“The Song in the Night,” date unknown. Sermons—Miscellaneous, Q-Z, Box 2, Folder 14, Carl F. H. Henry Collection, Gleason Archer Archives, Deerfield, Illinois. This story, of the angels and the shepherds, opens at night. It is the story of darkness and fright, which ends in exultation and jubilee. Life has many chapters like that, but…

Unlike the magisterial reformers, their radical counterparts were more suspicious of the role of secular government, and their approaches to worldly authority appear on a spectrum from theocracy to entire separation. Many Anabaptists ultimately rejected politics and argued that church and state must be entirely distinct. One who disallowed any place for Christians in secular…

Throughout the history of the church, prayer has been seen as an indispensable spiritual discipline, and this remained true during the era of the Reformation. In this encouragement to prayer, Lutheran pastor Johann Spangenberg (1484-1550) calls on his audience to reach out to the Lord, knowing with confidence that he is listening and ready to…

The intimate relationship between the church and the kingdom presented in the Scriptures was a prominent theme in many sixteenth-century writings. In various ways, its final revelation was hoped and longed for, while its present, partial blessings were tasted and enjoyed. In this selection from her exposition of the Lord’s Prayer, German Reformed writer Katharina…

Few subjects were as controversial during the sixteenth century as the doctrines of the sacraments. While most reformers agreed that there were two true sacraments—baptism and the Lord’s Supper—rather than the Catholic seven, how these two sacraments were understood amongst the Protestants was a source of debate and division. That the right administration of the…