Karin Maag approaches the study of worship historically. She provides her readers with an extremely detailed and yet very accessible analysis of worship as crafted and conducted in John Calvin's Geneva through a series of documents, case studies and analysis. The book is divided into three parts. The first locates the worshipping community by discussing the geographical and liturgical landscape, the significant themes and practices to observe, and provides a very helpful timeline. The second (by far the largest) part provides documents, mostly produced by Calvin himself, and numerous other items, such as a street map of Geneva's old city and a digest of Roman Catholic reaction to Reformed worship practices. The third part provides suggestions for devotional use by church groups or individual Christians. Maag, an accomplished scholar of Calvin and the Reformation, has brought together an array of primary sources, which she has supplemented with a running commentary which appears in the margins. The volume does an exceptional job of providing accessible and extremely useful coverage of Reformation worship, including within it the voices of ordinary Genevans and of course John Calvin's theological writings, sermons, public forms of prayer and also consistorial records, statutes of the Genevan Academy and a host of other related documents. Maag searches well outside the Institutes and other standard sources for material on this theme, and does so to brilliant effect.
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