A History of Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch

His last book, The Reformation, was chosen by dozens of publications as Best Book of the Year & won the Nat'l Book Critics Circle Award. The son of an Anglican clergyman, MacCulloch writes with feeling about faith.

We live in a time of tremendous religious awareness, when both believers & non-believers are engaged by questions of religion & tradition, seeking to understand the violence sometimes perpetrated in the name of God. This book encompasses all of intellectual history-we meet monks & crusaders, heretics & saints, slave traders & abolitionists, & discover Christianity's essential role in driving the Enlightenment & the age of exploration, & shaping the course of WWI & WWII. It discovers the roots of the faith that galvanized America, charting the rise of the evangelical movement from its origins in Germany & England. It follows the Christian story to all corners of the globe, filling in often neglected accounts of conversions & confrontations in Africa & Asia. Ambitious, it ranges back to the origins of the Hebrew Bible & covers the world, following the three main strands of the Christian faith.Ĭhristianity will teach modern readers things that have been lost in time about how Jesus' message spread & how the New Testament was formed. Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity is such a book. Once in a generation a historian will redefine his field, producing a book that demands to be read-a product of electrifying scholarship conveyed with commanding skill.

The author of The Reformation returns with the definitive history of Christianity for our time.

A History of Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch