Freedom Movement: 500 Years of Reformation by Michael Reeves

I enjoyed reading this short book this morning.

It has an attractively produced kind of magaziney feel with illustrations and break out bits of text and although it raises the most profound issues (how can I be happy and right with God) it is an easy read.

It's not in-you-face evangelistic (no prayer to pray at the end!) but a believer or an unbeliever could read it with profit.

It covers in brief Luther's monastic life and theological breakthrough and something of his home life (his bowling alley and private brewery and the loss of his daughters) and there's something on Tyndale and the Bible, Bunyan, the Oxford Martyrs and the impact of the Reformation especially on Wilberforce and Shaftsbury.

I have always thought of Bunyan as a tinker and I was interested to see that Reeves calls him "a metalworker by trade... [who] travelled from village to village with a 60lb anvil and hefty toolkit on his back: it became a model for the great burden of guilt his Pilgrim carries on his back." (p16)

Recommended.

We are planning to give out free copies when we host A Monk's Tale.

10Publishing, 2017, 37pp. Available from 10ofThose from £4.99 to £1 depending on number ordered.