Religion and the Early Modern State Views from China, Russia, and the West [Paperback]

Thirteen 2005 essays show worldwide perspectives of how early modern governments attempted to regulate religious life.How did state power impinge on the religion of the common people? This perennial issue has been sharpened as historians uncover the process of confessionalization or acculturation , by which officials of state and church collaborated in ambitious programs of Protestant or Catholic reform, intended to change the religious consciousness and the behavior of ordinary men and women. This volume sets the topic in a wider framework. Thirteen essays, grouped in themes affording parallel views show a spectrum of possibilities for what early modern governments tried to achieve by regulating religious life, and for how religious communities evolved in new directions, either in keeping with or in spite of official injunctions.How did state power impinge on the religion of the common people? This perennial issue has been sharpened as historians uncover the process of confessionalization or acculturation , by which officials of state and church collaborated in ambitious programs of Protestant or Catholic reform, intended to change the religious consciousness and the behavior of ordinary men and women. This volume sets the topic in a wider framework. Thirteen essays, grouped in themes affording parallel views show a spectrum of possibilities for what early modern governments tried to achieve by regulating religious life, and for how religious communities evolved in new directions, either in keeping with or in spite of official injunctions.How did state power impinge on the religion of the common people? The contributing historians of this collection uncover the process of confessionalization , or acculturation , by which officials of state and church collaborated in ambitious programs of Protestant or Catholic reform. Thirteen essays reveal a spectrum of possibilities which early modern governments tried to achieve by regulating religious life, as well aslÃÊ