The Reformation Towards a New History [Paperback]

Lee Palmer Wandel interweaves narratives of the Reformation and the encounter between Europe and the Western hemisphere.The Reformation and the Encounter between Europe and the western hemisphere have long been treated as separate events. Lee Palmer Wandel brings the two narratives together, casting a history of human difference, of multiple understandings of Christianity, each shaped by the encounter with unknown worlds.The Reformation and the Encounter between Europe and the western hemisphere have long been treated as separate events. Lee Palmer Wandel brings the two narratives together, casting a history of human difference, of multiple understandings of Christianity, each shaped by the encounter with unknown worlds.This book brings together two histories, of the Encounter between Europe and the western hemisphere that began in 1492 and the fragmentation of European Christendom in the sixteenth century, to recast the story of the Reformation. It restores to the polemicsidolatry, true Christian, barbariantheir deeply divisive force, even as it helps us to see past those polemics to divergent understandings of divinity, matter, and human nature. Every aspect of human life, from marriage and family through politics to conceptualizations of space and time was called into question. Debates on human nature and conversion forged new understandings of religious identity. Divergent understandings of human nature and its relationship to the material world divided Europeans on the nature and function of images and ritual. By the end of the century, there was not one Christian religion, but multiple understandings of person, matter, space, timeand of religion itself.Introduction; Part I. Beginnings: 1. Christianity in 1500; 2. 'The New World'; 3. 'The World'; Part II. Fragmentation: 4. The word of God and the ordering of the world; 5. The ties that bind; 6. Boundaries; Part III. Religion Reconceived: 7. Christians; 8. Things and places; 9. Incarnation; ColC)