Sometimes I find it hard to imagine that anything existed before I did. The past feels a bit like a fairyland populated by people in period costumes singing songs from your dad’s record collection: Barry Gibb strutting down the street singing “Staying Alive”, Austen types dancing to a string quartet, monks in hoods singing whatever they sing on “Mysteries of Gregorian Chant Vol. III”.
But we know that the past is real, that it is long, and that it is filled with billions of actual people, many of whom led long, interesting, fruitful lives. We’re even related to a lot of them. And though it might feel like the world popped into existence fully formed in 1992, it was created by these people. Almost everything around us now is the way it is because someone in the past made it that way.
That includes our churches. The way we do church might also feel like the obvious way to do it, but it only takes a quick look around your city to see that there are about a hundred different ways of doing church, and each of them thinks they, in some sense, have it right. How did we get here? Why are there so many different types of churches, each with different beliefs and practices? Why are we like we are?
These, friends, are questions for History. We can only understand ourselves by looking at who came before us. What they did, said and thought made the world the way it is today. Despite the best efforts of your high school history teacher to turn it into a list of disconnected names and dates, history is a story, and it’s the story of how you became you.
If you’re a Christian, a big part of that story is the story of the Church. It’s a story that spans thousands of years, every country, and billions of lives. It’s a story that’s still being written, and you’re part of the latest chapter. Just like John the Evangelist said, if we were to write down everything that happened, there wouldn’t be enough space in the world to hold the books. But a few historians have made valiant attempts to sketch the outline. Here are four of them.
Church History in Plain Language
Bruce L. Shelley (495pp, $30)
As the title suggests, this is the easiest read of the lot. The book is broken into very short chapters, each of which is written like a magazine article. There’s a new heading every page or two, so you always know where you are. Bruce Shelley sounds a bit like a Southern Gentleman, and he is open and polite to every era and strand of Christianity. It’s like a guided tour through the history of the Church with Colonel Sanders from KFC.
Because this book is an introduction to Church history for people new to the topic, its strengths are also its weaknesses. It’s not really a history book; it’s more a series of vignettes that give you a taste of the major players and high-points of Church history. Shelley also gives a bit too much space to the American churches at the expense of other places, and focuses on more recent events, especially the Reformation and the plethora of options that grew around it.
Justo L. Gonzalez (2 volumes, 926pp, $30 each).
Although it’s almost twice as long, The Story of Christianity does something very similar to Church History in Plain Language. It takes you through the history of the Church in a series of short, clear stories, but I think Gonzalez has done this much more successfully than Shelley. For a start, the book doesn’t present itself as a history. Each chapter begins with a famous quote and is illustrated with paintings and photos. It also includes short biographies of the main actors, which sit outside the main text. It tells the major stories from the history of the Church in a clear and memorable way.
Don’t be misguided by this structure, though. Gonzalez has a firm grasp of the historical forces behind the stories, and manages to give you a sense of the broad sweep of church history without getting arcane or academic. At over 900 pages all up, it might seem long, but this book is so easy and interesting to read, I didn’t want to put it down.
Diarmaid MacCulloch (1016pp, $30).
If the first two books were collections of the most important stories, this one is a real history. Diarmaid MacCulloch is one of the most notable historians in England, and is Professor of Church History at Oxford. If there was a nuclear apocalypse in the UK and there was only room in the bunker for one church historian, he would probably be the guy. MacCulloch’s writing is lucid and flowing, and he has managed to present a cogent history of the Church that is thoroughly readable and enjoyable.
MacCulloch writes from a less confessional stance than Shelley or Gonzalez. While he has a faith-commitment, he doesn’t wear it on his sleeve, nor does he make theological judgements of any of the various strands of the Church that have come and gone. He is also understandably more circumspect about ancient sources than our other authors. That said, this book is everything you need to begin your career as an historian of the Church.
David Bentley Hart (343pp, $16).
This book combines the best of the other three. It’s succinct, readable, erudite and manages to give a coherent overview of the history of the Church in under 350 pages. Unlike the other books, Hart spends an equal number of pages discussing the Western and Eastern churches, and each of the twenty centuries of church history. Traditions that might not usually be mentioned in such a short book, like the Oriental Church, the Ethiopian Church, and the Thomas Christians of India, are given the space they deserve.
David Bentley Hart’s understanding of and sympathy for many different types of churches gives him the ability to draw together strands of the Christian story that could be missed or ignored in the kind of history book that relies more on vignettes. While it skims the surface of church history at a pace of a century every five minutes, this book gives you by far the biggest bang for your buck.
