How did the English Reformation, with its illiberal, intolerant beginnings, lay the groundwork for the Enlightenment—free will, liberty of conscience, religious toleration, constitutionalism, and all the rest? In his provocative rewriting of the history of liberalism, James Simpson uncovers its unexpected debt to Protestant evangelicalism.

A subtle and helpful corrective to ahistorical Whiggish accounts of how we got here, and one that has significant, if largely unexplored, implications for the present.

This is ultimately a hopeful book, and those seeking liberalism’s death knell or swan song should look elsewhere…This fresh view of the Reformation will—if Simpson has put his pieces together in the right order, and I think he has—liberate us…from historical narratives that have prevailed in the West for over five hundred years.

As Simpson’s book ably demonstrates, by the end of the 17th century mainstream Protestantism had indeed become one of the champions of liberalism and a root of modernity…The scope of Simpson’s analysis is impressive. He moves well beyond the literary realm to provide deft accounts of historical developments. His sections on the divisions within Elizabethan Protestantism are particularly instructive…A major achievement.

An important and erudite book from a major scholar, one that takes issue in a critically self-conscious fashion with the way historical periods have been conventionally formulated, while arguing that we come to understand the cultural history of liberalism more clearly by recognizing its continuities with the religious legacies of medieval culture.

A breathtaking tour de force of literary and historical analysis that both confirms the basic pedigree—liberalism stems from the Reformation—and contradicts it in the novel twist that liberalism is the misbegotten and unforeseen child of evangelical religion, born precisely in order to discipline and contain it…An exciting, even compelling read, and in its breadth and argumentative brilliance will surely continue to engage scholars in the field for a long time to come.

Substantial and challenging…It is impossible to encapsulate here just how compelling and relevant this book is for our troubled times as Simpson shows that religious liberty was born through the pain of a post-Reformation world.

One of the best books I have ever read…Will provoke readers to contemplate the terms of their own faiths (or absence thereof), while revealing how various histories, when more fully understood, animate the world we live in today…What a monument (though a homely and familiar one) of humanist scholarship and cultural criticism…Magnificent.

Simpson has given us a landmark literary history of the Reformation, as well as a forgotten history of our liberties. A rare feat of scholarship and an exhilarating read.

An utterly gripping and monumental book, addressing the seventeenth-century revolutions and their implications for the Enlightenment and liberal modernity. This is a grand narrative, with extraordinary scope and range. Permanent Revolution is an intense, exuberant engagement with the unintended outcomes of the Reformation.

A provocative study of the English Reformation's transformation of literature, theology, and politics…Masterful.

A valuable contribution to describing the birth of Liberalism through the strife of the Reformation…Simpson has written a real Gesamtkunstwerk.

Erudite and fascinating. I learned from every page, not only about early modernity but about our own liberal predicament.

James Simpson is a renowned scholar of the English Middle Ages and the Reformation. He is the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University, and the author of many books, including the critically acclaimed Burning to Read.