History never repeats itself, but patterns of human thought and behavior repeat themselves all the time. William Faulkner captured it well when he said that “the past is never dead; it’s not even past.” And that simple fact informs the work of both Carlos Eire and Brad S. Gregory in their studies of the sixteenth century and its turmoil. As Gregory notes in
The Unintended Reformation,
“what transpired five centuries ago [in Europe] continues today” to influence the lives of people globally. This applies whether they’re religious or not, and whether they know it or not. Eire says much the same in his
Reformations.
He argues that “no Westerner can ever hope to know him- or herself, or the world he or she lives in, without first understanding this crucial turning point in history.”