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39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Christianity as page-turner, October 22, 2002
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?
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Popping the clutch, March 25, 2004
To read this book is rather like riding in a stick-shift car whose driver is used to an automatic: the smooth sailing is punctuated with sudden jumps and jolts that sometimes leave one breathless. What I mean is that Moynahan's history has some startling gaps in it, as if he's popped the clutch and either jumped ahead of where he should be or landed someplace he really shouldn't be. There's almost no treatment in this book, for example, of the Orthodox tradition, much less (except for a rather dismal late chapter on "Missions") of Christianity with a non-Western face. (I say that the missions chapter is dismal because it's primarily written from the perspective of Western missionaries.) No more than a page and a half is given to Vatican II. No consideration is given to recent ecumenical or interfaith developments in Christianity. And very little discussion of Christian doctrine or theology is included. Yet how can one write a history of Christianity without a consideration of the evolution of its beliefs? At the same time, an inordinate amount of space is devoted to elements in the history of Christianity that seem tangential. Is it really necessary, for example, to devote an entire chapter to witch hunts and still another one to Mormonism? One can't but suspect that the detailed discussions of such topics were motivated at least in part by their popular appeal. None of this is meant to condemn Moynahan's book. He's taken on a big, probably impossible task. Read as a quick and spotty survey, his history is okay. But for those readers who would like a more inclusive portrait, perhaps a work like Jaroslav Pelikan's multi-volumed (and entirely entertaining and accessible) history of Christian doctrine should be considered.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Fair History Showing that Christianity is Merely a Human Institution, January 27, 2008
This review is from: The Faith: A History of Christianity (Paperback)
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.
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