John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer

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John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. By Gary W. Jenkins. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006. viii + 293pp. $99.95

In this revisionist work, Gary W. Jenkins rejects past images of John Jewel as a forward-thinking theologian as previously held by some Protestant historians. Instead, Jenkins recasts Jewel (Bishop of Salisbury) as a protean church leader who demonstrated little genius in his scholarly work, showing "more fervor than imagination" (p. 2), and who arose as a leading apologist for Elizabeth and the English church of the Elizabethan Settlement.

Jenkins ties Jewel's ambivalent …