Book Review: Nurturing Faith: A Practical Theology for Educating Christians

Abstract

basic tenets of the faith. Christianity also impacted the marking of time with the services of the Divine Office and the celebration of Mass punctuating the day and the week. The sounding of bells for services created a distinctive soundscape, stirring people to devotion even when distant from the church, while the emergence of mechanical clocks by the end of the 13th century gradually standardized notions of time (pp. 225–31). The cycle of the year was sacralized by the commemoration of Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection. Likewise, the celebration of saints’ feast days added colour and respite to the drabness of the daily grind. Other rituals, like Rogation or Corpus Christi processions, saw religion take to the streets and helped foster a sense of parochial identity, sometimes in opposition to that of neighbouring communities. However, the impact of religion was felt most intensely in those rites that marked key moments in the human lifecycle. Orme identifies these as the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, marriage, and unction and the rituals of churching women after childbirth and the burial rites. The parish church, he concludes, was for most people ‘the scene of all the major events of human life. The first “epiphany” after birth at baptism, first confession and first communion in adolescence, marriage, churching, and funeral punctuated by innumerable visits to services’ (p. 347). The final chapter examines the impact of the Reformation on this comprehensive belief system. By emphasizing the gradual and hesitant nature of religious change from the 1530s onwards, Orme counsels against viewing it in apocalyptic terms, a view some readers may find challenging. However, change was difficult and sometimes resented and resisted as events like the 1549 ‘Prayer Book’ rebellion demonstrated. Orme has produced a masterly account of a vanished world in which religion formed part of the warp and weft of daily life. It will be interesting to see how his insights and conclusions will be applied, perhaps even to the situation in medieval Ireland.