English Church History

After decades of opposition, the Latter-day Saints have dedicated the Salt Lake Temple, a mighty symbol of their industry and faith. Now, with a new century on the horizon, the Saints are optimistic about the future and ready to spread the Savior's message of peace across the globe. Boldly, Nobly, and Independent is the third book in Saints, a new, four-volume narrative history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Fast-paced and meticulously researched, Saints recounts true stories of Latter-day Saints across the globe.

Making a much-anticipated return to the world of Hild, Nicola Griffith’s Menewood transports listeners back to seventh-century Britain, a land of rival kings and religions poised for epochal change. Hild is no longer the bright child who made a place in Edwin Overking’s court with her seemingly supernatural insight. She is eighteen, honed and tested, the formidable lady of Elmet, now building her personal stronghold in the valley of Menewood.

While Christians generally acknowledge that the Bible is God's Word, many of us lack robust confidence in the reality of its trustworthiness. We may not be sure if we really believe what we read. But the more we understand how Scripture came to be, the more we discover its power and truth. Historian Susan Lim unpacks how the history of the Bible bolsters our faith and anchors us through the changing tides of time. The story of Scripture, while messy and complicated at times, is also the story of how God shepherded his people throughout the centuries in and through these writings.

To many in the West, Orthodoxy remains shrouded in mystery, an exotic and foreign religion that survived in the East following the Great Schism of 1054 that split the Christian world into two camps - Catholic and Orthodox. However, as the second largest Christian denomination, Orthodox Christianity is anything but foreign to the nearly 300 million worshipers who practice it. For them, Orthodoxy is a living, breathing reality; a way of being Christian ultimately rooted in the person of Jesus and the experience of the early church.

For decades the accepted wisdom has been that America's mainline Protestant churches are in decline, eclipsed by evangelical mega-churches. Church and religion expert Diana Butler Bass wondered if this was true, and this book is the result of her extensive, three-year study of centrist and progressive churches across the country. Her surprising findings reveal just the opposite - that many of the churches are flourishing, and they are doing so without resorting to mimicking the mega-church, evangelical style. Christianity for the Rest of Us describes this phenomenon....

American history has profoundly shaped, and been shaped by, Christianity. This engaging introduction provides a brisk and lively yet deeply researched survey of these intertwined forces from the colonial period to the present. Elesha Coffman tells the story of Christianity in the United States by focusing on thirteen key events over four centuries of history. The turning points are as varied as the movements they track, including a naval battle, a revival, a schism, a court case, an outpouring of the Spirit, an act of terrorism, the election of a bishop, and the election of a president.

Cultural Christians in the Early Church, which aims to be both historical and practical, argues that cultural Christians were the rule, rather than the exception, in the early church. Using different categories of sins as its organizing principle, the book considers the challenge of culture to the earliest converts to Christianity, as they struggled to live on mission in the Greco-Roman cultural milieu of the Roman Empire.

In 1987, when Hilary Mantel was first published in the London Review of Books, she wrote to the editor, Karl Miller, ‘I have no critical training whatsoever, so I am forced to be more brisk and breezy than scholarly.’ This collection of 20 reviews, essays and pieces of memoir from the next three decades tells the story of what happened next.

The Knights Templar existed officially for less than 200 years. Founded to protect pilgrims who were travelling through the Holy Lands, their rise to power was sudden. They became some of the most feared warriors in the region, they had a mandate from God, they controlled perhaps the world's first real banking system, and they waged war against anyone who tried to wrestle Christianity and seize holy grounds from the control of the Catholic Church.

At the heart of power is a single family. They weren't elected but they live off the public purse. They aren't accountable to anyone, and yet between them they are privy to more government secrets than many cabinet ministers. Divinely appointed using a special hat, the head of the family is your superior, you his subject. Apparently he is guardian of our constitution - but we're also told he wouldn't dream of interfering in politics. If you accept the monarchy, you must accept the moral compromise that comes with it. But the good news is that we don't have to accept it.

Barbara Erskine returns with this beautiful and haunting tale of dark forces and mystical powers

Cambridge, present day: Following the death of her mother, Abi Rutherford receives a mysterious bequest – a misshapen crystal sphere known as the Serpent’s Stone, which...

From the New York Times best-selling author of Stony the Road and one of our most important voices on the African-American experience, a powerful new history of the Black church in America as the Black community's abiding rock and its fortress.

A leading Catholic intellectual explains why the teachings of the Second Vatican Council are essential to the Church's future—and the world's The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) was the most important Catholic event in the past five hundred years. Yet sixty years after its opening on...

The Catholic Church has a history that spans over 2,000 years, and it began with none other than Jesus Christ himself. At least, that is what modern popes believe. But at first, there was just one church, and there was no division between Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and other branches of Christianity. Christians all over the known world were united, and together, they made their spirituality bloom. Their religion took over the lives of villagers, nobles, kings, queens, and even newly arrived pagan armies that came to conquer Europe.

In this exciting book, Paula Fredriksen explains the variety of New Testament images of Jesus by exploring the ways that the new Christian communities interpreted his mission and message in light of the delay of the Kingdom he had preached. A new introduction reviews the most recent scholarship on Jesus and its implications for both history and theology.

A powerful new interpretation of Catholicism's dramatic encounter with modernity, by one of America's leading intellectuals Throughout much of the nineteenth century, both secular and Catholic leaders assumed that the Church and the modern world were locked in a battle to the death. The triumph...

The Christian church of the early centuries spread throughout much of Asia, Africa, and Europe, spoke many languages, was situated within diverse cultural settings, and had varied worship practices; yet it maintained a vital unity on core teachings. In The Global Church - The First Eight Centuries: From Pentecost through the Rise of Islam, author Donald Fairbairn helps listeners understand both the diversity and unity of the church in this pivotal era.

The riveting story of the McKissack family—the founders of the leading Black design and construction firm in the United States, from its beginnings in the mid-1800s to its thriving status today—in a moving celebration of resilience and innovation. Captured in his native West Africa and...

“An indispensible study” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) drawing on history, public opinion surveys, and personal experience that presents a provocative examination of the unholy relationship between American Christianity and white supremacy, and issues an urgent call for White Christians to reckon with this legacy for the sake of themselves and the nation.

Already infamous for the arbitrary, paranoid persecution of its own citizens throughout much of the 20th century, the Soviet Union - as is revealed in John Koeher’s revelatory, eye-opening exposé - also waged a vicious espionage campaign against the Catholic Church and its followers. From the persecution of local priests to an assassination order against Pope John Paul II, the KGB viewed Catholicism as a threat to stability in Eastern Europe and treated the church as an enemy of the State. Lifetime journalist and former U.S. Army Intelligence Officer John Koehler has written the definitive book on this startling history.