A History of Christianity

Traces the course of Christianity from its beginning to the present day, charting its geographical, doctrinal, and denominational developments and impact against the background of world history.
Here is both an old and a new story. It is old. Repeatedly across its nineteen and a half centuries the history of Christianity has been told and retold. In one or another of its aspects it has called forth a voluminous and massive literature.
This is as it should be. Christianity has become the most widespread of all religious faiths. It is by no means dominant. It never ceases to be challenged. There have been times when it has seemed to be waning. Some of the major attacks on it have been made in our day. Its ideals have never been fully attained. Indeed, it at least is debatable whether they ever can be fully realized within the span of history, so high are they, and so far beyond anything actual, either in man's collective life, in small groups, or even in individuals. The one life in which they were fully embodied came to a cross, so contrary were they to current practice in religion and the state. Yet, measured by its effects, Christianity has become the most potent single force in the life of mankind.
Moreover, by its very genius, Christianity is a concern of the historian. If the Christian faith is true, it should be either central or at least be consciously kept as the setting and the point of reference for all the work of the historian. It had its inception in events and in a life which are part of the historical record.
From the very first generation of Christians, there have been those who have believed that the clue to the perplexing and paradoxical human drama is to be found in Christ, that the whole of the created universe groans in travail waiting for the revealing of the sons of God, the sons of whom Christ is the first-born, and that it is the purpose of God to sum up all things in Christ, both in the heavens and upon the earth, and to put "all things in subje