book review: new history of Calvinism

[pynchonoid]

<http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=216991062173154>

Philip Benedict. Christ's Churches Purely Reformed: A
Social History of Calvinism. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 2002. xxvi + 670 pp. Tables,
illustrations, notes, index. $40.00 (cloth), ISBN
0-300-08812-4. 

[...] Not Your Father's History of Calvinism 

[...] Although he uses the term Calvinism in the
title, Benedict explains in his introduction that the
subject of his book is the Reformed tradition
generally. That tradition is usually identified by its
spiritual interpretation of the Lord's Supper, its
emphasis on predestination, and its concern for church
discipline, but Benedict identifies its most
fundamental characteristic as a radical rejection of
idolatry and subsequent refusal to participate in any
form of worship deemed idolatrous. This position led
to the simplification of worship where the Reformed
church became the established confession, and to
separatism and the formation of minority churches in
areas where the established church remained loyal to
Rome. These minority churches, in turn, experienced
divergent fates as they encountered varying levels of
persecution, especially over the course of the
seventeenth century. [...] 

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