Abstract
This substantial overview of church history falls into two parts. The first comprises a historical narrative considering ‘Christianity through the ages’ in five chronological chapters: the Early Church (from the beginnings to 500), the medieval period (500–1500), the Reformation (1500–1650), the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, and ‘the twentieth century and beyond’. The second part offers English translations of ‘Documents of Christianity through the ages’. As the title indicates, the scope is global, and the historical narrative seeks to do justice to the global scope, including in the second and subsequent chapters on Africa and Asia as well as on the Orthodox Churches, and, from the third chapter, by adding the Americas. The scope of the narrative is laudable and valuable; in contrast, although the selection of sources includes several relating to Ethiopia, China, Bulgaria and South-East Asia, and has a good confessional spread, the balance is decidedly weighted towards the European narrative.
This exemplifies the challenge of a project that wants to do justice to what might be viewed as the ‘standard’ narrative of church history, with its Northern/Western focus, while also considering Christianity from a global perspective. This book has a companion volume, Theology from the Great Tradition, which provides an overview of Christian teachings; A Global Church History is intended to provide context for these theological developments. The paired works are aimed at ‘upper level undergraduates, beginning graduate students, and interested laymen [sic!], while approaching the subject with a seasoned scholarly perspective’ (p. xxv). However, this ‘scholarly perspective’ is not very apparent. Each narrative section concludes with suggested discussion questions, mostly focused on reviewing information rather than critical analysis, suggesting a beginning undergraduate audience at most. Throughout, the volume shows a lack of critical engagement with up-to-date historiographical discussions. For instance, the claim that ‘the earliest records of the Church’s spread come from the New Testament’ (p. 4) begs some important questions about the dating of early Christian texts. The claim that ‘the prejudices against and maltreatment of Christians were more widespread than has been recently recognized’ (p. 22) is not substantiated and goes against the conclusions of recent scholarship. To suggest that Calvin’s theology can be understood through the TULIP acronym, which pertains to seventeenth-century discussions within Calvinism, is to occlude Calvin and Calvinism. The claim that Mary Tudor’s counter-Reformation ‘was not very efficient’ repeats a view overtaken by more recent scholarship. It is perhaps unsurprising that the summary bibliographies consistently include seriously outdated works.
More positively, the global coverage of the narrative includes the history of Christianity in often neglected areas of the world, particularly Africa and Asia, such as the Coptic Church in North Africa, the Mar Thoma Church in India, Christian mission to Russia, the conversion of the Congo in the sixteenth century and early modern missions to Asia. Unfortunately, the global reach has largely been achieved at the cost of half of humankind. The story told here focuses almost entirely on men. Only one woman seems to be mentioned in the Early Church chapter – the martyr Perpetua – and there is no discussion of how women responded to Christianity. Medieval female mystics are discussed briefly, but women’s response to the Reformation (with the exception of the marriages of some of the Reformers) is also passed over. Of the 185 source texts included, just six were written by women.
The layout of the volume is creative and complex, with tables and biographical panels, maps and illustrations that complement and enhance the narrative. However, the volume has been badly proofread, leaving a level of inaccuracy that further detracts from the authors’ claims to scholarly rigour. A few examples from the Reformation chapter will suffice: the birth year of Albrecht of Mainz appears to be given as 1514, in fact the year he became Archbishop of Mainz; Mary Tudor’s birthdate is given as 18 February 1558, but was in fact 18 February 1516 (she died in 1558, on 17 November); the first reforming parliament under Edward VI (which removed Henrician statutes, not statues!) took place in 1547, not 1847. These slips, obvious to a knowledgeable reader, make it difficult to recommend this book for use in introductory university courses. Overall, this volume witnesses to a laudable wish to provide a substantial overview of global church history, but its execution leaves much to be desired.