Oxford History of the Christian Church – serie

This pioneering study of Australian, New Zealand, and Pacific Christianity opens up new perspectives on Christianization and modernization in this richly complex region. The reception of Christianity into Pacific cultures has produced strongly Christian societies. Based on research in widely scattered archives, this book not only deals with regional interactions but pays careful attention to developments in microstates, and to the variety of indigenous religious movements, which were earlier regarded as deviations from Christian orthodoxy but are now seen as significant adaptations of Christian teaching. In Australia and New Zealand too, European Christian beginnings have been given local emphases, producing Churches with distinctive identities.Lay leadership is emphasized - not only in the Churches but as part of the Christian presence in the realms of politics, business, and culture. The broad liturgical, theological, constitutional, and pastoral developments of the 19th and 20th centuries are mapped, as a context for the striking changes which have taken place since the 1960s. The dynamics of religious change and conflict, the ambiguities of religious authority, and the destructive effects of Christian colonialism on indigenous communities, especially Australian aborigines, are all frankly dealt with.The decline of the institutional impact of the Churches in Australia and New Zealand is explored, as is the growth of partnership between government and Churches in education, social welfare, and overseas aid and development. Interchange in personnel and ideas is strikingly illustrated in the missionary activities of the regional Churches and their cultural impact.The author's involvement in Church and community leadership, ecumenism, and theological education makes this volume in The Oxford History of the Christian Church a valuable addition to the series, describing both continuities with world Christianity and little-known local developments.

Keith Robbins, building on his previous writing on the modern history of the interlocking but distinctive territories of the British Isles, takes a wide-ranging, innovative and challenging look at the twentieth-century history of the main bodies, at once national and universal, which have collectively constituted the Christian Church. The protracted search for elusive unity is emphasized. Particular beliefs, attitudes, policies and structures are located in their social and cultural contexts. Prominent individuals, clerical and lay, are scrutinized. Religion and politics intermingle, highlighting, for churches and states, fundamental questions of identity and allegiance, of public and private values, in a century of ideological conflict, violent confrontation (in Ireland), two world wars and protracted Cold War.The massive change experienced by the countries and people of the Isles since 1900 has encompassed shifting relationships between England, Ireland (and Northern Ireland), Scotland, and Wales, the end of the British Empire, the emergence of a new Europe and, latterly, major immigration of adherents of Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and other faiths from outside Europe: developments scarcely conceivable at the outset. Such a broad contextual perspective provides an essential background to understanding the puzzling ambiguities evident both in secularization and enduring Christian faith. Robbins provides a cogent and compelling overview of this turbulent century for the churches of the Isles.

Robert Frykenberg's insightful study explores and enhances historical understandings of Christian communities, cultures, and institutions within the Indian world from their beginnings down to the present. As one out of several manifestations of a newly emerging World Christianity, in which Christians of a Post-Christian West are a minority, it has focused upon those trans-cultural interactions within Hindu and Muslim environments which have made Christians in this part of the world distinctive. It seeks to uncover various complexities in the proliferation of Christianity in its many forms and to examine processes by which Christian elements intermingled with indigenous cultures and which resulted in multiple identities, and also left imprints upon various cultures of India. Thomas Christians believe that the Apostle Thomas came to India in 52 A.D./C.E., and that he left seven congregations to carry on the Mission of bringing the Gospel to India. In our day the impulse of this Mission is more alive than ever. Catholics, in three hierarchies, have become most numerous; and various Evangelicals/Protestant communities constitute the third great tradition. With the rise of Pentecostalism, a fourth great wave of Christian expansion in India has occurred. Starting with movements that began a century ago, there are now ten to fifteen times more missionaries than ever before, virtually all of them Indian. Needless to say, Christianity in India is profoundly Indian and Frykenberg provides a fascinating guide to its unique history and practice.

