Cultural history and religion

Peter J. Leithart, May 04, 2006

Heiko Oberman notes the impact of cultural history in his posthumously published book, The Two Reformations: "By moving from established politicla history to cultural and mentality studies, historians reestablished the crucial importance of religion, although they frequently marginalized it under the misleading category of popular religion. . . . Whereas Bismarckian Protestantism was dedicated to the Reformation miracle, with its perception of discontinuity, the best of our social historians have been working toward a paradigm of continuity that treats the Middle Ages and early modern times as one epoch, challenged but not disrupted by Luther and the Reformation."