Bruce L. Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, Fourth Edition (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008, 2013). To learn more about the early history of the church, see Thomas C. Oden, The Rebirth of Orthodoxy: Signs of New Life in Christianity; D. H. Williams, Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church; Bryan M. Litfin, Getting to Know the Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction; D. H. Williams, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants.
