A Short History of Christianity

Journalist Tomkins's breathless portrait of the development of Christianity certainly lives up to its title. Arranged chronologically in roughly 100-year increments, his survey devotes only enough space to major figures and events to introduce them before rushing off to another topic. Everyone who is anyone in Christianity is here: Jesus, Paul, Constantine, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Joseph Smith and Pope Benedict XVI, among others. Tomkins hurries through the rise of Islam, the Crusades, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and the Great Awakenings, offering simplistic overviews of the causes and effects of each event. The narrative can be jerky, often shifting unexpectedly and inexplicably. For example, he devotes two paragraphs to 19th-century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher and then jumps to Celtic Christianity with no warning or reason-all under the subsection that bears Schleiermacher's name. He gives Darwin a mere two paragraphs, and fails even to mention the rise of denominationalism, one of the most significant developments in the history of Protestantism. Moreover, no one reading Tomkins would ever know that women or non-European thinkers have played significant roles in Christian history. Racing through more than 2,000 years of Christian history in such cavalier fashion resembles bolting down the Sunday buffet at the local cafeteria: you can sample everything, but you're never full.