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This is a short, accessible analysis of Christianity that focuses on its social and cultural diversity as well as its historical dimensions.
Worshipped by 2 billion Christians (and revered by 1.3 billion Muslims), Jesus Christ is the most famous human being ever. Yet how did this man from an obscure backwater in the Roman Empire achieve such extraordinary acclaim? How did religion founded in his name grom to become the most powerful on earth? What has been its relationship through history with that other giant of religions, Islam? In this fast-paced and entertaining book, journalist and historian Stephen Tomkins sets out to provide the answers. Beginning with the life of Jesus, he presents a warts-and-all portrait of the key people, events and movements in Christian history. For every debauched pope, murderous crusader and hate-filled inquisitor, there are glorious examples of heroic self-sacrifice, spiritual enlightenment and social transformation. Despite setbacks and conflict, the church has continued to change and grow, with the result that, at the start of the 21st century, its centre of gravity is moving south into sub-Saharan Africa and South America. The author ends by looking to the future, for the story is far from over. All those wanting to understand where Christianity is going need to learn where it has come from, and in this book they will find a lively and informative guide.
First published in 1976, Paul Johnson’s exceptional study of Christianity has been loved and widely hailed for its intensive research, writing, and magnitude—“a tour de force, one of the most ambitious surveys of the history of Christianity ever attempted and perhaps the most radical” (New York Review of Books). In a highly readable companion to books on faith and history, the scholar and author Johnson has illuminated the Christian world and its fascinating history in a way that no other has. Johnson takes off in the year AD 49 with his namesake the apostle Paul. Thus beginning an ambitious quest to paint the centuries since the founding of a little-known ‘Jesus Sect’, A History of Christianity explores to a great degree the evolution of the Western world. With an unbiased and overall optimistic tone, Johnson traces the fantastic scope of the consequent sects of Christianity and the people who followed them. Information drawn from extensive and varied sources from around the world makes this history as credible as it is reliable. Invaluable understanding of the framework of modern Christianity—and its trials and tribulations throughout history—has never before been contained in such a captivating work.
"From the end of the Second World War until the rise of Gorbachev the division of Europe was the central fact in world politics - for individuals, nations and the different Christian Churches. Amid the ferocious polemics of the Cold War era neutrality was impossible." "The pressures of modernity led to the Second Vatican Council and affected Churches on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Almost all had to adapt to declining congregations, concerns about human rights and women's role in religion, and new attitudes to abortion, contraception and divorce. Yet day-to-day problems in the East and West were utterly different." "In Eastern Europe, the Churches were victims of state control, savage ideological attacks, show trials and occasional physical violence. Critics dwelt on their sometimes inglorious record of compromise and collaboration under fascist regimes, despite the crucial role of the religious resistance in fighting Nazism. Later Church leaders - Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox - often continued to tread a delicate path, but Polish priests helped to oversee the birth of Solidarity, and oppressed nations drew hope from the symbols and ceremonies of their Christian past. Successive Popes, meanwhile, were torn between hatred for Marxism's militant atheism and a pragmatic desire not to endanger the Catholics of Eastern Europe." "The post-war West, by contrast, has seen different countries adapting their own complex arrangements about relations between Church and State. Traditional practices in the great monastic orders, the language of the liturgy and pilgrimages to saints' shrines came under fresh scrutiny, although the charismatic movement proved astonishingly successful. Yet how deeply have the churches come to terms with the fierce winds of modernity? Where religion is tolerated, and even encouraged, do people truly believe what East Europeans know from bitter experience - that 'the religious conscience is an ultimate safeguard of human freedom'?" "Owen Chadwick is General Editor of Penguin's scholarly and comprehensive series The History of the Church and contributed an earlier book, The Reformation. The series starts with the first Disciples. This volume concludes in the late twentieth century - as the Churches struggle to face new global challenges and opportunities."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved