Hurtado, a naturalized Canadian who taught first at Regent College and then for many years at University of Manitoba before finishing his teaching career at the University of Edinburgh, makes the point, using a case study of early Christianity, that some religions can vary considerably from other surrounding religious movements. Christianity in the first century was a “broadside rejection” of the gods of the Roman world and was viewed as “bizarre” and even “dangerous” despite numbering perhaps only 7-10,000 followers by 100 AD. Tensions increased as the movement grew exponentially. A broadly “catholic” Christianity developed, and along with Judaism, were the only religious expressions to survive this period. In the four chapters that follow, Hurtado demonstrates the distinctive belief of the biblical faith in but one God and the unique place given Jesus by his early followers; the exclusive religious identity taken on; the early Christian movement as distinctive in its “bookishness”; and finally the distinctiveness of its behavioral practices that included a refusal to “expose” children, a rejection of spectacles such as gladiator contests, and the taking on of sexual moral codes that confined sex to marriage. Destroyer of the Gods is a very important study with much to think on for our cultural moment.     

Peter Marshall's Heretics and Believers is a vivid account of the English Reformation by one of the most able historians writing on this subject today.  His book integrates and responds to the latest scholarship, but does not get mired in these debates.  Instead, it furnishes a readable and beautiful narrative that will both inform and delight.  Moreover, as a practicing Catholic, Marshall writes with an insider's knowledge and sympathy about the reform and rupture of the Christian faith during this transformative period. The accent is placed on the importance of religious belief for all parties rather than simply viewing reform for the guise of the machinations of the state. The Reformation “was a flowering of late medieval developments, seeded and germinated in the political, cultural and religious soil of the decades around 1500.” There is a warm Christian faith on evidence throughout the book and especially in the postscript. Mark Noll has labelled the book “a treasure”. Marshall has also this year published 1517: Martin Luther and the Invention of the Reformation. For those who want a briefer treatment of the subject, one can consult Marshall’s The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction.