Infant Baptism in Reformation Geneva: The Shaping of a Community, 1536–1564. By Karen E. Spierling. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2009. x+254 pp. $39.95 paper.

摘要

Unlike many scholarly works, the central thesis of Karen Spierling’s new bookrnis encapsulated neatly in its title. In fact, community formation is the largerrntopic and the topic of baptism in Calvin’s Geneva merely provides the casernstudy. This emphasis in no way diminishes her deep engagement withrnReformed theology of “the other sacrament,” but it does underscore herrnconviction that the development of early Protestant teachings must always bernconsidered within the relevant social context. Her interpretations are clearlyrninfluenced by practice theorists, such as Catherine Bell, who views ritual “asrna vehicle for the construction of relationships of authority and submission,”rnas opposed to the simple expression of such authority (Ritual Perspectivesrnand Dimensions [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997], 83), andrnespecially by Margo Todd’s innovative work on the formation of Reformedrnculture and communities in sixteenth-century Scotland.