The Faith: A History of Christianity

I just finished reading large portions of Brian Moynahan's book. I highly recommend it. What I'm finding is that Moynahan tells us the good that the church did, as well as the bad. It's balanced and fair for the most part, implicating both Catholics and Protestants in their crimes, and also praising them for the good things they did. In any case, this is not a one sided history of Christianity. It shares how clerics, friars, priests and Protestants argued over things like the Inquisition, Crusades, the witch hunts, the conquering of the Americas, the slavery of African peoples, and how there were various Christian responses, both good and bad, to Stalin and Hitler. As I read this book it becomes clearer to me that the history of the church is a history of humans groping for truth, moral truth. The church learned it like the rest of us do, through trial and error. They argued for it. They learned from their mistakes. And the church is still learning from her mistakes. We all do. It presents the history of the church in human terms. Christianity does not look like a divine institution at all when you understand her history! The history of the church looks entirely like a human enterprise. There is no real evidence it's a divine institution. If there was one lack in my education it was in the area of church history. I had a two semester class in this subject as an undergraduate, and another two semester class in it for graduate school. Since my focus wasn't in that area I took the required courses. But as I remember them, they lacked in telling the whole story about the church. Yes, we read about the Crusades, and the Inquisition, but not much about slavery and the witch hunts. The focus was on theological doctrine and the progress of Christianity through missionary efforts. Among evangelicals, the whole progress of the church after the introduction of heresies in the 2nd century A.D. is seen to lead up to the restoration of a true understanding of the Bible once again, among true Christians in the 20th Century church, and beyond. And so the history of the church is a history of errors (both social and theological) precisely because she was led astray in the 2nd century A.D. My view now is that this is an absolutely inaccurate portrayal of church history for many reasons that this book lays out in some detail. The history of the church can actually be seen to demolish evangelical claims over and over. To read the disputes Christians had down through the centuries is enlightening. To say one has finally arrived at the truth is not only naive and simplistic, but ignorant. One needs only to gain a good grasp of church history to see this, and as an introduction I highly recommend this fair and balanced book for starters. There are others. I could only wish that more Christians would became church historians.

The Faith: A History of Christianity, is one of the most well researched as well as honest studies on the question of Christianity as well as the many roads the faith has taken. While looking at faith on a secular level, something that will most likely turn off some, The Faith shouldn't be seen as a secular attack on the divine but instead as a way to understand how Christians, who creeds have also stood at odds with each other, see what is divine. The most important aspect of this book is the fact that it doesn't just focus on Western Christianity as some Christian History books often do while giving short attention to the Eastern Churches. Also covered at the Mormons, Pentecostal groups, and even Muslims in terms of their relations to the more "orthodox" forms Christianity which are better known as Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox believers. The wars of religion, waged between Catholics and Protestants across Western and Central Europe and explained as well as how secular movements such as Communism and Fascism also influence the faithful to take action on various different levels. Christians tend to look at faith as if it existed in an isolated place far from non-Christians and the secular which is unfortunate because such sentiments are not only untrue but can also lead to distortion. In trying to understand how all of these various Christian, and non-Christian, beliefs have been tied in together, The Faith gives a picture of a religion that is truly global and is ever changing (despite what fundamentalists of all creeds would like to believe) to fit the needs of its believers. I recommend this book to believer and non-believer alike. Too often people focus on what makes them different instead of what actually unites them. While The Faith is not an ecumenical book by any means, it is a good source to show that Christians have as much to learn about each other as they do about non-Christians.

To try to sum up the history of Christianity in a 800 page book is well-nigh impossible -- but Moynahan does a good job trying. I've tried to read a couple of other general histories of Christianity and they were either too biased or too much like a laundry list. "Faith" manages to be interesting as well as informative -- no small feat. I thought the book was well balanced. The horrors of the medieval Church are well and graphically described -- as are the inspirational stories of the courage and faith of the early-day Christians. We get a good description of the Moslem conquest of Christian lands, the Protestant reformation, the early day monks and pole-sitters in Egypt, the creation of the Mormons, the work of missionaries in China, India, and elsewhere and a wealth of other stories. An interesting question occured to me while reading: why was it that Christianity at the height of its architectural excellence -- the Gothic cathedrals -- at its worst in the moral sense with executions of heretics, corruption, and downright evil Church leaders? Faith has full chapters on the thoughts and deeds of Paul, Augustine, the rise of Islam, the Crusades, Calvin, the Inquisition, the Puritans, the Jesuits, the Mormons, Darwin, and the "godless rulers of darkness:" Hitler and Stalin. I especially enjoyed his lengthy sections of Wycliffe, Hus and the other forerunners of the Protestant revolution. There's a vast amount of material in this book. Inevitably, the reader will find some subjects of more interest than others but I believe overall the author has done an excellent job in producing a readable history that is about an objective as one can be on a subject of such magnitude and inspiring such emotion. Smallchief

This is a terrific and engaging look at the history, good and bad, of Christianity. I found it to be extremely balanced, covering in detail the travesties of the Crusades and the murder of the "heretics" such as the Cathars. By far the best book on the history of Christianity that I have ever read.

Brian Moynahan's "The Faith" is many things -- a history of Christianity, a look at 2000 years of Near Eastern, European, and American history, an almanac of gore resulting from the splits within a growing religion, an object lesson in the dangers of letting men control God. The writing is lucid and impressive considering the scope of the subject. At times I felt like I was reading a page-turner, which is a feat even before you consider that this dictionary-sized book is over 700 pages long. Even given its heft, I read the book in a week.The subject is hard to beat. From its origins (as detailed in Acts) as a startup cult, to its history altering co-option by the Roman emperor Constantine (there's no way of knowing how limited the scope of Christianity might be today if it hadn't been sanctioned as Rome's state religion) Christianity has been a force as influential as it has been destructive. "The Faith" covers it all -- from the papal decadence that lead to Luther's reform, to the devastating effects of the Inquisition, to the centuries old conflict between Islamic and Christian warriors. The book's chapters are more or less chronological (although there is some doublebacking) and only a few of them are less than fascinating.This is as good a book as any if you want to learn about the history of Christianity. "The Faith" is really a history of what belief in a particular God has done to people -- the passions that lead to philosophic partings of the ways, the corruption of institutions, the neverending different interpretations of biblical texts. What can we learn from 2000 years of a particular religion? And how can this knowledge change the way Christians worship, and live their faith, today?