The Great Reformation:
a wide-ranging survey of the beginnings of Protestantism
By R. Tudur Jones. Bryntirion Press. 288 pages.
ISBN 1 85049 127 5
As evangelicals, there are few periods of history to which we look back with more theological nostalgia than that of the Reformation. Yet it is also true that many in our churches today have little more than a rudimentary knowledge of its history, personalities and doctrines.
Such ignorance has highly significant implications for an era when the future direction of the evangelical church, facing the challenge of the 'Evangelicals and Catholics Together' movement, will be largely determined by our understanding of the past and its relationship to today. At its most basic, the question to be asked is: 'Do the debates which took place between Protestants and Catholics at the Reformation still have some significance for today?'. The answer is not as easy as many on both sides of the current debate have sought to make it. If the church at large is to come to an informed view, it must first do its homework in the field of Reformation studies.
