church history

The version of Christian history I grew up with hit fast-forward after John’s Revelation and held it until the late 20th century.

Life in the Roman and Byzantine empires was utterly theatrical.

Not long after graduating from college, I found myself editing Christian History magazine, a richly illustrated quarterly where most of the contributing writers were academics but most of the readers were not. Honestly, I had more in common with our readers than with our authors. On my way to a B.A. in English literature, I had taken one class in Christian thought, one in Western civ, and zero in church history. I also had basically no exposure to Christian traditions other than evangelical Protestantism.

Margaret Bendroth and John Fea both contend that Christians need to encounter the past in all its complexity and humanity.

Satan has had an awfully good 2014. He might get a statue on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol. Actually, he probably won’t, but the New York-based Satanic Temple has proposed to have the goat-headed image of Baphomet built so that it can be seen by all visitors to the state’s seat of government. 

Robert Wilken's historical survey of Christianity is impressive, accessible and lively. It also leaves out a lot.

Luminaries praise Paula Fredriksen's Sin as gripping and magnificent. Her book on Augustine was both of these things. This one isn't.

Jay Rubenstein offers a lively and well-researched history of the First Crusade. He has a gift for making thousand-year-old history both exciting and relevant.

In this deeply researched and illuminating monograph, Elizabeth Clark examines the development of early church history as an academic field in the U.S.

With its long coastline, rugged mountains and haunting sand dunes, Oman is a paradise for desert lovers, hikers and boaters. Muscat, the capital city, is a gem—its arched white buildings and flat roofs squeezed between the blue ocean and black mountains. Yet call me an egghead, but what I remember most from a trip to Oman is a booklet I read there with an ominous title: Body Count: A Quantitative Review of Political Violence Across World Civilizations (2009). In it, author Naveed Sheikh claims that “the Christian civilization emerges as the most violent and genocidal in the world history.” Compared to Islam, Christianity is a clear winner: 31.94 million deaths by Muslims to 177.94 million deaths by Christians.