281
- Language
- EN
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