Christianity : the first three thousand years /
Diarmaid MacCulloch.
- 1st American ed.
- New York : Viking, 2010.
- xvii, 1161 p., [32] p. of plates : ill. (some col.), maps, music ; 25 cm.
Originally published as: A history of Christianity : the first three thousand years. London : Allen Lane, 2009.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [1017]-1112) and index.
Part I : a millennium of beginnings -- Part II : one church, one faith, one Lord? -- Part III : vanishing futures : east and south -- Part IV : the unpredictable rise of Rome -- Part V : orthodoxy : the imperial faith -- Part IV : western Christianity dismembered -- Part VII : God in the dock.
We live in a time of tremendous religious awareness, when both believers and non-believers are deeply engaged by questions of religion and tradition. This ambitious book ranges back to the origins of the Hebrew Bible and covers the world, following the three main strands of the Christian faith, to teach modern readers how Jesus' message spread and how the New Testament was formed. We follow the Christian story to all corners of the globe, filling in often neglected accounts of conversions and confrontations in Africa and Asia. And we discover the roots of the faith that galvanized America, charting the rise of the evangelical movement from its origins in Germany and England. We meet monks and crusaders, heretics and saints, slave traders and abolitionists, and discover Christianity's essential role in driving the Enlightenment and the Age of Exploration, and shaping the course of World Wars I and II.