FINISHED READING - A History of Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch

Diarmaid Mac Cullough is a historian not unfamiliar with the magisterial all encompassing epic. Winning prizes for his previous substantial biographies of Thomas Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell, and his history of the Reformation. So this history of Christianity rattles along at a pace through all three thousand years of the colourful diversity of its offspring. It has a lot of ground to cover.

It begins in the immediate aftermath of the death of its founder and ends in the mixed message of a post world war religious disillusionment on the one hand, against the extravagant, if not histrionic populism of fundamentalism in both East and West. Revealing how science and rationalism has both undermined and revived Christianity's fortunes.

Early Christianity,  though undoubtedly thriving, was a real ragbag of counter cultural movements with differing interpretations of their source materials. Of which The Bible and New Testament were only two. Things were unquestionably much wilder and on occasions uncontrollable. Paul's letters portray for us his attempts to keep control and direct his sometimes willfully errant followers.

Constantine's adoption of Christianity was the exemplar for what a potent force political and religious power being brought together could provide Christianity. Prior to this it's followers, who would never shut up bragging about their newfound faith, were continually hounded and persecuted. Progress to becoming a world wide universal religion, has been achieved on the back of a history of such adoptions and alliances with various emperors, kings, dukes and autocratic potentates. But also there's the misjudged and notable silences where moral clarity might have been expected.

Though establishment has provided an undoubted constitutional stability it has provoked upheavals galore - reformations, revolts and internal schisms, each attempting to meet the need for a specific theological adjunct or moral renewal. Establishment, though it provided access to power and influence in high places, it has frequently been one that would ultimately corrupt the actions of its practitioners and sew the seeds for further reformation.

McCullough expertly recounts theological disputes such as who the person of Jesus was a manifestation of - God, man or a synthesis of both. The meaning of The Bible is flexible, and can indeed be made to support many contradictory, inhumane and morally dubious things, should you wish it to.  It's clear whenever MacCulloch reaches a period which is one of his own specialisms. The text begins to fizz with a more vividly colouring and feeling for the detail.

Attempting any such comprehensive and inclusive coverage of the development of Christianity over millennia, cannot help but feel occasionally like its quickly skipping over the bare facts of the matter. No one can be a specialist in a minor cult's manners of practice. That MacCulloch largely manages to keep you on track and engaged over its thousand pages, is a Testament, not just to his scholarship, but also his feeling for the texture of this history and his undoubted skill as a writer of it.

CARROT REVIEW  - 6/8