August 23, 2007

MINNEAPOLIS – Perhaps no period in Christian history experienced such vast religious tumult and rapid social change as the European Reformation, when it quickly became apparent that social and political issues-finding deep resonance with the common people-were deeply entwined with religious ones raised by the Reformers.

For historians, clergy, college, university, and seminary students and general readers who want to learn more about this period in time Fortress Press is happy to announce the release of Reformation Christianity, Volume 5 in the A People's History of Christianity Series.

Led by eminent Reformation historian Peter Matheson, ten distinguished social historians trace the myriad and profound ways in which Europe's several Reformations played out in the lives of common folk: in their personal spirituality and corporate worship, catechesis and discipline, sexuality and gender roles, mores surrounding marriage, birth, and baptism, aging and death, relations with Jews and Muslims, lay theologies, as well as the utopian and even revolutionary ventures they spawned.

With some forty illustrations, maps, and an eight-page color gallery, this volume of A People's History of Christianity affords precious glimpses of the extraordinary stirring of spirits that was the Reformation.

"These stories may come up from the basement of church history, but news about their existence deserves to be shouted from the housetops. . . . This new series turns history upside down. . . " – Martin E. Marty, University of Chicago Divinity School.

"Hidden for centuries by their anonymity and illiteracy, the people of God are finally having their story told, and by some of today's finest historians of the church. The saints, bishops, and theologians of traditional histories can now be placed against the panoramic and fascinating backdrop of the lived religion of ordinary men and women of faith. Highly recommended." – Mark U. Edwards Jr., Harvard Divinity School.

Reformation Christianity is Volume 5 in A People's History of Christianity: The Lived Religion of Christians in the First Two Thousand Years, a new series from Fortress Press in which over 100 scholars seek to uncover the neglected side of church history as they bare the religious ideas, and consciousness of "the people" – their assumptions, beliefs, values, habits, longings, terrors, anxieties, and comforts. This is history "from below," and the revelations and insights are fascinating.

Volumes in this exciting series include:
• Volume 1, Christian Origins, edited by Richard Horsley.
• Volume 2, Late Ancient Christianity, edited by Virginia Burrus.
• Volume 3, Byzantine Christianity, edited by Derek Krueger.
• Volume 4, Medieval Christianity, edited by Daniel E. Bornstein.
• Volume 5, Reformation Christianity, edited by Peter Matheson.
• Volume 6, Modern Christianity to 1900, edited by Amanda Porterfield.
• Volume 7, Twentieth Century Global Christianity, edited by Mary Farrell Bednarowski.

Visit the companion Web site at http://www.peopleshistoryofchristianity.com/ to learn more about the series including testimonials, tables of contents, research paper guides, and more.

Volume Editor-Peter Matheson has taught at Edinburgh University and Otago University; he is Principal Emeritus of the Uniting Church Theological College in Melbourne. His publications include writing on New Zealand and Third Reich history but focus mainly on the German Reformation, including The Imaginative World of the Reformation (Fortress Press, 2001), The Rhetoric of the Reformation (1997), and The Collected Works of Thomas Mžntzer (1988). His current research is on Argula von Grumbach.

General Editor-Dennis R. Janz is Provost Distinguished Professor of the History of Christianity at Loyola University, New Orleans. He is area editor for the history of Christianity for Religious Studies Review, editor of Three Reformation Catechisms: Catholic, Anabaptist, Lutheran (1982), and A Reformation Reader (1999), and author of Luther and Late Medieval Thomism (1983), Luther on Thomas Aquinas (1989), and World Christianity and Marxism (1998).

Reformation Christianity, Item Number: 978-0-8006-3415-5, Specs: 7" x 9.25," sewn hardcover with jacket, 350 pages, Price: $35.00.

To order Reformation Christianity or other volumes in the A People's History of Christianity series please call Fortress Press at 1-800-328-4648 or visit the Web site at http://www.fortresspress.com/.

Fortress Press