Saw many glowing reviews and references to this book. They were accurate. Going by my usual barometer of dog-eared pages (I dog-ear a page if there's something of interest, don't make notes in books) - there are over 50 in this book. (Though it is 1000+ pages). And I even bought a copy.The book is interesting and useful to me because it provides perspective on all the other history I read. The undercurrent of religion is incredibly pervasive . . . thus it's helpful to read again about various historical events from a "history of Christianity" perspective.
The history of the papacy alone is simply amazing. There was nothing inevitable about Roman primacy. Jesus certainly had little to do with Rome. Sounds like there were five highly respected churches in the early going (though even that evolution was quite a story). Rome maneuvered well, took advantage of opportunities, ended up going all the way to an "infallibility" declaration - talk about progress.
Starting with Constantine in 312 - Christianity intertwined with political power. The opposite of its founding principle.
And what an amazing amount of energy has been expended debating points of doctrine . . . many of which points have no real anchor anywhere in Scripture . . . though at least debating doctrine is better than killing people over it . . . how odd that a church founded heavily on stories of persons martyred for their beliefs turned around and killed people over their beliefs.
So many beliefs and practices that we grew up with and took for granted turn out to be fairly recent developments.
The author certainly tries to cover an incredible amount of terrain in just over 1000 pages, so his synopses, edits, etc. inevitably must have involved lots of judgment calls.
Nonetheless - this takes a lot of time to work through, but is well worth it.
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