Brad S Gregory
Biographic Data
| ID | 1086667 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brad S Gregory |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brad S |
| FAMILY NAME | Gregory |
| SIGNATURE | GREGORY B S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Notre Dame |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4462-0060 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 45 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Acquisitiveness, Asceticism, Affluence, and the Anthropocene
The history of Western Christianity is indispensable to explaining the advent of the Anthropocene because of the outsized historical role of Western commercial, industrial, and consumerist capitalism in precipitating our current global environmental realities. The late anthropologist Marshall Sahlins contrasted hunter-gatherers’ paradoxical affluence of “desiring little” with the modern Western consumerist affluence of “producing much.” Sahlins c…
The End of Macro‐Narratives of Progress? History, Christian Theology, and the Anthropocene
The dominant modern Western macro‐narrative of historical change from the Middle Ages to the present has been a positive one of progress, all things considered. Most of those critical of the trajectory’s imperfect realization nevertheless defend its central ideals and the extension of opportunities to unjustly excluded persons. Such ideals include the politically protected right of individuals to live as they wish and to pursue material prosperit…
History and Politics as if We Still Lived in the Holocene
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021), by David Graeber and David Wengrow, is a monumental, boldly revisionist study of the human past from the last ice age to the present. It is geared explicitly toward the present in political terms and seeks to explain how primordial forms of human freedom were lost in ways that resulted in our current structures of violence and domination. The authors explore a vast range of prehistoric, an…
The Council of Trent
The Council of Trent: Reform and Controversy in Europe and Beyond (1545–1700). Edited by Wim François and Violet Soen. Refo 500 Academic Studies 35. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2018. 3 vols. €250.00 hardcover. - Volume 89 Issue 1
Formations of Belief
The Early Modern European Past and the Contemporary American Present
The one or the many? Narrating and evaluating Western secularization
Secularization in the Western world is not a contrived combination of disconnected phenomena. It is a complex, long-term, multi-faceted process in which the central place of Christianity has greatly diminished in all areas of life since the sixteenth century, and which derives from the enduring doctrinal disagreements and recurrent religio-political conflicts of the Reformation era. Because late medieval Christianity was embedded in and intended …
Why the Academy Needs Theological Discourse
Christian Ideas in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
The revival of intellectual history in recent years, to which the series Ideas in Context has contributed, owes much to showing how ideas, beliefs, and aspirations inform all areas of human life. In the Reformation era, disagreements about Christian ideas disrupted society at large. Nearly all studies of Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries must address the consequences of these disagreements, including the books noted here b…
The Inescapability of "Church" in the History of Christianity
Laurie Maffly-Kipp's insightful address about the perils and promise of church history concludes with an invitation "to begin a conversation" about how "the 'church history' of this new century can be both creatively forward-looking and respectful of the lineages that have brought us here." I offer here some brief remarks on her address as a small contribution to that conversation
The Unintended Reformation
In a work that is as much about the present as the past, Brad Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation and traces the way it shaped the modern condition over the course of the following five centuries. A hyperpluralism of religious and secular beliefs, an absence of any substantive common good, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, consumerism—all these, Gregory argues, were long-term effects of a movement …
Author's Reply
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Impact of the European Reformation
No Room for God? History, Science, Metaphysics, and the Study of Religion
Despite widespread beliefs to the contrary within the secular intellectual culture of the modern academy, scientific findings are not necessarily incompatible with religious truth claims. The latter include claims about the reality of God as understood in traditional Christianity and the possibility of divinely worked miracles. Intellectual history, philosophy, and science's own self-understanding undermine the claim that science entails or need …
The Cambridge History of Christianity
