In this collection of essays, Diarmaid MacCulloch provides a historiographical review of Reformation scholarship on selected themes to interpret the scholarship for a broader audience, including global Anglicanism. This book provides contemporary readers with a long-term perspective to show that conflict in the church is not a new or unusual phenomenon and, in fact, Anglicans have weathered over five centuries of conflict. This book not only covers topics where scholarly debate and inquiry have been robust but also highlights particular research interests in the English Reformation that reflect MacCulloch's work as a historian of the church over the past twenty-five years. While the book is organized neatly into three sections: “Reformations across Europe;” “The English Reformation;” “Looking Back on the English Reformation.” The varied methodology of the essays in each section, ranging from a revised book reviews to focused studies, challenges the cohesiveness of the book. Nevertheless, two noteworthy themes emerge from this book.

First, responding to a broad range of scholars of the English Reformation and Anglicanism, MacCulloch resists any notion that portrays the Reformation as the inevitable result of dissatisfaction with medieval piety. The fact that “the Protestant Reformers destroyed a powerful, self-confident institution makes the Reformation . . . so much more interesting; [for] only ideas and their independent power could so dramatically have brought down such a strong structure” (3). Consequently, various chapters examine Reformation theology and the connections between biblical and political authority.

Second, MacCulloch emphasizes that the unique shape of Anglicanism, molded by historical circumstance, royal preferences, and religious reform movements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, produced an Anglicanism that intentionally blends contrasting commitments. This type of balancing act shown within Anglicanism is an exemplary model for the contemporary context of a divided Christianity. Observing that Anglicanism has lived with internal contradictions since 1533, MacCulloch writes, “The glory of the Anglican tradition [is that] it is a double helix, intertwining two mutually antagonistic strands of Christianity which elsewhere bitterly clashed in the Reformation: Catholic and Reformed” (360). While the longevity of a tradition is noteworthy, one reason for this continuity may have been the release valve of migration whenever religious dissenters opted to leave England to relocate and create new communities abroad. In this sense, holding together contrasting views only worked insofar as the extremes were driven out or encouraged to leave.

In part 1, this book starts with a concise overview of the history of Christianity, emphasizing the importance of history for the church and for society globally. MacCulloch notes the recent realization that “Europe, far from setting the pattern for the world in secularization, has proved the exception to the worldwide reassertion of religion” (21). The following chapters in part 1 do not relate directly to each other, but nevertheless touch on a smattering of interesting topics from John Calvin to the Italian Inquisition.

Part 2 is the most cohesive section of the book as it is focuses on the English Reformation and the historical development of its legacy. This section starts with the effort poured into Tudor royal image-making (chapter 7) before examining Henry VIII's religious sensibilities, which were not always coherent (chapter 8). Then MacCulloch turns to another area of his expertise, Thomas Cranmer and the making of the Book of Common Prayer (chapters 9-10). While Cranmer agreed with Henry VIII that the English Church should omit the extremes, they never reached an agreement on the content of this middle ground (123). In midst of competing visions of a Reformation in England, Cranmer advocated for a concord by persuasion, rather than by coercion as practiced by the Tudor monarchs. According to MacCulloch, Cranmer, like most early English Protestants, “dawdled for a while in Lutheran pastures, then jumped over the waters onto the Reformed bank” (143). This move was gradual, as Lutheran and Reformed camps only defined themselves in opposition once the Consensus Tigurinus, or the Zürich Consensus with Geneva in 1549 triggered the second eucharistic controversy in the 1550s between Joachim Westphal and John Calvin. Additionally, English reformers welcomed many Reformed refugees, including Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr Vermigli, who moved into academic positions at Cambridge and Oxford, respectively. The subsequent five chapters compare the reigns of the Tudor queens, Mary and Elizabeth, including the politics of elite women with opposing religious loyalties and ruling styles, and emphasize the importance of the printed word through the publication of English Bibles and the liturgical Bay Psalm book.

Part 3 examines the legacy and historiography of the English Reformation. One highlight of this section is the chapter dedicated to “putting the English Reformation on the map,” which rejects both those who have rewritten English church history to downplay a Reformation that was Protestant and those who suggest a Reformation unique to England without much connection or collaboration with continental Europe (197–198). Instead, MacCulloch argues that England had a Protestant Reformation and that many Reformation ideas were imported. If there is something unique about the English Reformation, it does not stem from Henry VIII, but rather from Lollardy and the group of senior politicians and clergy supported by Anne Boleyn, Cromwell, and Cranmer.

With respect to published works within this field, this book resembles an edited book by a single author as it addresses multiple issues without needing to tie them together with a common thread. Yet the author achieves a different goal, namely displaying a range of approaches to sources available for a historian's task, including an examination of a forgery and its lasting impact (chapter 21), and the lessons learned from a long historical record of holding things in tension. Ultimately, the author portrays Anglicanism as a legacy of the Reformation. At its roots and in its development, the Church of England was distinctly Protestant with a cathedral ethos that lived with internal contradictions and survived vigorous external critique and would continue to do so.