A brief history of the faith

In a short review it is not possible to consider all the articles in detail. But this is not a straightforward history of 2,000 years of Christianity. Each author faces in his own way an explanation of what he or she is trying to do. The individual chapter headings should make it clear that the authors are presenting a bird's-eye view. It is plain that to deal with the early Middle Ages, the late Middle Ages, and the Reformation, etc., in a single lecture or a single chapter cannot cover all the ground. So the authors deal with broad sweeps of historical influences. Alexander Murray in his chapter on the later Middle Ages makes it plain when he says, 'In presenting medieval Christianity to you in terms of material changes, of a kind so big as to be visible from space, I may seem guilty of a kind of dialectal materialism, of wishing to reduce religious experience to a function of economics, and to ignore free will, with its inner response to God - which is what Christianity is all about.'

John Marsh