John Knox by Jasper Ridley (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 371 membership more difficult and cites examples of the accomplishments made by those who demand effort and commitment above attendance and donation. To those who say the church should stay out of politics, Dr. Littell shows that, historically, in cases where the church stood mutely by. totalitarianism took over-as in Russia and Nazi Germany. He says the time has come to abandon the over-emphasis on mass evangelism-which has brought American church membership from 6.9% in 1800 to a constituency of 96% of the population today-and get down to work. In conjunction with higher membership standards he feels work-study groups should be organized around members' vocations so that religious ethics can be strongly and boldly advocated where they are needed most-in every part of and at all levels of a community's daily life. A former professor of church history at The Chicago Theological Seminary, Southern Methodist University and Emory University, Dr. Littell avoids preaching in his book and relies on examples, statistics and a broad base of historical fact to call American churches to action. The church should take a strong position on public issues and in politics, he says, and not let government and technicians direct American life. " The most awful figure of the modern world is," he states, " the technically competent barbarian-the master of persuasion who sells his services to the highest bidder or the careful bookkeeper who counted dead bodies at Dachau and Auschwitz." lCYWa Wesleyan College Mount Pleasant, Iowa BILL BAXTER John Knox. By JASPER RIDLEY. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Pp. 596. $9.50. Against the turbulent background of the sixteenth century, Jasper Ridley has written a comprehensive exciting biography on " the light of Scotland," John Knox. A man of mysterious character and high achievement, this Scot is pictured in all the controversy which surrounded him but without the false slanders. The author is essentially concerned with Knox's revolutionary ideas, activities and his mentality, which viewed the world in essentially political terms. Mr. Ridley pictures this political-religious thinker as " one of the most ruthless and successful revolutionary leaders in history," and as one rather to be encountered in history books than in the flesh. Dictators and mobs might murder an opponent whom they considered dangerous or for the purpose of revenge, but Knox is the onlv revolutionary " who proclaimed that it was sinful not to kill their enemies.~' The author traces the development of Knox's thought from the Berwick 872 BOOK REVIEWS congregation, where he taught that the monarch must be obeyed, until the accession of Queen Mary when his views changed radically. Rule of women, in Knox's opinion, was contrary to nature, a view in which he became more hardened. A pragmatist of the highest caliber, a successful strategist, he could another. His passions did not seem to be limited to the cause of Scotland against the rule of women, yet appeal for help from Queen Elizabeth I. A powerful individual by temperament, yet one whose strength lay in the organization that he built, he could uphold one murder and yet condemn another. His passions did not seem to be limited to the cause of Scotland and religion, for in the last seven years of his life, when he was fifty years old, he married for the second time a girl of the age of seventeen. As a theologian, he certainly was not a John Calvin, Martin Bucer, Peter Martyr, or, for that matter, a Thomas Cranmer. It was not in his nature to enter into subtle analysis of deep theological questions. He never formulated "his opinions on the nature of the [Real] Presence with any clarity " until he went to Geneva where he accepted Calvin's and Bullinger's. In fact, he seemed more like a renaissance political pamphleteer than a theologian, being bitter and invective in " vilifying and ridiculing the mass [sic] and the adoration of the Host." He could label and attack any of his religious opponents with the ability of a nineteenth-century politican. In an age when success is the measure of greatness John Knox cannot help but be appealing. A regime which has...