An Introduction to the History of Christianity: From the Early Church to the Enlightenment

An Introduction to the History of Christianity is a beautifully crafted and clearly written introduction to Christianity over its 2,000 year history concentrating on the interraction between the sacred and the secular. This book will adopt an approach radically different to that of many general Church histories in terms of length, structure and presentation. The broad underlying theme of the book will be the interraction between Christianity and the secular world, exploring how the one has shaped and been shaped in its turn by the other. In order to achieve this the book will not attempt to cover the whole of Christian history in detail ( this has been done frequently by others ) but rather it will focus on a number of sepecific chronological periods and themes. Three, two hundred year periods have been chosen as pivotal in the development of Christianity, reflecting the conventional divisions into ancient, medieval and early modern. As well as considering the broad themes of belief, practice, organisation and propagation, it will also examine what Christians have meant by their use of terms like authority, tradition, reform or hierarchy. Manageable in length, this will enable the book to be used either as a general introduction to Christian history or as a starting point for further investigation of one or more periods. To help facilitate this each chapter concludes with a detailed section of suggested further reading.