Review
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Title: A Quick Look at Christian History
Author: George Thomas Kurian
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers (www.harvesthousepublishers.com)
Genre: History and Culture, Reference Book
Year Published: 2015
Number of Pages: 252
Binding: Paperback
ISBN10: N/A
ISBN13: 978-0-7369-5378-8
Price: $14.99
Reviewed by Dina Randall for the Association for Mormon Letters
[Editor’s note: as Mormonism emerges as a world religion, and as it interacts with the larger Christian world, a knowledge of Christian history becomes more and more important. Misunderstandings abound, both in the Mormon community and in non-Mormon circles. Understanding each others’ views is vital in the quest for place in the larger Christian community. I’m grateful to Dina, an evangelical Christian, for her good review of this important title. I’ve looked at it carefully, and it seems to me that this an ideal, and very affordable, reference work for members of the LDS church in their quest for familiarity with the history of the Christian church. This work is highly recommended. JN)
Twenty-one centuries are mapped out in this handy 252 page time-travelogue of the history of a world-wide movement. In the time it takes to eat a sandwich you can explore what Barbara Tuchman calls “the calamitous 14th century” and discover the causes of great demographic shifts in Christendom. The bubonic plague killed sixty million Europeans in less than five years, yet in the fourteenth century two-thirds of the Christian population was European. Why did the Asian and African Christian population rapidly decline? Read all about it in Chapter Fourteen.
George Thomas Kurian’s *A Quick Look at Christian History* is a quick yet thorough reference guide written by an experienced chronicler who has produced over sixty reference books. The author, who has been president of the Encyclopedia Society since 1992, presents the lowdown of Christian history in a concise, easy to follow format. The book contains twenty-one chapters, one for each century, plus three handy appendices. Each chapter contains four sections: “The Status of the Christian Church”, “Influential Christians”, “Significant Events and Influences”, and a chronology of the century.
For a brief overview, just flip through the chapters and read about the church’s status and how it evolves from century to century. At the end of the first century, Kurian tells us, 0.6 percent of the world’s population is Christian, 70 percent of this is nonwhite, and 28 percent of the then-known world has heard the gospel. Compare this with statistics on the twenty-first century: 32.9 percent of the world’s population is Christian, 55 percent of this is nonwhite, and 70 percent of the world has heard the gospel. The nonwhite percentages are interesting but, unfortunately, the term nonwhite is not defined by the author, so the reader has only a vague notion of what he means. Perhaps he means non-European. Are Greeks considered white and Jews considered nonwhite? Clarification on this point would be helpful.
If you are interested in the geographical expansion of the Christian religion, this book is an excellent source of information about people and events responsible for its remarkable spread. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, for example, Francis of Assisi tried to convert the Sultan of Egypt, and nearly sixty years later Kublai Khan, the Mongol ruler, asked the pope to send missionaries to his court to teach his people the religion of Christ. How did the pope respond? Kurian gives the answer in chapter thirteen.
A notable feature of this reference work is its emphasis on world-wide Christian developments. Kurian is keen to apprise the reader of the fact of Christianity’s spread to the north, south, east and west of its original center in Jerusalem. We in the west tend to think of the religion as a Eurocentric development, yet Kurian (born in India and emigrated to the U.S. in 1968) corrects this misconception over and over again. The hundredth anniversary of the Armenian genocide has created interest in Armenia. Kurian tells us many things about Christianity in Armenia, including that it is the oldest Christian nation in the world, dating from the year 301.
Sadly, we learn about the “Great Schism” between the Western/Latin Christian church and the Eastern/Greek Christian church at the dawning of the eleventh century. With the Islamic persecution of Christians in Syria and Iraq, it is helpful to know about the history of the church in the Middle East. This book provides glimpses into this history and describes the wider history of the persecuted church, sadly on the rise in the world today.
The book concludes with three useful appendices: “Christian Literature” which contains four pages listing classic Christian writings; “Christian Creeds” which reproduces the Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed and Creed of Constantinople; thirdly, a list of the one hundred most consequential events in Christian history.
The only thing lacking in this otherwise complete and concise handbook of Christian history is an index of people, places and movements.
The test of a good book is that it leads you to other good books. Kurian’s reference work tantalizes the reader to learn more about the multifarious and dramatic people, events and ideas that make up the history of Christianity.