Greco-Roman religion had ended up with an uneasy mixture of the cult of the emperor (increasingly odd as the empire became a military dictatorship constantly changing hands after bloody conflicts) and a chaotic plurality of local rites and myths. But my money is on Pentecostalism, and whatever happens next to Pentecostalism (no, not necessarily the jumping-up-and-down, happy-clappy, tambourine-bashing version).

The popular and distinguished Oxford historian, Diarmaid MacCulloch, recommends books that will help you make a start. Diarmaid MacCulloch begins with what turns out to be one of many tours de force in summarising the intellectual and social background of Christianity in the classical as well as the Jewish world, so that we can see something of the issues to which the Christian faith offered a startlingly new response. S. Lewis que se transmitieron durante tiempos de guerra, charlas en las cuales él se proponía ""explicar y defender las creencias que han sido común a casi todos los cristianos de todos los tiempos. What modern historians would say is that this is a story of transformations, and one of those transformations was the alliance between emperors and Christianity, which made the Empire very different. As a serious historian, he brushes aside the luxuriant growths of conspiracy theory - the Gnostics plus Mary Magdalene plus Knights Templar fantasy world.

The first great English detective novel, Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone is presented in a Folio Society limited edition of 750 numbered copies. In a review at the London Review of Books, Frank Kermode notes that the subtitle of the book, 'The First Three Thousand Years', includes the ancient world of Greece, Rome, and Judaism ( c. I was frustrated by conflicting messages about gender and faith from my family, profession, and religion. In Visual Faith the reader will find a wonderful overview of art history from a Christian perspective, beginning with art in the Early Church and coming all the way up to Warhol, Pollock, and art today.

Transported two thousand years into the past, readers are introduced to Antipas, a Roman civic leader who has encountered the writings of the biblical author Luke. Time and again, there are glimpses of lost worlds, possibilities that flickered and disappeared - not only the Christian empire of China in the 13th century and the Unitarian commonwealth of Poland in the 16th, but the Islamic republic of central America (a short-lived proposal for anti-Spanish cooperation between Elizabeth Tudor and Morocco). This book, now the most comprehensive and up to date single volume work in English, describes not only the main ideas and personalities of Christian history, its organisation and spirituality, but how it has changed politics, sex, and human society. So you get a sense that for him being in a relationship with Rome is what it is to be true, and yet also curiously what it is to be local, to be where he is in the north of England.From the book’s provocative subtitle – The First Three Thousand Years – Diarmaid MacCulloch sets out his ambition to follow Christianity all the way from its origins to the present day. His Thomas Cranmer won the Whitbread Biography Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. If there was one book I’d give to people in my church who were interested in engaging with art , this would be it. I’m not about to re-read the whole book just to verify, but a quick perusal shows me perhaps 5-6 quoted verses throughout the entire text. Scores of Jewish prophets, preachers, and would-be messiahs wandered through the Holy Land, bearing messages from God.

An admirable and impressive work of synthesis that will give insight and satisfaction to thousands of lay readers.

It’s easy for us 21st-century liberals to feel it was dreadfully repressive, but if society is constantly on the edge of violence, as that society was, I think we’d feel rather differently about the community disapproving of people stepping out of line. Destined to become a classic of both urban reportage and contemporary spirituality” ( Los Angeles Times )— Tattoos on the Heart is a series of parables about kinship and redemption from pastor, activist, and renowned speaker, Father Gregory Boyle—now in paperback. We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview. A Church with the Soul of a Nation explores this question by weaving together the history of the United Church with a provocative analysis of religion and cultural change. There’s virtually nothing about Jesus’ shed blood which washes away the sins of the world, about His resurrection, about the love and forgiveness of God, about the drawing of the Spirit or the grace by which even the worst of sinners can be saved.