Recultivating the Vineyard: The Reformation Agendas of Christianization (review)

This book aims to answer the question "what was the Reformation?" by seeking the common denominator of the various reform movements of the sixteenth century. As the title suggests, Hendrix's answer is that it was an "agenda of Christianization," or a large-scale missionary movement, variously understood by reforming parties. Because his question is strictly a "what" question, his argument is primarily descriptive. The description lays out the intentions of sixteenth-century reformers to the extent this is possible. His aim is neither to explain why the Reformation took hold when and where it did, nor to evaluate it theologically or ethically. The value of this book lies primarily in the success with which it meets its aim of cutting through the details of local reforming currents to find the core impetus that allows one to speak of "the Reformation." Although Hendrix offers a detached historical account, his sensitivity to theology in its own right makes the clarity of his argument possible. Modern readers may come away from this book able to read the reformers' more strident comments not as histrionic rhetoric, but as simple statements of the urgency of their agenda.

Hendrix uses the term "Christianization" largely because it was a term used by reformers themselves (xx). The term sets the temporal boundaries of the argument: he excludes late-medieval reform efforts. He treats what he considers to be the major agendas — Lutheran, South German and Swiss Urban, Radical, and Roman Catholic — in separate chapters. Because Hendrix contends that reformers felt that medieval Catholicism was fundamentally un-Christian, he precedes his account by calling attention to the conflict within contemporary scholarship over the extent to which rural Europe was effectively Christianized by the end of the fifteenth century. He turns to medieval theological arguments about superstition to account for why, given the establishment of European Christendom, reformers felt a task of Christianization was necessary. Given that Hendrix stresses the fact that reformers considered their task to be one of Christianizing an insufficiently ChristianChristendom, the Catholic Reformation might seem to be the real test case for his thesis. His chapter easily ties this movement to his main point through discussion of the Jesuit missions and the general renewal of Catholic piety after the Council of Trent. A final chapter treats outcomes, largely on confessionalization and the global expansion of Christian mission.

Although Hendrix mostly presents familiar material in light of a strong thesis, on occasion he uses his thesis to make new claims. He asserts that attention to Luther's agenda of Christianization corrects construal of his thought as unconcerned with ethics. Another contribution is an insistence on understanding the differences between Luther and south German urban reformers as primarily tactical, rather than theological, in nature. However, he also has a tendency occasionally to move his argument forward by beating a dead horse. For example, in asserting the fundamental commonality of Luther and Zwingli, he takes issue with Friedrich Julius Stahl, a nineteenth-century theologian.

Missing from Hendrix's argument is the place of the English and Scandinavian reformations, in which governments took a more leading role. Although Hendrix occasionally shows important points of contact between the continental and the English reformations, he never treats the latter in its own right. The reader is left to extrapolate how the agenda of Christianization played out in the thought of Tyndale or Cranmer. Although his presentations of Servetus and Socinius do this to an extent, materials on witch-trials could have sharpened the meaning of "Christianization" by showing where it met a limit. Although Hendrix includes women as significant agents of the reform agenda, for readers familiar withHendrix's work from his deft analysis of Reformation masculinities, his refusal of this opportunity to incorporate a gendered take on the question may come as a disappointment. These caveats aside, Recultivating the Vineyard offers a simple and compelling vision of the heart of reforming...