This study describes the origins of early Reformed confessional development using the example of those congregations of religious refugees most heavily influenced by John Laski: the congregation at Emden and the Dutch and French Strangers’ Churches in London. At its center are questions about the congregation as the location of ecclesiology. The outlines of Laski’s theology--which viewed the congregation as the communion of the body of Christ--are described in comparison to the approaches of other Reformers and in relationship to daily reality in the second half of the sixteenth century. Working from a rich base of source materials, the author discusses the development of teachings on church offices and the practice of church discipline, thus illuminating the self-understanding of the three congregations. Becker shows how reciprocal influences and attempts to conform led to the unification of doctrine and community life within these congregations.

Anyone wishing to know what has been written on the Pennsylvania Germans will welcome the reappearance of this classic bibliography. Anyone aspiring to a command of the literature on the Pennsylvania Germans must master its contents; and anyone doing research in Pennsylvania-German genealogy must have it at his side. It is basic, and no efficient research can be done without it. Divided into subject categories, the bibliography contains citations to all published writings dealing with the Germans in colonial North America (chiefly Pennsylvania), whether in the form of general histories, magazine articles, newspapers, pamphlets, mug-books, church records, town, county, and state histories, or printed genealogies, and it attempts to give as complete an account of the printed source material as possible. It is in effect the starting point in Pennsylvania-German research because it acquaints the researcher with everything that had been published up through the cut-off year of 1933.