"I can merely admire his courage in tackling so complex and difficult a subject; he should succeed in stimulating a fresh generation of research... this well-written, intelligent and lively study will greatly stimulate anyone fortunate enough to read it."Christianity provided the constitutive identity of historic Ethiopia. From the sixteenth century, and increasingly from the nineteenth, it entered decisively into the life and culture of an increasing number of other African peoples. In the course of the twentieth century, African Christians have become a major part of the world Church, and arguably modern African history as a whole is not intelligible without its powerful Christian element. Yet despite the great advance in African historiography over the last forty years, this is the first major volume to consider the historical development and character of the Christian Church in Africa as a whole, linking together Ehtiopia Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and the numerousm 'Independent' churches of modern times. The book focuses throughout on the role of coversion, the shaping of Church life and its relationship to traditional values, and the impact of political power. Professor Hastings also compares the relation of Christian history to the comprable development of Islam in Africa.

The Early Reformation on the Continent offers a fresh look at the formative years of the European Reformation and the origins of Protestant faith and practice. Taking into account recent work on Erasmus and Luther, Owen Chadwick handles these and numerous other figures and with sensitivity and understanding. Emphasis on the context provides a balanced view of the raison d'être for the changes which the reforming communities sought to introduce and the difficulties and disagreements concerning these. The structure of the book is distinctively original. Rather than following a conventional chronological progression, Owen Chadwick takes a much broader perspective and arranges his material thematically. Whatever the topic - the Bible, clerical celibacy, moral questions of adultery and divorce, purgatory, hymns, excommunication, the role of the State in worship and pastoral activity, education, the Eucharist - the reader is taken back to its origins and development through the history of the western Church and given an authoritative, accessible, and informative account.

This survey of the development of the Frankish Church under the Merovingian and Carolingian kings (approximately AD 500 - 900) is the first of its kind to appear in English. It is not a story of unimpeded advance towards the Church of medieval France but rather of painful adaptation. It takes account of unsolved problems: the reaction of the Church to heresy, to Judaism, to the Frankish ethos of marriage, and to the conversion of peoples outside Francia itself. Special attention is paid to the intellectual interests of churchmen and to the role of the vernacular in transmitting the Christian message to clergy and laity whose Latin was negligible or nil.Much turned on the authority of a succession of rulers who combined deep piety with material needs that were inimical to the Church's position as a great landowner. The advance of the Church was thus hesitant and often baulked. What emerges is the Churchmen's increasing resolve to unite against the pressures of lay domination, and to press forward with their basic duties as converters and teachers.

The religious histories of both the USA and Canada contain many dramatic themes, such as the Great Awakenings, the triumph of religious freedom, the clashes between Catholics and Protestants, the tensions of racial and ethnic differences, the forming of church unions, and the contentions between Christians who seek to express their faith in the thought patterns of their time and those who cling to traditional formulations. The way the churches faced the movement of peoples into and across a vast continent tells much about their present size and characteristics in both Canada and the United States.

Professor Rupp looks at the consequences of the Revolution of 1688, including the Toleration Act and the schism created by those who felt bound in conscience not to accept the new monarchy. He asks how the alliance between Church and State affected the Establishment, and how party politics modified its attitudes and sought to silence its independent voice. He describes the life and worship of the Churches; the survival of intolerance despite the principle of toleration; the growth of the dissenting Churches, and the predicament of the Roman Catholics.

Owen Chadwick describes the effects of the European Revolution of 1789 to 1815 on the Papacy, and compares Catholic Church of the ancient régime to that of the early nineteenth century. The book shows how strongly the Counter-Reformation still worked in Italy during the eighteenth century; how it was the constitutional development of states, rather than the incoming of new ideas, which forced change; how traditional was the Catholic world even in the age of the Enlightenment. It shows reform at work, and the fierce pressure on the Papacy marked first in the forced suppression of the Jesuits and afterwards in the kidnapping of two successive Popes by French governments. It shows how revolution in Italy affected church structures and brought on peasant war, yet encouraged, in a radical form, some improvements of church life towards which the earlier reformers had striven. Finally, it shows the political swing of the Restoration after the fall of Napoleon, the way in which the Church was already associated with the political right, the great difficulties of restoring church life after the evolutionary years, and the persistence, half unnoticed, of the earlier reforming ideas among Catholics.

