A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

The writing and telling of history is bedevilled by two human neuroses: horror at the desperate shapelessness and seeming lack of pattern in events, and regret for a lost golden age, a moment of happiness when all was well.

Indeed. We simply don’t look back closely enough nor far enough into the past to see that the nearest we have to a golden age is today.

Some may sneer at this as ‘political correctness’. When I was young, my parents were insistent on the importance of being courteous and respectful of other people’s opinions and I am saddened that these undramatic virtues have now been relabelled in an unfriendly spirit.

Thucydides had grasped that vital historical insight that groups of people behave differently and have different motivations from individual human beings, and that they often behave far more discreditably than individuals.

Yes. We saw that in January 2021 in Washington DC