History of Christianity

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 576 pages
• Published by: Touchstone; 1st Touchstone Ed edition August 1, 1979
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0684815036
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0684815039
• Book Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Weighs: 1.4 pounds

Product Review
Richard Marius The Christian Century Paul Johnson, an English Roman Catholic, has given us the best one-volume history of Christianity ever done. -- Review

Product Review
Malcolm Muggeridge

New Statesman (London)

Paul Johnson's study of Christianity, from his namesake Apostle to Pope John XXIII, more particularly in relation to the role in world history of the Roman Catholic Church and other institutional manifestations, can only be described as masterly. It combines a great wealth of scholarship, including many fascinating byways as well as the main highways, with a vigorous, confident style, a kind of innate intensity which carries the narrative along so that it rarely falters and is never dull.



W. H. C. Frend

The New York Review of Books

His is a tour de force, one of the most ambitious surveys of the history of Christianity ever attempted and perhaps the most radical. In eight sections, with a great range of reading and a knowledge that is never made tedious, he tells the story of the rise, greatness, and decline of Christianity.



Richard Marius

The Christian Century

Paul Johnson, an English Roman Catholic, has given us the best one-volume history of Christianity ever done.



Michael McCauley

Commonweal

That the history of Christianity can be lucidly surveyed in a single, comprehensive volume of 556 pages is no small accomplishment. To Paul Johnson's credit A History of Christianity neither skimps on significant details or wallows in scholarly fussiness. Johnson provides a panoramic overview of events which have shaped our twentieth century Western lifestyle far more than we realize.For economy of style combined with a sympathetic understanding of the nearly 2000 years of Christianity's conflicts as well as its glorious achievements, Johnson's History is exceptional.



J. Enoch Powell

The Daily Telegraph (London)

It is astonishingly well done.



Robert Kirsch

Los Angeles Times

Johnson has written a readable and provocative history based more on politics, economics and social and cultural facts than on theology.[He] bases his account on modern scholarship, achieves objectivity without aridity, arrives at the present age after looking at the recurring cycles of religious response to situations.



Mayo Mohs

Time

An ambitious, magisterial and ultimately positive book.



Martin E. Marty

The New York Times Book Review

A reliable if hard-edged story of the public church.



Reader Reviews
Paul Johnson is easily the best pop-historian writing today. He's so good, his books almost qualify as serious academics- really the only thing that keeps them "popular" literature is their astonishingly ambitious scope, far too wide to facilitate truly serious study. But it is this breadth of scope which I love most about them. Johnson writes these sweeping studies of peoples, movements and centuries that provide a framework for understanding that is simply invaluable. In his History of Christianity, he has done it again. I've heard that Johnson is Roman Catholic, but he doesn't come across that way in his book. He's very unbiased toward any one tradition. But that's not to say he's an impartial observer. He alternately lambastes and praises almost every major figure in church history from Augustine to John Calvin to the spineless Pius XII. The narrative is constructed as a tension between the forces of humanism in the church, and the more conservative elements. Both sides have had their problems, often springing from dogmatism and overzealous application of their own philosophies to the lives of others, through the instrument of the state. Of all the personalities treated in the book, his favorite seems to be Erasmus, who he sees as almost the ideal Christian- intellectual, but with conviction, open-minded, but with a foundation for his thought. There's not much pre-A.D. history provided as background in the book, but this doesn't detract from the quality of the history that is given. I assume that A History of Christianity takes up where Johnson's History of the Jews left off, so I plan on reading it before long. My only real regrets about this book are that it doesn't deal more with the Eastern Orthodox church and that it ends in 1970. I'm also interested in reading an academic study of American fundamentalism, a movement which I find fascinating in its strangeness, although Johnson only touches on it briefly here. I'd highly recommend A History of Christianity to anyone with even a passing interest in church history. The context it provides for further study is invaluable and the book, although a long read, is a delight.