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Religion On The Run, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

"At one time English religion had emphasized the static or the recurrent aspects of worship. Then for a century or more, England was conscious of acting a sacred history as opposed to reenacting it". Sommerville's observation should shock no one familiar with his "century or more," roughly 1530 to 1660, although the declared opposition between "acting" and "reenacting" is likely to strike those who still read Bale, Foxe, Dering, or Dell as rather forced. Yet, so many of the contrasts in Secularization are terribly suggestive, announcing that religion "was changing from devotion to deliberation".

What may surprise some historians, however, …