Customer Reviews

The Christian World: A Global History (Modern Library Chronicles)

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Marty is the consummate church historian. In this, latest of his publications, he is the insider looking in from the outside. In a sweeping overview he points out that Christianity was a global faith from its inception. From the ancient land of Israel through Asia Minor and North Africa, Christianity rapidly spread through the Mediterranean basin, and thus to Europe, North American, and finally to the global south. Highly recommended for study groups interested in seeing the broad sweep of Christianity. Al Kirk

Attempting a one-volume history of anything that has existed for over 2000 years is no small task. Now try to keep it "brief". Once again Modern Library deserves praise just for tackling the task. Martin Marty's emphasis is on the spiritual side of the Christianity, with the institutions taking a back seat. His scope is larger, geographically, than Paul Johnson's admirable yet European-centric The History of Christianity. You won't find a tremendous amount of information about individual churches or creeds but you will meet an interesting array of characters like Origen who decides to go the extra mile in curbing his instincts by castrating himself. (Whether or not this was entirely a DIY endeavor or not isn't clear from the text.)

With material like this the early part of the book glides along. Marty has an eye for a good vignette and a good quote, like the nun who responds to a monk who averts his gaze when he sees a group a nuns. "If you had been a perfect monk, you would not have looked so closely as to perceive that we are women." I do believe that's the early Church equivalent of "in your face, holy boy." Then things bog down a bit and Marty seems to lose a bit of his spark, churning out lines like "It was unholy Christian holy war". Now really. For one thing, what "holy war" isn't unholy? This is just the start of a catalog of atrocities committed by men and women allegedly to act in the name of a religion. This is hardly a newsflash. On the other hand, this occasional heavy-handedness seems to me to be the result of trying to tell all sides of the story in a limited space rather than axe grinding.

All in all this is a solid effort, more history of Christianity as a faith rather than a historical force. It didn't leave me wanting to read more nor did I feel like I have the topic well-covered now but I did learn a few things and what more can one ask of a "concise" history?

I'd give this three and a half stars if Amazon allowed it.

Kindle note: maps but no pictures.

This is a brief but thorough summary of the growth and variety of experience and points of view of Christian communities from the beginning to present. Much more than a cursory explore there is enough detail to give a pretty clear picture of the breadth and scope that has been Christianity.

When Martin Marty stands at a considerable historical distance from his subject -- in this case, the first 1500 years or so of Christian history -- he is clear, crisp, enlightening, and evidently objective. The quality of his treatment of more recent times, however, suffers from the injection of modern-day intellectual fashions. The value of the final third or so of the book is tainted by current-era liberal political orthodoxy applied to earlier times.

Marty paints with a crude anti-colonialist and anti-capitalist brush when discussing recent and current Christian history. He seems unaware of the more balanced historical analysis of Thomas Sowell or Rodney Stark. His analysis of the decline of mainline churches in the US and Europe over the past half-century ignores their leftward political tilt and drift away from Christian orthodoxy as an explanation. He also goes easy on the persistent aggressiveness of Islam as the major reason for the decline and disappearance of Christianity in western Asia and North Africa. He ought to read Bat Ye'or's work. Jenkins' work on modern Christianity in Africa and Asia is far superior to Marty's accounts.

Skip the latter hundred pages or so, and it's a good book.

The author on Mao: "The `Cultural Revolution' for which he later called did undertake some needed civil reform, but it also produced innumerable martyrs and it inhibited religious expression." Inhibited? Contrast this with what the author has to say about the last pope. While Pope John Paul drew massive crowds, he couldn't fill the pews of Europe, the author says. That's it; for on the matter of the devout Christian leader who had a huge hand in bringing down the Communist Polish dictatorship and that of Eastern Europe's communist governments, in taking a moral Christian stand against evil, the author has nothing to say. The Poles' Christian faith during the ordeal of martial law is not worth one sentence in this book, either.

In a work little over 200 pages one must, of course, leave much of the story of Christianity out of "The Story of Christianity." And while this readable book is rather interesting at times, one nevertheless still wonders what the point is herein. A roller coaster car goes up sometimes rapidly, sometimes not under its own power, and has its dips, too, but ends how it began. That's sort of the author's disinterested take on Christianity, although exactly where Christianity began geographically is not where it is now strong anymore.

