The Faith : A History of Christianity

Rating:
Summary: Christianity as page-turner
Review: Brian Moynahan's "The Faith" is many things -- a history of Christianity, a look at 2000 years of Near Eastern, European, and American history, an almanac of gore resulting from the splits within a growing religion, an object lesson in the dangers of letting men control God.

The writing is lucid and impressive considering the scope of the subject. At times I felt like I was reading a page-turner, which is a feat even before you consider that this dictionary-sized book is over 700 pages long. Even given its heft, I read the book in a week.

The subject is hard to beat. From its origins (as detailed in Acts) as a startup cult, to its history altering co-option by the Roman emperor Constantine (there's no way of knowing how limited the scope of Christianity might be today if it hadn't been sanctioned as Rome's state religion) Christianity has been a force as influential as it has been destructive. "The Faith" covers it all -- from the papal decadence that lead to Luther's reform, to the devastating effects of the Inquisition, to the centuries old conflict between Islamic and Christian warriors. The book's chapters are more or less chronological (although there is some doublebacking) and only a few of them are less than fascinating.

This is as good a book as any if you want to learn about the history of Christianity. "The Faith" is really a history of what belief in a particular God has done to people -- the passions that lead to philosophic partings of the ways, the corruption of institutions, the neverending different interpretations of biblical texts. What can we learn from 2000 years of a particular religion? And how can this knowledge change the way Christians worship, and live their faith, today?

Rating:
Summary: Popping the clutch
Review: To read this book is rather like riding in a stick-shift car whose driver is used to an automatic: the smooth sailing is punctuated with sudden jumps and jolts that sometimes leave one breathless. What I mean is that Moynahan's history has some startling gaps in it, as if he's popped the clutch and either jumped ahead of where he should be or landed someplace he really shouldn't be.

There's almost no treatment in this book, for example, of the Orthodox tradition, much less (except for a rather dismal late chapter on "Missions") of Christianity with a non-Western face. (I say that the missions chapter is dismal because it's primarily written from the perspective of Western missionaries.) No more than a page and a half is given to Vatican II. No consideration is given to recent ecumenical or interfaith developments in Christianity. And very little discussion of Christian doctrine or theology is included. Yet how can one write a history of Christianity without a consideration of the evolution of its beliefs?

At the same time, an inordinate amount of space is devoted to elements in the history of Christianity that seem tangential. Is it really necessary, for example, to devote an entire chapter to witch hunts and still another one to Mormonism? One can't but suspect that the detailed discussions of such topics were motivated at least in part by their popular appeal.

None of this is meant to condemn Moynahan's book. He's taken on a big, probably impossible task. Read as a quick and spotty survey, his history is okay. But for those readers who would like a more inclusive portrait, perhaps a work like Jaroslav Pelikan's multi-volumed (and entirely entertaining and accessible) history of Christian doctrine should be considered.