Church History in Plain Language--Bruce L. Shelley

Update March 2010: Prof. Shelley passed away in February 2010 (read press release). May God bless him and his family. Though I never met him personally, I did caught a few glimpses of him when he visited his son Marshall at our Church. His book has been an inspiration for Dan and myself (we just couldn't put it down until we were done!).

Below is Dan's original Book Review
Shelley organizes church history by theme and time, so this book is not necessarily a ‎straight timeline from 6 BC until now. Chapters revolve around people, secular and/or ‎church movements, or events. However, the chapters generally proceed in a timeline ‎fashion. Aside from the Middle Ages (590-1517), time periods receive mostly equal ‎treatment until what Shelley calls “The Age of Ideologies” (1914-1996). The Middle ‎Ages gets less space than the other time periods, while modern times get more space. The ‎entire book is 520 pages, so don’t expect detailed analysis. Shelley effectively ‎summarizes key figures and events in the church. The book provides suggestions for ‎further reading at the end of each chapter. At the back of the book, Shelley provides ‎indexes for people, movements and events, as well as endnotes for each chapter.‎

I enjoyed this book so much that I am reading it a second time and taking notes. 2000 ‎years of church history reads like a story. Reading about all the years of church history ‎puts things in perspective. For example, Shelley writes about martyrs in the Roman ‎Empire before Constantine. Did you know that during the reign of Diocletian, just before ‎Constantine, many Christians rushed to suffer for their faith? The Church had so many ‎martyrs on its hands it didn’t know what to do with them! When I look around, I see ‎Christians afraid to break their cover.‎

The author does an excellent job at presenting various heresies and detailing the Church ‎response to them. The early heresies serve to let us know that it’s all been done before ‎‎(mostly). Blood was shed and eternal salvation denied for heretical doctrines. Apparently, ‎orthodoxy was important back then ‎

The book explains step by step how the Roman Catholic church formed, and how it’s ‎bishops and popes incrementally took more and more power. It is a fascinating ‎demonstration of the slippery slope that eventually sparked the Reformation.‎

A few things I didn’t like: For each chapter, the book has a few endnotes with additional ‎information. I prefer footnotes so I don’t have to flip to the back of the book. I wish ‎Shelley had gone into more detail about the canonization of Scripture and how Scripture ‎was used to combat each heresy. ‎

This is a top-notch introduction to Church history written at a high-school/undergraduate ‎level. I recommend it to anybody with an interest in Church or world history.