This authoritative volume presents the history of Christianity from the eve of the Protestant Reformation to the height of Catholic Reform. In addition to in-depth coverage of the politics and theology of various reform movements in the sixteenth century, this book discusses at length the impact of the permanent schism on Latin Christendom, the Catholic responses to it, and the influence on the development of the Orthodox churches. This comprehen…
The Other Confessional History
The rejection of confessional commitments in the study of religion in favor of social-scientific or humanistic theories of religion has produced not unbiased accounts, but reductionist explanations of religious belief and practice with embedded secular biases that preclude the understanding of religious believer-practitioners. These biases derive from assumptions of undemonstrable, dogmatic, metaphysical naturalism or its functional equivalent, a…
Salvation at Stake
Is Small Beautiful? Microhistory and the History of Everyday Life
Books reviewed in this article: The History of Everyday Life. Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life Edited by Alf Lüdtke, translated by William Templer Jeux d'Échelles. La micro-analyse àl'expérience Edited by Jacques Revel
The ‘True and Zealouse Seruice of God’
It appeareth (I saye) what an exacte lyfe the trew lyfe of a Christian is: which is a continuall resistance of all sinne, bothe in thought, word and deede, and a performance or exercise of all good woorkes, that possiblie he can deuise to doe. God requireth at our handes, that we should make his lawes and preceptes our studie and cogitations: that we should think of them continuallie, & meditate vpon them bothe day and night, at home and abrode, …
Is Small Beautiful? Microhistory and the History of Everyday Life
Books reviewed in this article: The History of Everyday Life. Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life Edited by Alf Lüdtke, translated by William Templer Jeux d'Échelles. La micro-analyse àl'expérience Edited by Jacques Revel
The Other Confessional History
The rejection of confessional commitments in the study of religion in favor of social-scientific or humanistic theories of religion has produced not unbiased accounts, but reductionist explanations of religious belief and practice with embedded secular biases that preclude the understanding of religious believer-practitioners. These biases derive from assumptions of undemonstrable, dogmatic, metaphysical naturalism or its functional equivalent, a…
The ‘True and Zealouse Seruice of God’
It appeareth (I saye) what an exacte lyfe the trew lyfe of a Christian is: which is a continuall resistance of all sinne, bothe in thought, word and deede, and a performance or exercise of all good woorkes, that possiblie he can deuise to doe. God requireth at our handes, that we should make his lawes and preceptes our studie and cogitations: that we should think of them continuallie, & meditate vpon them bothe day and night, at home and abrode, …
History and Politics as if We Still Lived in the Holocene
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021), by David Graeber and David Wengrow, is a monumental, boldly revisionist study of the human past from the last ice age to the present. It is geared explicitly toward the present in political terms and seeks to explain how primordial forms of human freedom were lost in ways that resulted in our current structures of violence and domination. The authors explore a vast range of prehistoric, an…
No Room for God? History, Science, Metaphysics, and the Study of Religion
Despite widespread beliefs to the contrary within the secular intellectual culture of the modern academy, scientific findings are not necessarily incompatible with religious truth claims. The latter include claims about the reality of God as understood in traditional Christianity and the possibility of divinely worked miracles. Intellectual history, philosophy, and science's own self-understanding undermine the claim that science entails or need …
The ‘True and Zealouse Seruice of God’
It appeareth (I saye) what an exacte lyfe the trew lyfe of a Christian is: which is a continuall resistance of all sinne, bothe in thought, word and deede, and a performance or exercise of all good woorkes, that possiblie he can deuise to doe. God requireth at our handes, that we should make his lawes and preceptes our studie and cogitations: that we should think of them continuallie, & meditate vpon them bothe day and night, at home and abrode, …
Is Small Beautiful? Microhistory and the History of Everyday Life
Books reviewed in this article: The History of Everyday Life. Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life Edited by Alf Lüdtke, translated by William Templer Jeux d'Échelles. La micro-analyse àl'expérience Edited by Jacques Revel
Salvation at Stake
The Other Confessional History
The rejection of confessional commitments in the study of religion in favor of social-scientific or humanistic theories of religion has produced not unbiased accounts, but reductionist explanations of religious belief and practice with embedded secular biases that preclude the understanding of religious believer-practitioners. These biases derive from assumptions of undemonstrable, dogmatic, metaphysical naturalism or its functional equivalent, a…
The Cambridge History of Christianity
