A review by ory12
The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 by Eamon Duffy

challenging emotional informative inspiring sad slow-paced

5.0

It’s biased. But it’s factual and his conclusions are convincing based on the facts. The people of England lost their religion and culture all within 50 years. It’s the equivalent of what communist Russia did to its culture or probably even more so the Cultural revolution of China. Ancient symbols, meaning, and community structure swept away. His argument is convincing that the majority of English people didn’t want it to happen but were complacent in following what the regimes did, but only because they had no option. I’ve learned two things.
1. The Church of England  was no longer  an Apostolic Church according to the Cyprianic definition of Apostolic Sucession probably within fifty years of the break with Rome. 
2. It’s a phenomenal case study of what not to do during reform, no matter how needed it is.

Mirroring that second point, I think it gave me as a reader a lot of ideas and a good foundation to properly inculturate the Gospel. Missionaries should in many senses try to do what the reformers did. Create a nation church with autonomy/patrimony and unique cultural Christianity that is faithful to Christ, the apostolic church (the reformers didn’t try to do this though) and the culture it’s in.