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MacCulloch also includes a section on social history that could be called "the difference the Reformation made in everyday life." He covers the emergence of new funeral rites for Protestants, the importance of the book in Protestant Europe, the survival of folk beliefs in all parts of Europe, and a study of sexual ethics. MacCulloch sees high ages at first marriage and low rates of bastardy as an argument for lots of non-procreative sexual activity. He concedes that some could have followed church teaching and been chaste, but thinks it more likely that other activities, including "the discreet practice of homosexuality," substituted for procreative sex. He argues that attitudes on homosexuality (mostly condemnations of it) are a "useful litmus test of the nature of attitudes towards sexuality generally." With prohibitions on homosexuality foremost in mind, he finds 16th- and 17th-century Christian teachings on sexuality wanting modern appreciations of sexual need. For all of MacCulloch's nuanced treatment of theological debates and other questions unfamiliar to the modern world, he seems keen to elide differences in sexual ethics between the modern world and the Reformation era.
Overall MacCulloch seems convinced that the Reformation is still quite close to us. Remarks designed to demonstrate the nearness of the Reformation, however, sometimes obstruct the flow of the narrative. Offhand comments that compare medieval friars to contemporary professors or religious riots in Paris to violence in Mostar, Belfast, or Rwanda do little to show that the subjects are related. The real danger in drawing contemporary analogies, however, is not that they distract but that they can create dangerous reductions. Luther's later publications on Jews hardly model Christian charity, but stating that his "writing of 1543 is a blueprint for the Nazis' Kristallnacht of 1938" ignores the almost 400 years of change between Luther and Hitler.
MacCulloch's attempts to tie the story of the Reformation to the present do bring us to the end of the road: the importance of the Reformation for understanding American religious practice. He credits the high rate of religious observance in America to the influence of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. Ulster Presbyterians were descended from Scottish Protestants, who had been settled in northern Ireland by the English crown in an attempt to Protestantize Ireland. When their offspring came to North America in the 18th century, they brought with them a Reformed theology that was indebted to Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin. MacCulloch traces American revivalism to holy fairs that Presbyterians held in Scotland and Ireland whenever they celebrated the Eucharist, noting that "American life is fired by a continuing energy of Protestant religious practice derived from the sixteenth century." While declining religious adherence in Europe may have dampened the importance of the Reformation there, MacCulloch sees the continued impact of European reforms in Wittenberg (Wisconsin), Geneva (Nebraska), Belfast (Maine), and Amsterdam (New York).
MacCulloch's willingness to assign a preeminent role in American religious and cultural history to Ulster Presbyterians has its own dangers of reductionism; it ignores the vitality of American Catholicism and the endurance of African American Christianity, as well as the distinctives of American church-state relations. In the midst of the 16th and 17th centuries, however, MacCulloch has a surer touch. His masterful outline of the subject demonstrates a fine ear for the debates and characters of the time. The elegance of the book, its lively and clear prose, suggest that what we mean when we say "Catholic" continues to matter a great deal.
Mary Noll Venables recently received her Ph.D. in Early Modern European History from Yale University and is now living in Ireland.
Copyright © 2004 by the author or Christianity Today International/Books & Culture magazine.
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