This authoritative volume presents the history of Christianity from the eve of the Protestant Reformation to the height of Catholic Reform. In addition to in-depth coverage of the politics and theology of various reform movements in the sixteenth century, this book discusses at length the impact of the permanent schism on Latin Christendom, the Catholic responses to it, and the influence on the development of the Orthodox churches. This comprehen…
No Room for God? History, Science, Metaphysics, and the Study of Religion
Despite widespread beliefs to the contrary within the secular intellectual culture of the modern academy, scientific findings are not necessarily incompatible with religious truth claims. The latter include claims about the reality of God as understood in traditional Christianity and the possibility of divinely worked miracles. Intellectual history, philosophy, and science's own self-understanding undermine the claim that science entails or need …
The Impact of the European Reformation
The Unintended Reformation
In a work that is as much about the present as the past, Brad Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation and traces the way it shaped the modern condition over the course of the following five centuries. A hyperpluralism of religious and secular beliefs, an absence of any substantive common good, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, consumerism—all these, Gregory argues, were long-term effects of a movement …
Author's Reply
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Why the Academy Needs Theological Discourse
Christian Ideas in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
The revival of intellectual history in recent years, to which the series Ideas in Context has contributed, owes much to showing how ideas, beliefs, and aspirations inform all areas of human life. In the Reformation era, disagreements about Christian ideas disrupted society at large. Nearly all studies of Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries must address the consequences of these disagreements, including the books noted here b…
The Inescapability of "Church" in the History of Christianity
Laurie Maffly-Kipp's insightful address about the perils and promise of church history concludes with an invitation "to begin a conversation" about how "the 'church history' of this new century can be both creatively forward-looking and respectful of the lineages that have brought us here." I offer here some brief remarks on her address as a small contribution to that conversation
The one or the many? Narrating and evaluating Western secularization
Secularization in the Western world is not a contrived combination of disconnected phenomena. It is a complex, long-term, multi-faceted process in which the central place of Christianity has greatly diminished in all areas of life since the sixteenth century, and which derives from the enduring doctrinal disagreements and recurrent religio-political conflicts of the Reformation era. Because late medieval Christianity was embedded in and intended …
Formations of Belief
The Early Modern European Past and the Contemporary American Present
The Council of Trent
The Council of Trent: Reform and Controversy in Europe and Beyond (1545–1700). Edited by Wim François and Violet Soen. Refo 500 Academic Studies 35. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2018. 3 vols. €250.00 hardcover. - Volume 89 Issue 1
The End of Macro‐Narratives of Progress? History, Christian Theology, and the Anthropocene
The dominant modern Western macro‐narrative of historical change from the Middle Ages to the present has been a positive one of progress, all things considered. Most of those critical of the trajectory’s imperfect realization nevertheless defend its central ideals and the extension of opportunities to unjustly excluded persons. Such ideals include the politically protected right of individuals to live as they wish and to pursue material prosperit…
History and Politics as if We Still Lived in the Holocene
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021), by David Graeber and David Wengrow, is a monumental, boldly revisionist study of the human past from the last ice age to the present. It is geared explicitly toward the present in political terms and seeks to explain how primordial forms of human freedom were lost in ways that resulted in our current structures of violence and domination. The authors explore a vast range of prehistoric, an…
Acquisitiveness, Asceticism, Affluence, and the Anthropocene
The history of Western Christianity is indispensable to explaining the advent of the Anthropocene because of the outsized historical role of Western commercial, industrial, and consumerist capitalism in precipitating our current global environmental realities. The late anthropologist Marshall Sahlins contrasted hunter-gatherers’ paradoxical affluence of “desiring little” with the modern Western consumerist affluence of “producing much.” Sahlins c…
Philosophy (12 works) · History (11 works) · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity (11 works) · Political science (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Theology (5 works) · Art history (4 works) · Christianity (4 works) · Classics (4 works)