In his book Two Tudor Conspiracies, D. M. Loades challenged the traditional view among historians that the Wyatt rebellion was influenced by Protestant concerns over the Catholic policies of Mary Tudor. In Loades' account of the event, religion played no prominent part; the conspirators were secular and anti-clerical, but otherwise their religious convictions remain “shadowy.” Loades contends that apart from William Thomas, the well-known Protestant enthusiast, “all had conformed without protest under Edward, and those still alive were to do so again under Elizabeth, but throughout the period of the rebellion and trials which followed it, all protested their loyalty to the Catholic Church.” The real reasons for the revolt, he asserts, were secular and political—namely, fear of foreign domination through the Queen's intended marriage to Philip of Spain.

In 1710 Archbishop John Sharp of York of the Church of England and Daniel Ernst Jablonski of Prussia began a dialogue hoping for the possible union of their respective churches. They wanted to bring about a junction of the Reformed and Lutheran churches in Prussia through the adoption of the Anglican liturgy and episcopal polity and an organic union between this Prussian church and the Church of England, perhaps including other Protestant churches as well. The progress of this effort surprised even the men most dedicated to it, and it appeared likely that they could forge an association within a short time. Yet, in the end these churchmen were disappointed and their negotiations came to naught. The reasons, however, were not religious in nature; indeed, there seemed to be no religious impediment to the effort at all. Although the ministers of both Queen Anne and King Frederick expressed interest in the discussions, political considerations relating to the English exertions to end the war of Spanish Succession led to the failure.

Urbanization was the child of the industrial revolution. Born in the previous century, urban life rapidly matured in the nineteenth. The growth of industrial centers such as Glasgow placed an unbearable strain on the existing parochial system as people who had been reared in rural ways were thrust into urban situations alien to rural interests. One observer described the movement of the population from country to town as “a flood which swept away all the old relations of urban and rural districts.” The result of this social upheaval was twofold: a widespread attitude of religious disinterest and the appearance of social vices on a large scale. To the staid but wary religious community, urbanization appeared to be the basis of irreligion and moral decadence.

Whitney R. Cross's The Burned-over District:. The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850, first published in 1950 by Cornell University Press, has had a puzzling reception from the scholarly world. On the one hand, its quantity of research and quality of insight earned the book a reputation as one of the principal studies of innovative religion in America. On the other hand, despite the frequency with which historians have cited it, until recently no one has attempted a systematic consideration of its hypotheses and conclusions.

Although the United States had extensive commercial contacts with the Spanish-owned Philippine Islands early in the nineteenth century, interest in them declined sharply by the 1890s. But with the Spanish-American War of 1898 and Commodore George Dewey's defeat of the Spanish fleet at Manila the Philippines reappeared on the American horizon. At the peace negotiations the United States demanded, and received, the islands.

These are days of small books and single volumes. Multi-volume sets are a rare and endangered species. The completion of Horton Davies's five-volume set on Worship and Theology In England is a major achievement in our age, and an uprecedented one in any age. Never before has the worship life of an entire people for four and one-third centuries received such a balanced and careful scrutiny. Over fifteen years of research have borne plentiful and rich fruit. This work of the Henry W. Putnam Professor of Religion at Princeton University marks an achievement in liturgical studies unequalled by living scholars in the English-speaking world.