Customer Reviews

The Faith: A History of Christianity

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

In this book, Brian Moynahan provides a nice overview of Christian history. Starting with its humble beginnings, the author traces the major events and people of the Christian faith over the last 2000+ years. Overall, I enjoyed this book and felt it was well worth the time commitment it took to make it through the 800 pages. Oddly enough, I have to commend the author for attempting to cram so much history into less than 1,000 pages. It is a difficult thing to do, and he mainly succeeds, although I felt he did exclude some things that I would like to have seen discussed in more detail.

The author writes in a style which is easy to follow, and I liked the balance he uses. Some Christian history I have previously read is a little on the dry side because so much theology is discussed, and the reader starts to get lost in some of the "hair splitting" that has taken place over the years. Some tend to forget that the story of Christ's church is a mixture of both people and ideas. The inclusion of too much theology can make for a pretty boring read. I felt that Mr. Moynahan does a decent job of telling the story of the Christian Church without boring the reader to death.

My one main complaint is the same as a previous reviewer. The author tends to jump around a bit much for my taste, and some of the transitions between chapters is pretty rough. Also, I felt like he practically blows through the last 300-400 years of Church history, and the book starts to take on a little bit of a "text-book" tone during the last 100-150 pages. Once the reformation is done, the author seems like he is in a rush to reach the end.

If you are interested in reading a solid overview of the Christian faith, this book is a good starting point. It will take some time to work through, but I think it is well worth the effort.

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.

Trying to condense some 2000 years of history into one book is certainly no easy task. But Brian Moynahan pulls it off quite effectively and gives us an excellent chronological overview of this ever-evolving and dynamic religion known as Christianity.

Moynahan seems to have covered just about every important historical aspect of Christianity: Jesus and his followers, early Christians, martyrs, heretics, popes, emperors, saints, mystics, crusaders, inquisitors, and politicians.

The author goes behind the scenes, so to speak, and explains things like; how men such as Paul and Constantine were responsible for the successful expansion of Christianity. Because without such figures, Christianity could have very easily remained a small religious sect or even evaporated entirely.

Also, every major event in Christian history is outlined in this book: councils, divisions, conversions, reformations, WWII, the birth of new Christian denominations in the twentieth century - and this is just a small fraction of what Moynahan actually covers. The research that was conducted for this book is quite impressive.

I appreciate Moynahan's ability to remain neutral throughout this book and not throw in his personal opinions. I think he did a fantastic job of reporting events the way they happened without sounding like a critic or an apologist. In other words, I value this book because it was written from a journalistic/historical perspective, and not from a religious or anti-religious point of view.

In my opinion, this book is very informative and overall complete. Keep in mind that there are a lot of people, places, and events that are mentioned in this book, so it may be a bit overwhelming for some who are just starting to learn about the history of Christianity.

I highly recommend it. Five stars!

This is the best nonfiction book that I have ever read. It provides a narrative that allows critics an honest view of the religion without drama, and the faithful an understanding of Christianity's struggles without demeaning the religion.
As a piece of writing, the pages do turn quite quickly. If you're nervous about the length of this book, don't be. It's the equivalant of reading two books, and afterward gives you such an intimate understanding of Christianity. This is one of the most interesting and enlightening books I expect to ever read.

This book reads like a novel in its recording of the history of the Christian Church from its inception until the 20th century-