Cynicism and Hope

John Heywood ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 61-97
Author(s):  
Greg Walker
Keyword(s):  
Social Reform ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
John Rastell

This chapter offers a new reading of this powerful humanist interlude. It argues for Heywood’s authorship in collaboration with his father-in-law John Rastell, who also printed the play. It reads the play in the context of humanist debates about the injustices of contemporary society, and demonstrates that the epilogue effectively reverses the pessimism about the prospects of enacting thoroughgoing reform that characterizes the latter parts of the play. Setting the play in the context of the fall of Wolsey, the summoning of the Reformation Parliament, and the elevation of More to the chancellorship, it argues that the play was written and revised over the autumn of 1529, reflecting the newfound optimism about social reform generated in those months.

scholarly journals Social Reform and the Reformation

1909 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 127
Author(s):  
Sidney B. Fay ◽  
Jacob Salwyn Schapiro
Keyword(s):  
Social Reform ◽  
The Reformation

The Protestant Tradition

2020 ◽  
pp. 605-620
Author(s):  
Inge Mager
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Communal Living

This chapter addresses the Protestant tradition in Germany. The Reformation did not bring an end to the monastic system in Germany. Many convents adhering to Protestant principles survived until the Thirty Years’ War, and others lasted until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Some few convents continue to exist today as so-called Protestant women’s foundations. Not all monastic property was secularized; what remained was used for educational, cultural, and social purposes. An aspiration for more intense forms of devotion, as well as for alternative ways of communal living, endured throughout the post-Reformation era. But it was only in the twentieth century that German Protestant churches began to recover the monastic dimension for themselves, with the founding of brotherhoods and sisterhoods. These communities base their faith and life on the Gospel, and they aim to contribute to a contemporary society that is otherwise largely alienated from the Christian tradition.

scholarly journals Ramsden Balmforth on the Reformation and the Evolution of Christianity: A Post-Protestant South African Perspective

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Hale
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
African Perspective ◽  
The Comparative Study

Theologians and historians of the Protestant Reformation have often interpreted it in terms that are strongly determined by their own concerns. One such writer was Ramsden Balmforth (1862-1942), a prominent Unitarian minister and public intellectual in Cape Town from 1897 until the late 1930s. An advocate of Darwinian evolutionary thinking, liberal theology, religious freedom, the comparative study of religions, and social reform, this transplanted Yorkshireman perceived the Reformation as an important stage in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, one marked by liberation from the spiritual and intellectual shackles of Catholicism. However, he regarded it as a truncated and ultimately reactionary reform movement which substituted the authority of the Bible and creedal formulations for that of the Roman Catholic power structure. Balmforth called for a “new Reformation” which would resume the liberation of religious life.

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