This is a beautifully crafted and clearly written introduction to Christianity over its 2000 year history, concentrating on the interaction between the sacred and the secular. This book is a practical response to the experience of teaching in a variety of different settings from university undergraduates, through WEA, to parish groups. This book will thus adopt an approach radically different to that of many general Church histories in terms of length, structure and presentation. The broad underlying theme of the book will be the interaction between Christianity and the secular world, exploring how one has shaped and been shaped by the other, reflecting the title of the book. In order to achieve this, the book will not attempt to cover the whole of Christian history (this has been done frequently by others), but rather it will focus on a number of specific themes and chronological periods. The four themes will be Belief, Practice, Organisation and Propagation. There will be four chronological divisions, chosen as pivotal in the development of Christianity, and reflecting the conventional divisions of history into ancient, medieval, early and later modern.
This will enable the book to be used as either a general introduction to Christian history or as a starting point for further investigation of one or more periods. The periods are: The Imperial Church (300-500) The Medieval Church (1050-1250), The Reformation Church (1450-1650) The Modern Church (1800-2000). There will be included maps, timelines, quotations from primary source material, a glossary and a further reading section.