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Christianity

The First Three Thousand Years

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Christianity

By: Diarmaid MacCulloch
Narrated by: Walter Dixon
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About this listen

Once in a generation, a historian will redefine his field, producing a book that demands to be read and heard - a product of electrifying scholarship conveyed with commanding skill. Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity is such a book. Breathtaking in ambition, it ranges back to the origins of the Hebrew Bible and covers the world, following the three main strands of the Christian faith.

Christianity will teach modern listeners things that have been lost in time about how Jesus' message spread and how the New Testament was formed. We follow the Christian story to all corners of the globe, filling in often neglected accounts of conversions and confrontations in Africa and Asia. And we discover the roots of the faith that galvanized America, charting the rise of the evangelical movement from its origins in Germany and England. This audiobook encompasses all of intellectual history - we meet monks and crusaders, heretics and saints, slave traders and abolitionists, and discover Christianity's essential role in driving the enlightenment and the age of exploration, and shaping the course of World War I and World War II.

We are living in a time of tremendous religious awareness, when both believers and non-believers are deeply engaged by questions of religion and tradition, seeking to understand the violence sometimes perpetrated in the name of God. The son of an Anglican clergyman, MacCulloch writes with deep feeling about faith. His last book, The Reformation, was chosen by dozens of publications as Best Book of the Year and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. This awe-inspiring follow-up is a landmark new history of the faith that continues to shape the world.

©2010 Diamaid MacCulloch (P)2010 Gildan Media Corp Christianity History World Middle Ages Imperialism Africa Middle East Ancient History Socialism War Social justice Crusade Tradition

Critic Reviews

"Assuming no previous knowledge on the part of readers about Christian traditions, MacCulloch traces in breathtaking detail the often contentious arguments within Christianity for the past 3,000 years. His monumental achievement will not soon be surpassed." ( Publishers Weekly)
"A work of exceptional breadth and subtlety." ( Booklist)
All stars
Most relevant  
The story flowed in an entertaining way and was easy to listen to. Narrator was great with a pleasant voice. I recommend this book.

Comprehensive, well researched.

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The book is good. but there are multiple mistakes, errors and significant biases - but these are to be expected.
The narrator also struggles to understand Christianity, and makes many mistakes in pronouncing key terms in history and theology. Very annoying.
Still worth a listen when you have a spare 2 days.

Solid review of Christianity

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Literally everything you ever wanted or needed to know about Christianity right here in one place. So much information presented in an unbiased, factual format. A genuine pleasure to listen to.

Fantastic History

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McCullough uses so much detail, but also presents it in a fascinating and captivating way. Loved his factual, unbiased writing

Dixon was engaging the entire time, though I had to keep it on a solid 1.5x speed, and by the end was going at a 1.8x speed. I appreciate audible's accessibility to this function.

Best to read it along side a physical copy, and even underline/take notes, as its so big, I can now go back and find specific parts later.

Great story. Great Presentation (at 1.5x speed)

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I was looking for a book connecting world history with the development of Christianity. This book makes a brave attempt at doing that, though sometimes it has too much detail about religious controversies for my taste and perhaps too little detail on the historical side. I guess this is to be expected, as its focus is on Christianity rather than world history. The book still provides a lot of useful connections between the two subjects.

Connecting world history and Christianity

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The narrator uses incorrect pronunciation on certain words, and more annoyingly, changes the way he pronounces them throughout the book. The book itself is great though.

Great book, okay narrator

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Where to start? It’s simply brilliant!

My understanding of theology is reasonable. However, I was wanting to understand the history of Christianity and forces that shaped our modern understanding of Christian theology + alternative interpretations that emerged.

This book serves as a one stop reference book for all the above.

What a pleasure to listen to/read (I also ordered a hard copy for reference)

+ I very much enjoyed the narration. It too was outstanding!

Outstanding!

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This title was certainly informative, thorough in most aspects, and objective in some parts.
I’ve really enjoyed the authors thoroughness of research in other works & was looking forward to this title as it would be a helpful resource that would objectively reveal parts of Christian history that I am uninformed of. It did accomplish that for most part. It was extremely helpful to hear more in regard ri orthodox traditions than most church history books give. Where this title fails is not so much in the authors work of a survey of history, but in his inability to separate the institution of the church (with all its benefits and flaws) with the body of the church and Christianity as a specific study in history. He is certainly not a Christian, which by no means disqualifies him from speaking to Christian history, but it does mean his own views, predispositions, allegiances, and life choices interpret and critique where perhaps history itself should just tell the story. Historian and scholar he certainly is. Exegete and theologian he is not. That leaves large gaps in some of his assessments (assumptions) about how the church should or should not be at nearly every point in history. There is also a “clunkyness” to the last third or so of the book, as there is far too much covered in disconnected ways.
Overall a helpful and insightful book, but the authors bias (especially in relation to biblical ethics of sexuality and gender) to show itself by the end, which doesn’t so much paint a poor picture of modern evangelicalism (which seems to be the intent), but shows the author had an axe to grind all along and has not yet realised his issue does not lie in the church and it’s teaching, but in the Word of God the true church teaches throughout history, and the source of that Word.

Mostly thorough, but a bias comes through by end.

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The scope of this book is enormous which makes it difficult to follow. The book aims to be a complete history of Christianity and from what I've listened it is able to provide that.

For me the undoing is the understanding why some of things that happened were important to the story. I can understand why these were left out to a certain extent as this would make the text even longer.

I sadly don't recommend this book unless you're already familiar with Christian history and are looking to find where you have gaps.

Difficult to follow

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