The main profound attribute of Western Europe within the heart a long time was once its cultural and non secular harmony, a solidarity secured by way of a typical alignment with the Pope in Rome, and a standard language - Latin - for worship and scholarship. The Reformation shattered that cohesion, and the results are nonetheless with us this present day. In All issues Made New, Diarmaid MacCulloch, writer of the New York Times bestseller Christianity: the 1st 3 Thousand Years, examines not just the Reformation's influence throughout Europe, but additionally the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the detailed evolution of faith in England, revealing how some of the most turbulent, bloody, and transformational occasions in Western historical past has formed smooth society.

The Reformation could have introduced a social revolution, MacCulloch argues, however it used to be no longer as a result of social and financial forces, or perhaps through a mundane concept like nationalism; it sprang from an enormous concept approximately loss of life, salvation, and the afterlife. this concept - that salvation was once fullyyt in God's palms and there has been not anything people may well do to change his selection - ended the Catholic Church's monopoly in Europe and changed the trajectory of the complete way forward for the West.

By turns passionate, humorous, meditative, and subversive, All issues Made New takes readers onto attention-grabbing new flooring, exploring the unique conflicts of the Reformation and slicing via prejudices that proceed to distort renowned conceptions of a non secular divide nonetheless with us after 5 centuries. This huge paintings, from essentially the most exceptional students of Christianity writing at the present time, explores the ways that historians have informed the story of the Reformation, why their interpretations have replaced so dramatically over the years, and finally, how the contested legacy of this revolution maintains to affect the area today.