Customer Reviews

A Short History of Christianity

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Stephen Tomkins was a writer for Monte Python, but he also has strong credentials as a religious scholar. Thus, his presentation displays his dry wit, making the reading a pleasure. OK, maybe he does pick some of the most bizarre characters of Christian history, but there they are! The history of Christianity is indeed bizarre, and Tomkins makes this abundantly clear in his presentation. This is a must read for most Christians who want a short read and quick understanding of the history of their faith. If you expect Tomkins to sugar-coat the past, don't buy this book. If you don't know much about the history of Christianity, be prepared!

Not many authors can get cover blurbs from a serious theologian like J. I. Packer and from ageniius like Terry Jones from Monty Python. It's indicitive of how well Tomkins walks a narrow line-getting history in a readable, concise format, and writing succinctly with wit. Simply put every minister needs a copy of this book. Tomkins boils events down into the barest narrative, yet he holds the essentials.

He writes short chapters that cover several hundred years in a jump or he discusses one great individual. When you need to brush up the basic set of facts and how they influenced the development of the culture-perhaps for a sermon or class, perhaps to answer a question from a parishioner, this book is incredibly useful. If you have someone who is growing in faith and they are curious about church history, this is a book that is accurate and will not put them to sleep or overwhelm them with its erudition.

I highly recommend this book.

First, please note the slightly wry Review Title here.

Now to the review of this fascinating, and "successful" little book. I have tried for years to digest historical, religious-related or oriented material, to not much success, as it bogs down and becomes so mundane that I cannot focus on it further and "give it up".

The past couple years I have read a lot about the Knights Templar, early Christianity from Jesus' time until about 500 years later. Personally, I seek the early "pure" (as I refer to it) Christian orthodoxy (or whatever one wishes to refer to it as), before it was transferred to Rome, and re-worked and twisted into something completely different than what it originally was supposed to be.

In the process of reading this book, I was very pleased with what Tomkins has to say "before" Rome, and also everything he says "about" Rome, and also, everything after that. Here we have an incapsulated, and 100-year or so, stepped history from the beginnings until today, right up to 9-11. This is fascinating to get this kind of overview, and I was most intrigued throughout this journey of 250 pages or so. It "snagged" me in several places, pricking my interest, and leaving me wanting to "know more" about certain eras, sects, etc. So, my reading list just got a little longer! And that is certainly OK!

Thus, the "Success" in the review title. Mr. Tomkins has succeeded very well (with others, too, I'm sure) in pricking my interest, and enlightening me, and making me want to go further in deeper readings of some of this material. So, he has certainly done his job, at least in my case, and I consider myself thankful to him for his enlightenment.

As a closing, might I also add that Mr. Tomkins is very clever in his writing style, adding just the slightest wry, humorous edge to his words, making this history so easy to get through.

If you're curious, by all means grab yourself a copy of this fascinating little book and do enjoy! ~operabruin

In the book's Preface the author, Stephen Tomkins, writes "So, whatever the cover may have led you to believe, this is not a history book." He defines his book as "This is the story of how we came to be who we are." This work is more story than history.

The book's comments about early Christians are interesting. The author states that "What set Jesus apart from other executed messiahs was resurrection. . . ." "These first Christians were Jews; they worshipped in the Jerusalem temple and local synagogues as well as in their own homes." The text further notes that "Twelve years after the first Easter, Christianity was still in every sense a movement within Judaism." Interestingly, as Christians were persecuted, they fled spreading the gospel wherever they went thereby greatly contributing to the dissemination of Christianity beyond Jerusalem.

The text traces the progress of Christianity through centuries in storybook manner very briefly covering the activities of St. Augustine, Charlemagne, Luther, Calvin, Pope Benedict XVI and others. Much of the first millennium involved politics as governments in Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor had involved the church as governments sought to extend and consolidate their control over territory. Muhammad's 610 AD vision is noted. Limited detailed coverage is given for the millennium covering this era. In general, throughout the book if the reader is interested in any particular era they may want to seek other sources.

