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Marc R. Forster, David M. Luebke. Hometown Religion: Regimes of Coexistence in Early Modern Westphalia., The American Historical Review, Volume 123, Issue 1, February 2018, Pages 316–317, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/123.1.316
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David M. Luebke’s excellent study of religious coexistence in early modern Westphalia makes an important contribution to our understanding of the complexity of religious practices in post-Reformation Germany. Central to Hometown Religion is the concept of “religious regimes.” These regimes were “modes of social interaction that were both upheld and constrained in everyday life by shared assumptions, points of doctrinal consensus, accustomed behavior, and sometimes even laws and formal agreements” (18). This concept means that Luebke’s study ranges widely, examining local religious practice, political interactions, Church reform from above, and the life and experience of the clergy in the parishes.
The book is based on extensive archival research in the archives of the prince-bishopric of Münster. This territory was traumatized by the “Anabaptist Kingdom” of Münster in 1535, an example to rulers and religious leaders everywhere of the dangers of religious radicalism. The “kingdom” was suppressed by an alliance of Catholics and Lutherans, leading to an ongoing sense that the established confessions needed to cooperate against future outbreaks of radicalism. Münster, like many ecclesiastical territories in Germany, was dominated by the regional nobility, which controlled the cathedral chapter and generally elected bishops from among themselves. Rarely supporters of church reform endeavors or paragons of clerical celibacy, this group helped create conditions for religious fluidity throughout most of the sixteenth century. The parish clergy in the sixteenth century was also locally embedded, both in the ways they served their parishes and in their personal lives, as many of them lived with their “concubines.” By the time of the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, Lutheran and Calvinist ideas had come to the region and “Protestant” ideas and religious practices were found everywhere, from the capital city of Münster to the smaller market towns.