Could a Pope ever consent to be the subject of a political power? Owen Chadwick presents an analysis of the causes and consequences of the end of the historic Papal State, and the psychological pressures upon old Rome as it came under attack from the Italian Risorgimento; and not only from Italy, but from liberal movements in Germany, France, Spain, and Portugal, as well as Tsarist Russia as it oppressed its Polish subjects. If a united Italy was to be achieved, the State must disappear. These pressures caused Popes to resist 'the world' rather than to try to influence it, to make the Vatican more of a sanctuary behind high walls, and to preach the more otherworldly aspects of Catholic faith. At the same time they met new moral demands: the rights of the labourer in industry, divorce, toleration, which they could confront because the Revolution had destroyed the powers of the Catholic kings over their churches, and therefore Catholic authority could be far more centralized in Rome.

This book is the first history in English of the Lutheran Church in Germany and Scandinavia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A period of fundamental and lasting change in the political landscape--with the separation of the old twin monarchies of Sweden-Finland and Denmark-Norway in Scandinavia (1809, 1814), and the unification of Germany (1866-71), this was also a time of particular unease and upheaval for the Church. Attempts to emulate the spiritual community of the early church, reform of the church establishment, and steps taken to enlighten parishioners were almost held back by the anomalous structural legacy of the Reformation, tradition, and parish habit, sacred and profane. However, the birth of the modern nation-state and its market economy posed a fundamental challenge to the structure and ethos of the Reformation churches, as it did to the Catholic Church. The First World War deepened the crisis further: German Protestants (and the Scandinavians were not immune either, although they remained neutral), who bracketed modernity with crisis and religious with national renewal, and who saw national loyalty as a higher value than the faith, fellowship, and moral order of the Church, were swept up into the maw of a modern national war machine which threatened to wipe out Protestantism altogether.

The study of the Reformation in England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland has usually been treated by historians as a series of discrete national stories. Reformation in Britain and Ireland draws upon the growing genre of writing about British History to construct an innovative narrative of religious change in the four countries/three kingdoms. The text uses a broadly chronological framework to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the pre-Reformation churches; the political crises of the break with Rome; the development of Protestantism and changes in popular religious culture. The tools of conversion - the Bible, preaching and catechising - are accorded specific attention, as is doctrinal change. It is argued that political calculations did most to determine the success or failure of reformation, though the ideological commitment of a clerical elite was also of central significance.

The two centuries covered in this volume were among the most creative in the history of the Church. Colin Morris charts the emergence of much that is considered characteristic of European culture and religion, including universities and commercial cities, the crusades, the friars, chivalry, marriage, and church architecture. In all these developments, the Roman Church played an important and often fundamental role. A re-evaluation of that role is now particularly apt given the dissolution of Christendom in its old form witnessed by today's generation.

This second volume begins with a Section on the religion of the people. The clergy offered the liturgical services, sermons, evangelistic missions, and the offices sanctifying birth, marriage, and death; distinctions are made between what they intended and how their ministrations were popularly interpreted and incorporated into the social order. Statistical soundings concerning the extent of religious practice and the degree of conviction involved are evaluated. Further chapters deal with processions, pilgrimages, and popular practices and superstitions, with hermits and confraternities, with the impact of reading the Bible and other edifying literature in an age of increasing literacy. Finally comes a view of the twilight world of magic and sorcery. Throughout this Section the comments of theologians and thinkers of the Enlightenment are recorded, whether in coincidence or contradiction. The next section deals with the efficacy of the confessional and the role of the casuistry of the Church in attempting to mould sexual mores, business practices, and in the world of the theatre. In the next two Sections, the role of religious issues in political affairs is detailed. An overview of the Jansenist quarrel and of the activities of the Jesuits brings in the story of the struggle between Crown and Parlement, while an extended portrayal of the life of the Protestant and Jewish communities leads to the history of the debate on toleration, involving the Gallican Church in political interventions and controversy. Throughout the two volumes the rising forces of anticlericalism and the tensions within the ecclesiastical establishment have been recorded, and these themes come to their climax in a final section on the role played by churchmen in the coming of the Revolution.