Coverage of the Reformation and beyond is a little more detailed. The activities of Luther and Calvin, etc are briefly covered along with the Age of Reason and beyond. Especially interesting is the book's coverage of the twentieth century which involved two World Wars and the Cold War plus the establishment of the World Council of Churches (WCCO). The rise of new Catholicism and Pope John Paul II is briefly but interestingly covered. Author Tomkins notes that in the 1960s church attendance by Americans peaked while in Korea Catholicism increased threefold and Protestantism ten fold.

In the third millennium, the text notes, "Muslims in general tend to see the west as Christian . . . the great division is between those who want coexistence and those who want victory."; therefore "The historic conflict between Islam and the Christian west, after four quiet centuries, (has) returned to the prominence it maintained for a millennium." In conclusion the author notes "As in recent centuries, Christians have successfully fought slavery, industrial exploitation and then racial segregation, so significant numbers of Christians in the west now are mobilizing against the greatest institutional evil of today, world poverty.

As the author noted, the text is a story book not a history book, but it does give the reader a limited overview of Christianity. Most useful is the Glossary of terms given at the end of the book. For the interested reader who has no previous knowledge of the subject this book is a good place to start.

With a quote from a member of Monty Python on the cover, and not many pages inside, it would be easy to suspect Stephen Tompkins' latest work favoured brevity and humour over history. But that couldn't be further from the truth. While he clearly delights in some of the Church's more extreme experiences (such as exhuming the body of a some-months-dead Pope in order to put him on trial) he also succinctly communicates the twists and turns of twenty centuries of Christian history.

At times it might be nice to get clearer pointers to where we can find more detail, and those without much sense of dry humour may find pieces confusing. But for anyone in need of a clearer overview of the church's role in european history this is a good starting point.

Mr. Tomkin's has a great approach to the history of the church. Make it fun and don't hold out the goof-ups or the goof-offs. Text books tell you that the church and state were tied together in western history. This book shows how. Amazing, fun, easy to read. Not a history book, not a theology book. It's just a great story which happens to be true.

I've always wondered where Christianity came from, and how it is still standing, and this book answered those questions with great historic accuracy AND humor.

As Stephen Tomkins says in the preface of A Short History of Christianity, "It is your story whether or not you are a Christian yourself." For better or for worse (and his book definitely makes the point debatable), Christianity is a critical part of world history, even having effects in regions where it is not the prevalent religion. To squeeze two millennia history of the world (particularly Western Civilization) into 250 pages is a daunting task and Tomkins is only partially successful.

To cram it further into a single paragraph may be overdoing it, but here it goes: For a couple hundred years, Christianity, a religion with its origins in Judaism, struggled to stay in existence until it became as the state religion by the Roman emperor Constantine. Now that they no longer had to fight the Establishment (because they were the Establishment), the Christians fought among themselves over various theological issues, with the major split being between the Roman Catholic church and the Eastern Orthodox church. Eventually, they decided to fight with the Muslims instead (during the Crusades). This didn't work that well, and the Catholic church descended into corruption, leading the Protestant Reformation and another reason for Christians to fight among themselves. Things calmed down by the period of the Enlightenment and by the 20th Century, mainstream Christianity had lightened up and become more tolerant of other denominations (and, to some extent, other faiths).

If there is a single lesson to be taken from this book, it's that since its inception, Christianity has constantly changed and fragmented. Every one of the various groups within Tomkins's book believed that it was practicing the proper form of Christianity. It should be a lesson of humility for those nowadays who feel that they - and only they - have the monopoly on Christian truth; they are actually little different from the Arians, Cathars, Ebionites or dozens of other sects and denominations.

While Tomkins's book is reasonably informative, it is only an okay book, and I am rating it a low four stars. The principal problem is that the topic is too big to be covered so quickly (he even acknowledges that he is covering around a decade a page). Many topics are covered too sketchily to really grasp. In addition, Tomkins occasionally switches from past to present tense, a stylistic choice that is more jarring than effective. Nonetheless, as an introduction to Christian history, this book is adequate to at least get you moving towards the things that might interest you. It's like a large-scale map; it's good for the general picture, but for the real details, you need to go to something far more specific.

- received book in a timely fashion in the condition promised -- would definitely buy from this source again