Overview

This first volume of A Global Sourcebook in Protestant Political Thought provides a window into the early Protestant world, and the ways in which Protestants wrestled with politics and religion in the wake of the Reformation. This period saw political authorities and church hierarchies challenged and defended by scholars, clerics, and laypeople alike. The volume engages the full spectrum of Protestants, with reference to theology, geography, ethnicity, historical importance, socio-economic background, and gender. This diversity highlights how Protestants felt pulled towards differing political positions and used several maps to chart their course – conscience, custom, history, ecclesiastical tradition, and the laws of God, nature, nation, or community. On most important issues, Protestants lined up on opposing sides. Additionally, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox political thought, as well as interactions with Jewish and Muslim texts and thinkers, profoundly influenced different directions taken in the history of Protestant political thought. Even as our own time is fraught with deep disagreement and political polarisation, so too was early modern Europe, and we might read it in the anxieties, uncertainties, hopes, and expectations that the sources vividly express. This sourcebook will enrich both research and classroom teaching in politics, theology, and history, whether geared towards general political or religious history, or towards more specialised courses on colonialism, warfare, gender, race or religious diversity.

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9781032162102

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Reviews

“This is a brilliant and welcome collection of 200 judiciously chosen primary texts framed by authoritative and accessible introductions by leading scholars. Here in one well-edited volume, specialists and new readers get vivid illustrations of the enduring fundamentals of early modern Protestant political thought and their ample local variations and applications. Religious insiders and secular historians alike will be surprised to learn how prescient and prophetic Protestants have been in creating and reforming many of the political ideas and institutions still in place in the West today.” John Witte, Jr., Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Emory University, USA “What we call ‘Protestantism’ both is and was a very various phenomenon, a variety often lost to caricature and homogenizing, just-so surveys based on a narrow range of historical sources. This volume captures convincingly the sheer diversity of political arguments and approaches that passed under the ‘Protestant’ label in the early modern period, not only in Northern, but also Southern and Eastern Europe, as well as North America and the near East. The primary sources and commentaries collected here offer an unrivaled resource for students and scholars to explore this critical moment—and movement—in global intellectual history, the legacies of which continue to shape our world in important and often unexpected ways.” Teresa Bejan, Professor of Political Theory, University of Oxford, UK This is a really invaluable collection of materials, demonstrating the breadth and sophistication of political theology inspired by Protestant traditions - mainstream and not so mainstream. As increasing scholarly attention is - rightly - given to the insights of Catholic Social Teaching, it is more than ever important to have a clear sense of what other Christian bodies have to contribute to our current and urgent debates on the foundations of political ethics.' Rowan Williams, Former Archbishop of Canterbury

Author Information

Matthew Rowley, FRHistS, is Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Fairfield University. His publications include Trump and the Protestant Reaction to Make America Great Again (Routledge, 2020), God, Religious Extremism and Violence (2024), and Godly Violence in the Puritan Atlantic World (2024). Marietta van der Tol is College Lecturer in Politics at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. She is Principal Investigator of the Protestant Political Thought project and is author of the book Constitutional Intolerance: The Fashioning of the Other in Europe’s Constitutional Repertoires (2024).

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