REFORMATION MYTHS:
Five Centuries of Misconceptions and (Some)
Misfortunes
By Rodney Stark
SPCK. 194 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 0 281 078 271
As an historian I have profited from and enjoyed a number of the works of Rodney Stark, Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University.
Although his books betray a contrarian at heart (a recent work on the Crusades provided a balanced perspective on those wars that are often regarded as a major blot on medieval Western Christianity and another, published in 2016, critiqued the legacy of anti-Catholicism in American history), as a sociologist by training he often brings fresh eyes to knotty historical issues. This most recent of his books proves to be no exception.
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