When I was a graduate student studying the English Civil War period for the first time, I quickly learned to appreciate two phenomena: first, in a society torn apart by violence and social upheaval, growing numbers of men and women rejected Protestant orthodoxy in favour of radical sectarian groups; second, it was a period in which women increasingly published spiritual autobiographies, biblical prophecies and scriptural exegeses and thus played a significant role in public religious life. Traditionally, scholars have considered these two phenomena separately, with historians and religious scholars exploring the theologies underpinning the radical religious movements, while feminist scholars focused upon radical religious women. In The Reformation of the heart, Sarah Apetrei brings these two strands together. Her claim is that gender radicalism was integral to theological radicalism in England’s Civil War. That this claim seems at once both obviously true and transformative is a testament to its power. This is a field-changing book.

The book’s argument requires some unpacking. Apetrei derives her title from a sermon given by Army Chaplain William Dell before the House of Commons in 1646 in which he asserts that English men and women should no longer work to transform the institutions of the established Church but instead seek to reform the individual heart. Apetrei argues that in this sermon, Dell articulates beliefs shared by a radical mystical community which rejected an ‘objectified God’, ‘external to oneself, fixed in time by the single historical reference point of the incarnation, bound in a closed canon of revealed texts’. In its place these mystical radicals taught a ‘subjectivized doctrine of God, exceeding the mystical union with Christ mediated by Scripture knowledge, preaching, and sacraments in the magisterial Reformation churches’ (p. 4). Because they believed that ‘divine love and knowledge were rising in women and men, in a second birth of Christ bearing fresh revelations’, the mystical radicals embraced female preachers, prophets and pamphleteers: if God could best be known through experiential knowledge, women, as well as men, could be conduits of divine grace and wisdom (p. 4). This ‘shift in lenses’, writes Apetrei, ‘ – from the objectified or externally mediated to the indwelling God – provided part of the impetus for widespread female participation in the radical movements of the English revolution’ (p. 25). Radical mystical theology galvanised women’s participation in public religious life.

Because the mystical radicals believed that God could best be known through personal revelation, they questioned traditional doctrines concerning the nature of God, the incarnation, the scope of salvation and the scriptural sources of revelation. In six chapters, each of which focuses upon a Christian doctrine or church practice, Apetrei explores how female mystical radicals participated in this interrogation of orthodoxy. I found two chapters especially compelling. Chapter ii, ‘Salvation’, argues that women were ‘pioneers of [the] doctrine [of universal salvation] in a way which has been overlooked by historians and theologians alike’ (p. 55). Eleanor Davies, for example, insisted that God’s mercy was greater than his judgement and that God would forgive all human beings, a claim she supported by referencing Origen (p. 68). I was also struck by Apetrei’s observation that some women radicals developed their belief in universal salvation in direct response to their experience as mothers. Grieving the death of their unbaptised children, these women insisted that a loving God would not condemn innocent children to hell. In oral testimony given to a ‘Mr. Warner’, a woman identified only as ‘Mrs E’ imaginatively connects the death of her children and her belief in their salvation with the salvation of all human beings. Admittedly, the oral testimony of Mrs E. does not rise to the level of argument, but I am convinced by Apetrei’s claim that it suggests that the belief that the spirit of God was rising in the heart of believers encouraged some seventeenth-century women to challenge traditional religious orthodoxies on the basis of their gendered experience. Chapter iv, ‘Grace and sin’, discusses how the radical mystics’ emphasis upon the experiential knowledge of God led some women to conceptualise God as a mother. Free-grace proponents like Ana Trapnel, Anne Yemans and Sarah Wight used maternal love as a way of conceptualising the intense and tender love Christ has for sinners. Apetrei observes that Trapnel even compares Christ to a lactating mother, ‘whose breasts are full of milk’ (p. 123).

Apetrei’s knowledge of both historical and contemporary theology is impressive. She cogently observes that many of the positions envisioned by women in the Civil War anticipate those made by contemporary feminist and liberation theologians. Moreover, she connects the doctrinal positions developed by the mystical radicals with earlier dissenting movements within the Church and thus provides a genealogy of seventeenth-century mystical beliefs. Apetrei also possesses a thoroughgoing knowledge of archival material. This enables her both to recreate the often loosely connected radical religious communities and to show how female prophets and lay preachers emerged from within these communities. I would have liked Apetrei to discuss more fully the relationship between the mystical radicals and millenarianism. Some of the religious thinkers she discusses, like Mary Cary, believed that the imminent arrival of the millennium would similarly transform traditional ecclesiology and doctrine. Unlike the mystical radicals, Cary did not rely exclusively upon her experience of an indwelling God; she presented herself as an experienced exegete, who drew upon her interpretation of Scripture when advancing her critiques of orthodoxy. But this is a minor objection to an otherwise convincing book.

The Reformation of the heart is animated by the brilliant yet simple conviction, born of the feminist movement, that gender matters. It is chock-full of historical detail and theological analysis. By taking women’s participation in radical religion seriously, The Reformation of the heart transforms long-established ways of thinking about women, religion and the past. Like the radical women theologians it discusses, it significantly transforms the way we think about women, radical religion and orthodoxy – for the better.