... how much we enjoyed it and at so many levels."
Those that Tyndale has joined together in this year of his quincentenary are a very mixed bunch, and the aim of this journal is to demonstrate just how mixed it is. We all of us come to Tyndale via our private or professional interests, and tend to assume that he belongs to our immediate coterie. It comes as a bit of a surprise, therefore, to find Tyndalians who see him as a picturesque spy out in the cold, who would never think of darkening the inside of a church themselves; or students of late medieval English who find in his prose and translations the most telling clues about what's going on in the language.
But beyond that diversity of interests there is a man who is not only an important literary and historical figure but also a newly found friend and exemplar. Thousands of ordinary folk, the people of England Tyndale had in mind, and at heart - in need of the gospel and without it - have come to find in him a hero for our time, the model for the hour. His straight talking, his singleness of mind, his sheer courage and uncomplaining acceptance of his lot, and above all his moral probity and Christian love, have endeared him to a generation that is hungry for such virtues. He is a perpetual challenge to the false gods of church and state and media that seem all-powerful and securely corrupt. His single stand, his willing death, and even the unfairness of his overlooked merit, have been heartening to us this year, to such an extent that people who are normally and decently shy are able to say that 'any friend of Tyndale is a friend of mine.'
At least, that is one attempted explanation of the amazing response to the Tyndale celebrations up and down the country, and all around the world. Snippets from your letters in this issue should bear that out.
This journal is for us all to share information, views, and questions relating to matters not only historical but also to Tyndale's ongoing work, however we might understand that, and will be as exciting and diverse as its readers choose to make it. Our expectation is that it will appear quarterly, that its articles will be shorter though not slighter than those in the annual journal Reformation, and that it will read well.