Reforming Faith - (Lutheran Quarterly Books) by Anna Marie Johnson (Paperback)

About the Book

The Reformation was, at its heart, a movement to change the way Christians worshipped, lived, and understood their faith. Wittenberg reformers were deeply involved in efforts to implement these changes. Johnson recasts the story of the early Reformation, highlighting practical efforts to reform practices, institutions, and understandings.

Book Synopsis

The Protestant Reformation brought significant changes to the shape of Christian life. Worship, preaching, catechesis, and prayer all changed enormously; a renewed focus on engaging the Bible took the place of other devotional acts; and schools and charitable institutions were reshaped and expanded. The Wittenberg theologians helped instill these new practices and understandings by reforming Protestant preaching, pedagogy, ecclesiology, and piety. Reforming Faith tells the story of the Wittenberg reformers' joint work to establish and support the growing evangelical movement in the 1520s. Although this story is often told as Luther's movement, he worked in collaboration with his colleagues at the University of Wittenberg, and those colleagues made vital contributions to the movement.

Aside from training new pastors, the university's largest enterprise was the publication of biblical and practical guidance by its faculty. The audiences were varied: political and community leaders who wanted to institute the Reformation in their jurisdictions, pastors who had become Protestants after being trained as priests, church leaders who wondered how to revise church practices, and laypeople with nagging questions that the new theology had raised for them. The Wittenberg faculty also participated in early community initiatives to help establish the Reformation, such as opening schools and performing parish visitations. Johnson sets the work of the Wittenberg reformers into the larger context of the Reformation, highlighting their cooperative work by bringing the many writings and initiatives of "the other Wittenberg reformers" to light.

Review Quotes

All too often we think of the Wittenberg Reformation as a one-man show: Everything starts with Luther, and all is brought together through and in him. Johnson teaches us otherwise. There were many collaborators in this fascinating project of renewal. The author follows carefully many traces of reform in theology and society. We learn how different actors worked together throughout the Reformation. Her marvelous book establishes a more nuanced, more multifaceted, and therefore more interesting view of the Reformation than traditionally held. --Volker Leppin, Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology at Yale Divinity School and author of United with Christ: Martin Luther and Christian Mysticism (Fortress, 2025)

Reforming Faith examines the effort of the Wittenberg circle of reformers to effect wholesale change in the religious life of their city and in Lutheran Europe more broadly. As the work of a team of theologians--not Luther alone--this reformation encompassed belief, worship, education, family life, and the care of the poor. Johnson does an especially good job of capturing both the unbridled optimism of this reforming effort in its early years and the growing sense of disappointment that its proponents experienced as the decades wore on and opposition or simple indifference mounted. Yet Johnson does not conclude that the Lutheran Reformation was a failure; instead, with a deep appreciation for its complexity, she notes short-term limited success, while attending to long-term change that emerged slowly and provides encouragement for gospel-inspired reformation today. --Ronald K. Rittgers, professor of Reformation studies at Duke Divinity School and author of A Widower's Lament: The Pious Meditations of Johann Christoph Oelhafen (Fortress, 2021)

Straddling the daring protests of Martin Luther and a confession of faith presented to Emperor Charles V in 1530, Anna Marie Johnson's Reforming Faith describes how a team of Wittenberg-based reformers created a new approach to Christian faith and practice in the 1520s. Translating the scriptures, adding congregational hymns to a vernacular liturgy, reforming approaches to poverty relief and marriage, launching educational structures in German towns and villages, and revising constitutions for the church required an array of skilled theologians and church practitioners. Johnson's important work details how this Wittenberg ensemble--more than a one-man band (Luther) and not merely a one-hit wonder (the Augsburg Confession)--constructed an enduring approach to Christian life. --Jeffrey Jaynes, emeritus professor of church history at Methodist Theological School in Ohio and author of Christianity Beyond Christendom: The Global Christian Experience on Medieval Mappaemundi and Early Modern World Maps (2018)