This book is the first history in English of the Lutheran Church in Germany and Scandinavia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A period of fundamental and lasting change in the political landscape with the separation of the old twin monarchies of Sweden-Finland and Denmark-Norway in Scandinavia (1808, 1814), and the unification of Germany (1866-71), this was also a time of particular unease and upheaval for the church. Attempts to emulate the spiritual community of the early church, reform of the church establishment, and steps taken to enlighten parishioners were almost always held back by the anomalous structural legacy of the Reformation, tradition, and parish habit, sacred and profane. However, the birth of the modern nation-state and its market economy posed a fundamental challenge to the structure and ethos of the Reformation churches, as it did to the Catholic Church. The First World War deepened the crisis further: German Protestants (and the Scandinavians were not immune either, although they remained neutral), who bracketed modernity with crisis and religion with national renewal, and who saw national loyalty as a higher value than the faith, fellowship, and moral order of the church, were swept up into the maw of a modern national war machine which threatened to wipe out Protestantism altogether.

This, the first volume, begins with a Section on Church and State, the theology and political theory justifying their alliance, the wealth of the Clergy and their Assemblies voting taxation, their role in the official life of the nation, from the Court at Versailles to army barracks, warships, and prisons. Then comes a presentation of the complex structure of dioceses and parishes, and the vast variety of monastic institutions (where the enjoyment of misapplied wealth contrasted with the austere dedication which ensured the education of the children and the care of the sick throughout the land). There is an evocation of the life-style of the clergy from the palaces of the aristocratic bishops and the cathedral closes of comfortable canons to the humblest tumbledown nunnery, with a gallery of portraits analysing clerical motives and vocations. A multitude of lay folk come onto the scene, aristocrats battening on monastic revenues, lawyers threading the labyrinth of benefice law, estate managers, musicians, vergers and officials of every kind; many families' whole way of existence was postulated on the assumption of the availability of ecclesiastical offices for their children--the differential privileges of the classes in the hierarchy of society being reflected in an institution devoted to spiritual and unworldly ends.

The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism, 1914-1958 examines the most momentous years in papal history. Popes Benedict XV (1914-1922), Pius XI (1922-1939), and Pius XII (1939-1958) faced the challenges of two world wars and the Cold War, and threats posed by totalitarian dictatorships like Italian Fascism, German National Socialism, and Communism in Russia and China. The wars imposed enormous strains upon the unity of Catholics and the hostility of the totalitarian regimes to Catholicism lead to the Church facing persecution and martyrdom on a scale similar to that experienced under the Roman Empire and following the French Revolution. At the same time, these were years of growth, development, and success for the papacy. Benedict healed the wounds left by the 'modernist' witch hunt of his predecessor and re-established the papacy as an influence in international affairs through his peace diplomacy during the First World War. Pius XI resolved the 'Roman Question' with Italy and put papal finances on a sounder footing. He also helped reconcile the Catholic Church and science by establishing the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and took the first steps to move the Church away from entrenched anti-Semitism. Pius XI continued his predecessor's policy of the 'indigenisation' of the missionary churches in preparation for de-colonisation. Pius XII fully embraced the media and other means of publicity, and with his infallible promulgation of the Assumption in 1950, he took papal absolutism and centralism to such heights that he has been called the 'last real pope'. Ironically, he also prepared the way for the Second Vatican Council.

