“New Approaches to the Radical Reformation”: Notes from My Presentation (Nov. 2018)

Below are a few notes related to my contribution to the round table held on 1 Nov. 2018 in Albuquerque, NM, at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference. Other contributors to the round table included Amy Nelson Burnett, Kat Hill, David Yoder Neufeld, and James M. Stayer. Geoffrey Dipple was the organizer and moderator.

UPDATED: Dec. 2022

At the session I outlined 3 proposals for the future of Radical Reformation Studies:

Scholars shouldn’t study the Radical Reformation any longer, except as a once-inspiring and now very problematic heuristic tool or historiographical category.
In its place, scholars of early modern “radicalism” (however understood) should study the transformation of new religious movements into established churches, which in turn were challenged in time by movements of reformers / freethinkers / heretics / dissenters / competing factions (or whatever).
The study of transformations from movements to institutions to movements puts the study of heresy and dissent into a broader framework by reconnecting it with the study of confessionalization / confessional cultures, and by encouraging scholar of the German Reformations to join conversations with other scholars of early modern radicalisms.

Scholars shouldn’t study the Radical Reformation any longer, except as a once-inspiring and now very problematic heuristic tool or historiographical category.
- M. Driedger, “Against ‘the Radical Reformation’: On the Continuity between Early Modern Heresy-Making and Modern Historiography” in Radicalism and Dissent in the World of Protestant Reform, edited by Bridget Heal and Anorthe Kremers (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 139-161.
- M. Driedger, “Thinking inside the Cages: Norman Cohn, Anabaptist Münster, and Polemically Inspired Assumptions about Apocalyptic Violence” in Nova Religio 21:4 (May 2018), 38-62.
- A key reason that the concept of Radical Reformation is outdated is because it theorizes a distinction between Anabaptists and spiritualists (Radical Reformation) on the one hand and Lutheran and Reformed Protestantism (Magisterial Reformation) on the other. This distinction is artificial and counterproductive because it is an artifact of Lutheran and Reformed polemics that has been sublimated (without proper critical reflection) into supposedly objective modern theory (Williams and all who repeat him). One is several serious consequences of the artificial distinction is to make more difficult recognize historical connections across the ideal-typical boundary of Radical and Magisterial.
  - For evidence related to this last point, see
    - James M. Stayer, “The Contours of the Non-Lutheran Reformation in Germany, 1522–1546: The Distinction between the Bible-Centred Meeting Places and the Altar-Centred Churches,” Church History and Religious Culture 101: 2–3 (2021): 167-174.
    - Amy Nelson Burnett, Debating the Sacraments: Print and Authority in the Early Reformation (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2019).
In its place, scholars of early modern “radicalism” (however understood) should study the transformation of new religious movements into established churches, which in turn were challenged in time by movements of reformers / freethinkers / heretics / dissenters / competing factions (or whatever).
- Specifically on this dynamic in early 16th-century German history, see Hans-Jürgen Goertz’s work on religious movements, the radical Luther, anticlericalism, and Reformation history in general.
- For a general sociological view of this dynamic in Christianity, see the work of David Martin, the British sociologist of religion. A good introduction is David Cayley’s interview with Martin (https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-myth-of-the-secular-part-2-1.3143513).
- For more about this dynamic in early modern dissenter communities (mostly in 17th-century Amsterdam), see the work of Leszek Kolakowski (Christians without churches, and the antinomies of religious freedom).
- For citations and newer (post 2018),
  - Michael Driedger and Gary Waite (with contributions from Francesco Quatrini and Nina Schroeder), “From ‘the Radical Reformation’ to ‘the Radical Enlightenment’? The Specter and Complexities of Spiritualism in Early Modern England, Germany, and the Low Countries” in Church History and Religious Culture 101: 2-3 (2021), 135-166.
The study of transformations from movements to institutions (and back to newer movements and institutions) puts the study of heresy and dissent into a broader framework by reconnecting it with the study of confessionalization / confessional cultures, and by encouraging scholar of the German Reformations to join conversations with other scholars of early modern radicalisms and modern new religious movements.
- Nicholas Terpstra. Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
  - For an even more global view, see Merry Wiesner-Hanks, ed., Religious Transformations in the Early Modern World: A Brief History with Documents. Boston and New York: Bedford / St. Martin’s, 2009.
- Glenn Burgess and Matthew Festenstein, eds., English Radicalism, 1550-1850. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
- Ethan Shagan, The Rule of Moderation: Violence, Religion, and the Politics of Restraint in Early Modern England. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
- Margaret Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans. London: Allen & Unwin, 1981.
- Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

2022-23: Michael Driedger is proposing a volume for the Cambridge Elements Series on New Religious Movements to provide more thoughts and details about these dynamics.

Dutch Dissenters

Prof. Mike Driedger's research website

“New Approaches to the Radical Reformation”: Notes from My Presentation (Nov. 2018)