The History of Christianity II

Summary: A summary of the history of Global Christianity since the reformation.

I am not unfamiliar with Christian history. But this audiobook lecture series (18 hours, 36 lectures) on the history of global Christianity since the reformation was well done. Starting with the pre-reformation and then quickly running through various aspects of the reformation, I still learned things in an area that I had a good background on.

Part of what I wanted from this was the global aspects that I have less background on. The overview of Eastern Orthodoxy in lecture 10 was excellent as was the overview of the church in the Russian revolution and Liberation theology in Latin America. By my count, there was really only nine lectures that were not US/European focused. These are the areas I was less familiar with and more interested in, although I am not unfamiliar with aspects that did get covered. I wish there was more non-US/Europe lectures.

The PDF that is included was very thorough. It was not an exact transcript but includes bullet points and a number of images from the lectures in 385 pages. There were also questions and suggested readings for each lecture.

I picked this up because it was Molly Worthen and I had enjoyed her book The Apostles of Reason, on the history of the Evangelical idea of authority. And because it was free as part of Audible's Plus Catalog (although it is cycling off the Plus program at the end of July.) I have listened to a number of good history of Christianity lectures, especially the ones by Phillip Carey. The lecture by Luke Timothy Johnson on Christianity to the reformation I think is supposed to be the other part of this history, but I did this second lecture was better.