"By the end of the first century most of the Christian churches had been planted in Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor, which means in Asia." "By 1500, Christianity, born in Asia, had all but died in Asia," he adds later, though he means Syria, Constantinople, etc., not what we'd think of as being Asia today. Christianity has been enormously adaptive and successful nevertheless, both up until the 1500s and especially afterwards and has thus held its own in the world. Is this fortunate? A miracle? Something to thank God for? Or, as the author seems to imply, something to be agnostic and dispassionate about?

Consider his conclusion regarding the "Christian World": "tracing the story through twenty centuries and on six continents is an act that produces enthralling stories, but, one asks, what understandings and actions among Christians and non-Christians alike might follow these?" (In his Acknowledgments of the ten or so whom he thanks for having read the manuscript it doesn't appear any were men of the cloth. Wouldn't you want at least one especially fervent adherent of the faith to read such a work; simply to provide some passionate feedback, whether you ultimately accepted it or not?)

Priority one, as far as the author seems to believe, is for Christians to come to some accommodation with other faiths. Buddhism? Judaism? Shintoism? Why beat around the bush when the author means only Islam? As for those Muslins who attacked the USA on 9-11, the author's characterizes them as "extremists inspired by selective Qur'anic depictions." Then he quotes Billy Graham's son disparaging Islam, without having another word to say about Muslim terrorists; and never even uses the word terrorists. Likewise, there is no mention of Osama Bin Laden's self-described Holy War against Western Christian Civilization as a threat to continue to face in the future.

The `understandings and actions among Christians and non-Christians alike [that] might follow' seem to be all up to Christians apparently. It's no surprise then that the overleaf of this book says that the author "has been engaged in ecumenical and inter-religious work for decades." This rather explains why this otherwise worthwhile book, considering that the author is an ordained Lutheran minister, is vaguely agnostic and without any passion.

The most interesting topic in this book is the idea that Christianity has prospered more when it hasn't been championed by any specific governmental power: "On occasions when the persecutions [of Christians] became empire-wide policies, ready-to-die Christians drew the attention of the public, elicited awe, and, ironically, before the eyes of the authorities, saw their community grow. A faith for which people would give their lives bore looking into."

And when Christianity split into factions, denominations, parties of different interpretations---however you might characterize it, being conservative has generally stimulated church growth. The author offers up the Council at Trent (Italy) 1545-63, dominated by Italians and Spaniards, as an example herein: The Council "set in hard lines the differences between these branches of Western European Christianity and therefore, later, of the Americas." "The new tensions did not lead to decline in the West. The Council of Trent, in fact, gave new life to Catholicism, now called `Roman' for the first time." And, at the same time, this also stimulated the profusion of competing churches.

Thanks to John Calvin (1509-1564) "The Calvinists provided a systematic theology for Protestantism and enjoyed a more engaged sense of involvements with public affairs than did the Wittenbergers [Luther adherents in Germany]. While influencing Geneva, Calvinist styles eventually shaped the Puritan world in England, then in New England, and eventually around the world."

On this matter the author focuses on the "Colonial `big three' of Congregationalism with its northern Baptist offshoots, Presbyterianism, and Episcopalianism. A second cluster included the revivalist Methodists whose `connectional' polity made it possible for them to start thousands of churches in the West; the southern Baptists, who forgot their New England roots and became a kind of native growth...Third were the non-English-speaking traditions...Lutherans, the German and Dutch Reformed, the Anabaptists called Mennonites, Moravians, Brethren, and others."

Then the US Constitution effected a huge impact. "In the conspectus of Global Christianity, the most significant feature of this constitution was the fact that for the first time in 1400 years, ever since the days of Constantine and Theodosius, religion and regime were officially rendered distinct and separated in constituting documents." Missionaries and evangelists for the next 2 centuries and more thus "became free to spread their gospel, to compete with each other, and to invent or develop new forms of voluntary churches called denominations. They could produce a republic in which Christianity prospered as it was seldom to do where the faith remained established by law and the subject of even gentle and often not so gentle coercion." (08Aug) Cheers