Christianity Audiobook By Diarmaid MacCulloch cover art

Christianity

The First Three Thousand Years

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Christianity

By: Diarmaid MacCulloch
Narrated by: Walter Dixon
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Once in a generation, a historian will redefine his field, producing a book that demands to be read and heard - a product of electrifying scholarship conveyed with commanding skill. Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity is such a book. Breathtaking in ambition, it ranges back to the origins of the Hebrew Bible and covers the world, following the three main strands of the Christian faith.

Christianity will teach modern listeners things that have been lost in time about how Jesus' message spread and how the New Testament was formed. We follow the Christian story to all corners of the globe, filling in often neglected accounts of conversions and confrontations in Africa and Asia. And we discover the roots of the faith that galvanized America, charting the rise of the evangelical movement from its origins in Germany and England. This audiobook encompasses all of intellectual history - we meet monks and crusaders, heretics and saints, slave traders and abolitionists, and discover Christianity's essential role in driving the enlightenment and the age of exploration, and shaping the course of World War I and World War II.

We are living in a time of tremendous religious awareness, when both believers and non-believers are deeply engaged by questions of religion and tradition, seeking to understand the violence sometimes perpetrated in the name of God. The son of an Anglican clergyman, MacCulloch writes with deep feeling about faith. His last book, The Reformation, was chosen by dozens of publications as Best Book of the Year and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. This awe-inspiring follow-up is a landmark new history of the faith that continues to shape the world.

©2010 Diamaid MacCulloch (P)2010 Gildan Media Corp Middle Ages World Christianity History Ministry & Evangelism Middle East Africa Imperialism

Critic reviews

"Assuming no previous knowledge on the part of readers about Christian traditions, MacCulloch traces in breathtaking detail the often contentious arguments within Christianity for the past 3,000 years. His monumental achievement will not soon be surpassed." ( Publishers Weekly)
"A work of exceptional breadth and subtlety." ( Booklist)
Comprehensive History • Global Perspective • Pleasant Voice • Scholarly Research • Detailed Analysis • Clear Narration

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MacCulloch uses a huge canvas for this book: all continents, all times, and (if there weren't so many of them) you could say all sects and denominations as well. The book is a remarkably good listen, considering the amount of detail it includes, a tribute to Walter Dixon's steady pace and his clear and pleasing voice. Because Christianity has been so tightly bound with the West for the last 2000 years, it becomes in places a "Western world history" as well.

One of the hardest areas of Christian history to grasp is the centuries-long debate about the nature of the Trinity, and its equally long-lasting partner, the debate about the exact nature of Christ. (Human? Divine? Both? If both, what percentage of each, and how mixed or not mixed?) It's a story of determined attempts to fashion a creed and equally determined attempts to resist credal formulations. MacCulloch navigates this territory well, giving plenty of time to each viewpoint and noting that many of the viewpoints, assumed by many Christians to be long dead, are in fact alive and thriving in one or another sect to the present day.

MacCulloch is writing as a friendly outsider, which pretty well sums up my position as a listener. His attempts to describe Christianity's romance with temporal power, and its frequent turning of a blind eye to social injustice, may offend some people. My own impression is that his account is balanced and largely non-judgemental. Highly recommended.

Detailed, expansive, and memorable

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It is hard to tell, given the vast range of time and place covered by this text, whether it is a solid historical account. The level of detail, specificity of attention and shear number of people, places, ideas, beliefs, heresies and orthodoxies would require a fact checker to spend as much time verifying the book as was taken to write it.
This is not to say that the book is cumbersome or weighed down by minutia, it is not. The story is told in a brisk, efficient manner, logically laid out and well written. The history is given according to epoch, region and spiritual movement. There is no jumping between places and people or ideas.
For me the material and its treatment makes clear that, in essence, every religion is the same. Most if not all of the early religions were polytheistic and essentially consisted of a cast of characters that sprang from a creation myth. There was a head god, one or more lieutenants, a throng of other characters responsible for the various actions of the earth, environment or mysteries of existence that needed explaining. There is human relating, human/deity pairings, blended offspring and drama. There are exceptions, the early religions of Asia, for instance, which have features of the the others but other ideas, consistent with the needs of the culture or the peculiarities of geography or circumstance in the region of origin.
Later religions too have a similar pattern. All generally descend from the ideas one charismatic individual, whose work is eventually codified, politicized and overtaken by the power dynamics of all human enterprise. I am tempted to say that Buddhism is an exception, but an investigation of various iterations around Asia make clear that that is not so.
Christianity is no exception. In its bare bones it is a cult of personality, built around a poor rabbi trying to reform his religion and prepare his people for the coming end of the world. The spread of the religion is primarily due to the work of Saul (Paul) of Tarsis, the only disciple who advocated teaching Christ’s message to non-Jewish congregations
This is all a a gross simplification of almost 50 hours of material, but I do it to make the point that the book’s presentation covers the material in a way that is short on miracles and long on group dynamics, politics and human desire for power, in addition to the drive for transcendence that all humans share.
The book is required reading for any person seeking to understand Christianity today.

Required reading

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the book seems a little anit-christian although I did quite Revere the immense wealth of knowledge on the historicity of Christendom

Accuracy

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MacCullough has managed to present a long, and exhaustively complex story in an interesting and clearly understandable manner. He treats his subject matter respectfully, focusing strictly on the historical record and not taking a religious stand. Walter Dixon, the narrator, does a good job as well reading clearly and briskly, not getting bogged down in sometimes hugely complicated text.

A brilliant overview

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this Is A VERY well written , thorough study of Christianity. An objective , academic, scholarly one. I thought the narrator was also very good, despite complaints about his "American accent"..he was as good if not better than many british narrators. very sober, well pronounced, objective , clear tone throughout. highly recommend if want to get at the truth of Christianity's rise and power in past 2,000, or 3,000 years.

Wow! Exactly what i wanted to buy!

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