Jenkins, Gary W. 1961-

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Jenkins, Gary W. 1961-

PERSONAL:

Born April 14, 1961. Education: Manahath Christian College, B.R.E.; Reformed Episcopal Seminary, M.Div.; University of Maryland, M.A.; Rutgers University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—History Department, Eastern University, 1300 Eagle Rd., St. Davids, PA 19087-3696.

CAREER:

Eastern University, St. Davids, PA, John H. Van Gorden Professor in History.

WRITINGS:

John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer, Ashgate (Burlington, VT), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Gary W. Jenkins was born April 14, 1961. He earned a B.R.E. from Manahath Christian College, and continued his education with a master's degree in divinity from the Reformed Episcopal Seminary, a second master's degree from the University of Maryland, and ultimately a doctorate from Rutgers University. Jenkins serves on the faculty of Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, where he is the John H. Van Gorden Professor in History. Jenkins's primary areas of research and academic interest include late medieval, renaissance, and reformation intellectual and ecclesiastical history, Byzantium, and Christian Orthodoxy. He has taught a number of courses on varied topics, including the heritage of Western civilization, history from the early Middle Ages up through the reformation, the age of enlightenment, the Byzantine empire, the history and theology of Eastern Orthodoxy, and ancient, medieval, and modern Gnostics. He is also the author of John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer, which was released by Ashgate in 2006.

John Jewel and the English National Church gives readers a fresh look at John Jewel, who lived from 1522 to 1571 and was the thirty-sixth Bishop of Salisbury. Jenkins disagrees with the commonly held view of Jewel among Protestant historians, who consider him to be a forward-thinking religious figure on the whole. Instead, Jenkins addresses Jewel as a man split between his public life as a church leader of little imagination (if great enthusiasm), whose scholarly achievements within the confines of his role were limited, and his private life as a man with his own religious beliefs that may or may not have corresponded with the opinions that he preached as bishop. In addition, he was a major defender of the Elizabethan settlement and frequently published items that supported it, along with the decisions of both the monarch and the archbishop.

Jenkins offers a great deal of information about the period in history in order to put Jewel and his decisions into proper prospective, paying particular attention to the reformations of the time. Of his thorough treatment, Andreas Loewe, reviewing for the Catholic Historical Review, commented that "at times Jenkins is too generous with his material: the short biographical summaries of key players, events, and places, give the work an encyclopedic feel." He also addresses the question of which side Jewel supported in a region that was often divided between two popular religions, noting how he maintained as balanced an attitude toward Protestantism and Catholicism as possible. The attitudes of his parishioners, rather than being resentful at his refusal to maintain a stand, seemed appreciative of his efforts to remain in the good graces of both sides of the religious gap.

In private, however, according to Jenkins, Jewel held a very different set of beliefs. Rather than walking a fine line between religious factions or maintaining an outward allegiance to the church leadership and the monarch, he was actually in favor of major reforms within the church that would include the unification of the two sides of the debate. Jenkins goes on to discuss the fact that the beliefs that Jewel was forced to espouse in public actually were contrary to his own theories and desires. Bracy V. Hill II, in a review for the Journal of Church and State, opined that "Jenkins's analyses of Jewel and his career appear well-founded and insightful. The work evinces the limitations of previous treatments of Jewel, particularly their one-dimensional depiction of this complex character and a complicated world." Sharon Arnoult, in a review for Renaissance Quarterly, declared that "Jenkins's analyses are perceptive, nuanced, and convincing: he does more than any previous author in assembling a portrait of Jewel."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Catholic Historical Review, April 1, 2008, Andreas Loewe, review of John Jewel and the English National Church: The Dilemmas of an Erastian Reformer, p. 382.

Church History, December 1, 2007, Constance Furey, review of John Jewel and the English National Church, p. 850.

English Historical Review, September 1, 2007, Rosamund Oates, review of John Jewel and the English National Church, p. 1083.

Journal of British Studies, July 1, 2007, Michael Pasquarello, review of John Jewel and the English National Church, p. 656.

Journal of Church and State, January 1, 2008, Bracy V. Hill, review of John Jewel and the English National Church, p. 169.

Reference & Research Book News, August 1, 2006, review of John Jewel and the English National Church.

Renaissance Quarterly, spring, 2007, Sharon Arnoult, review of John Jewel and the English National Church, p. 276.