The Backstory:
Reformation
A Solejourn is designed to be immersive and educational.
To help you make the most of your experience, we recommend engaging with a few thoughtfully selected pieces of media before departure.
Suggested Reading & Watching
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Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet
Lyndal Roper
From “one of the best of the new [Martin Luther] biographers” (The New Yorker), a portrait of the complicated founding father of the Protestant Reformation, whose intellectual assault on Catholicism transformed Christianity and changed the course of world history.
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Calvin
Bruce Gordon
During the glory days of the French Renaissance, young John Calvin (1509-1564) experienced a profound conversion to the faith of the Reformation. For the rest of his days he lived out the implications of that transformation—as exile, inspired reformer, and ultimately the dominant figure of the Protestant Reformation. Calvin’s vision of the Christian religion has inspired many volumes of analysis, but this engaging biography examines a remarkable life. Bruce Gordon presents Calvin as a human being, a man at once brilliant, arrogant, charismatic, unforgiving, generous, and shrewd.
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Protestants: The Faith That Made The Modern World
Alec Ryrie
Five hundred years ago a stubborn German monk challenged the Pope with a radical vision of what Christianity could be. The revolution he set in motion toppled governments, upended social norms and transformed millions of people's understanding of their relationship with God. In this dazzling history, Alec Ryrie makes the case that we owe many of the rights and freedoms we have cause to take for granted--from free speech to limited government--to our Protestant roots.
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Christianity's Dangerous Idea
Alister McGrath
The radical idea that individuals could interpret the Bible for themselves spawned a revolution that is still being played out on the world stage today. This innovation lies at the heart of Protestantism's remarkable instability and adaptability. World-renowned scholar Alister McGrath sheds new light on the fascinating figures and movements that continue to inspire debate and division across the full spectrum of Protestant churches and communities worldwide.
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Women and the Reformations: A Global History
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
In this rich and definitive study, renowned scholar Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks explores the history of women and the Reformations in full for the first time. Wiesner-Hanks travels the globe, examining well-known figures like Teresa of Avila, Elizabeth I, and Anne Hutchinson, as well as women whose stories are only now emerging. Along the way, we meet converts in Japan, Spanish nuns in the Philippines, and saints in Ethiopia and America. Wiesner-Hanks explores women’s experiences as monarchs, mothers, migrants, martyrs, mystics, and missionaries, revealing that the story of the Reformations is no longer simply European―and that women played a vital role.
Medieval Lives: Birth, Marriage, Death
BBC Documentary
It's been said that "The past is another country. They do things differently there". It's impossible to truly understand the protestant reformers without understanding the living conditions of medieval people. The soil from which they sprang. In this three part documentary, historian, Helen Castor, immerses us in the lives 15th century people in Europe. Hearing the voices medieval people in the great passages of life, we come to understand their fears, hopes, joys, trials, and what they believed about God.
Empires: Martin Luther
PBS Documentary
This PBS documentary on the life of Martin Luther is an excellent primer for the first 8 days of our trip. A young man's journey from stern childhood to tortured youth to the stunning realization that God's grace saves fallen humanity finds its culmination in an audacious break with religious authority and tradition. This break caused and earthquake in the world of faith and a revolution in human thought about everything. If you are more of a watcher than a reader this is your best intro to they man we'll track through this trip.