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A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years
by Diarmaid MacCulloch
by Diarmaid MacCulloch
It took three library renewals to get through this book (and thanks to an ice storm, the fifth this year!, I still owe the library a one day fine, a whole nickel that they thank you for and dump in a desk drawer with a bunch of rubber bands, and I love living in the country and having that library), and then work kind of slammed me a little, so it’s just been sitting there languishing on my currently-reading shelf for two weeks. And in all that time I still haven’t come up with something deeply insightful or clever to say.
I keep coming up with jokes, like, “You know what they say, ‘An atheist is just someone who’s studied their religion.’”
Honestly, this book was really very good. It’s history, which I love, and religious history, which utterly fascinates me with the scale and grandeur of brutality people are willing to inflict on other people in the name of charity and salvation. The whole book— which kept switching from the macro to the micro with expert timing, by the way— I just kept picturing all of this three-thousand-year saga, a hiccup on the evolutionary timescale, playing out from the vast vantage point of elsewhere in our galaxy, where we’re not even a blip of starlight in deep space. And if it didn’t seem petty before, well.
Back down on an earthly scale— or not even that, on a continent’s scale, country by country— the epic and the exhaustive scope of MacCulloch’s research has to be praised. I can’t imagine taking on a scholarship of that magnitude. It’s just bewildering in breadth, and meticulous in detail. All told, though, I much preferred Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God; not because it does the subject more justice, but because it deals with the slightly different angle— the actual evolution of the anthropological and sociological aspects of a religion, as well as what is worshipped within it— that is far more fascinating to me.
For a history of the church, though, you couldn’t do much better than this without devoting your time in semester-sized chunks, and maybe not even then.
Honestly, to hold onto the mystery and conviction of a religion: don’t study its history.
I keep coming up with jokes, like, “You know what they say, ‘An atheist is just someone who’s studied their religion.’”
Honestly, this book was really very good. It’s history, which I love, and religious history, which utterly fascinates me with the scale and grandeur of brutality people are willing to inflict on other people in the name of charity and salvation. The whole book— which kept switching from the macro to the micro with expert timing, by the way— I just kept picturing all of this three-thousand-year saga, a hiccup on the evolutionary timescale, playing out from the vast vantage point of elsewhere in our galaxy, where we’re not even a blip of starlight in deep space. And if it didn’t seem petty before, well.
Back down on an earthly scale— or not even that, on a continent’s scale, country by country— the epic and the exhaustive scope of MacCulloch’s research has to be praised. I can’t imagine taking on a scholarship of that magnitude. It’s just bewildering in breadth, and meticulous in detail. All told, though, I much preferred Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God; not because it does the subject more justice, but because it deals with the slightly different angle— the actual evolution of the anthropological and sociological aspects of a religion, as well as what is worshipped within it— that is far more fascinating to me.
For a history of the church, though, you couldn’t do much better than this without devoting your time in semester-sized chunks, and maybe not even then.
Honestly, to hold onto the mystery and conviction of a religion: don’t study its history.
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Reading Progress
| 11/22/2010 | page 240 |
|
20.0% | "Spoiler alert: it’s a bloodbath." |
| 12/05/2010 | page 510 |
|
42.0% | "Lesson learned: when you’re founding a pivotal Christian community at Cluny, probably best to re-think the name before you’re stuck forever with ‘Clunitics.’" |
| 01/07/2011 | page 925 |
|
76.0% | "I’m on my third renewal at the library. It’s like the point in a blockbuster epic where you go “Oh no not another fight scene.”" |
| 01/15/2011 | page 1216 |
|
100.0% | "Whew. As they say, “It is finished.”" |
Comments (showing 1-9 of 9) (9 new)
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Amber
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Dec 01, 2010 08:17am
Damn, don't ruin it for me!
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Hi. I very much wish to read this history of Christianity. Do tell me what its like when you're done. Thanks!
Want to have a surreal experience? Read a book like the one you reviewed here, then something like Harris's The End of Faith, and then go read some internet debate between two amateur theologians. You will immediately feel like you're taking crazy pills. And having studied something about the religion in question, it gets even weirder. The easiest cure for religion is to study it from a critical (as opposed to devotional) approach. I totally get where you're coming from.
I might peruse a copy of this if I can get it cheap somewhere.
Oh, tell me about it. I’m currently re-reading a little Dawkins, and also following the debate Jerry Coyne, evolutionary biologist, and Eric MacDonald, ex-Anglican priest, are having with some of the higher-ranking theologians at the Biologos Foundation. (Coyne and MacDonald are... well, you can imagine. It’s kind of the proverbial bloodbath, as opposed to the literal and historical one I just read 1,216 pages on.) Even above the ‘amateur’ level, you can talk about surreal.
1,216 pages? Hell, my History of Art book (which was a monster and took 3 classes to cover) wasn't quite that long. It has my attention, though. I'll be picking it up once I've graduated with my BFA. Until then, I'll stick to those 600-800 page light reading books.
Haha, I’m not surprised. War & Peace is 1400 pages, if you want a different benchmark. Yep, better stick with those light readers for now.
I will pick it up at some point in the future, though. I'm certain I can muster the focus necessary to make it through 1216 pa... oohh, tvtropes.org! Clicky clicky!