The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism, 1914-1958 examines the most momentous years in papal history. Popes Benedict XV (1914-1922), Pius XI (1922-1939), and Pius XII (1939-1958) faced the challenges of two world wars and the Cold War, and threats posed by totalitarian dictatorships like Italian Fascism, German National Socialism, and Communism in Russia and China. The wars imposed enormous strains upon the unity of Catholics and the hostility of the totalitarian regimes to Catholicism lead to the Church facing persecution and martyrdom on a scale similar to that experienced under the Roman Empire and following the French Revolution. At the same time, these were years of growth, development, and success for the papacy. Benedict healed the wounds left by the 'modernist' witch hunt of his predecessor and re-established the papacy as an influence in international affairs through his peace diplomacy during the First World War. Pius XI resolved the 'Roman Question' with Italy and put papal finances on a sounder footing. He also helped reconcile the Catholic Church and science by establishing the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and took the first steps to move the Church away from entrenched anti-Semitism. Pius XI continued his predecessor's policy of the 'indigenisation' of the missionary churches in preparation for de-colonisation. Pius XII fully embraced the media and other means of publicity, and with his infallible promulgation of the Assumption in 1950, he took papal absolutism and centralism to such heights that he has been called the 'last real pope'. Ironically, he also prepared the way for the Second Vatican Council.

The Church in Ancient Society provides a full and enjoyable narrative history of the first six centuries of the Christian Church. Ancient Greek and Roman society had many gods and an addiction to astrology and divination. This introduction to the period traces the process by which Christianity changed this and so provided a foundation for the modern world: the teaching of Jesus created a lasting community, which grew to command the allegiance of the Roman emperor. Christianity is discussed in relation to how it appeared to both Jews and pagans, and how its Christian doctrine and practice were shaped in relation to Graeco-Roman culture and the Jewish matrix. Among the major figures discussed are Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Constantine, Julian the Apostate, Basil, Ambrose, and Augustine.Following a chronological approach, Henry Chadwick's clear exposition of important texts and theological debates in their historical context is unrivalled in detail. In particular, theological and ecclesial texts are examined in relation to the behaviour and beliefs of people who attended churches and synagogues. Christians did not find agreement and unity easy and the author displays a distinctive concern for the factors - theological, personal, and political - which caused division in the church and prevented reconciliation. The emperors, however, began to foster unity for political reasons and to choose monotheism. Finally, the Church captured the society.

Could a Pope ever consent to be the subject of a political power? Owen Chadwick presents an analysis of the causes and consequences of the end of the historic Papal State, and the psychological pressures upon old Rome as it came under attack from the Italian Risorgimento; and not only from Italy, but from liberal movements in Germany, France, Spain, and Portugal, as well as Tsarist Russia as it oppressed its Polish subjects. If a united Italy was to be achieved, the State must disappear. These pressures caused Popes to resist 'the world' rather than to try to influence it, to make the Vatican more of a sanctuary behind high walls, and to preach the more otherworldly aspects of Catholic faith. At the same time they met new moral demands - the rights of the labourer in industry, divorce, toleration - which they could confront because the Revolution had destroyed the powers of the Catholic kings over their churches, and therefore Catholic authority could be far more centralized in Rome.

The greatest Christian split of all has been that between east and west, between Roman Catholic and eastern Orthodox, a rift that is still apparent today. Henry Chadwick provides a compelling and balanced account of the emergence of divisions between Rome and Constantinople. Drawing on his encyclopaedic command of the literature, he starts with the roots of the divergence in apostolic times and takes the story right up to the Council of Florence in the fifteenth century. Henry Chadwick's own years of experience as an ecumenist inform his discussion of Christians in relation to each other, to Jews, and to non-Christian Gentiles. He displays a distinctive concern for the factors - theological, personal, political, and cultural - that caused division in the church and prevented reconciliation. His masterly exposition of the complex issues discussed at the Ecumenical Councils (issues that eventually led to the separation) is characteristically clear and fair. This is a work of immense learning, written with sensitivity and spirit. Its fascinating detail and full analysis make it invaluable to anyone interested in how this lasting rift in the Church developed.

The Church in Ancient Society provides a full and enjoyable narrative history of the first six centuries of the Christian Church. Ancient Greek and Roman society had many gods and an addiction to astrology and divination. This introduction to the period traces the process by which Christianity changed this and so provided a foundation for the modern world: the teaching of Jesus created a lasting community, which grew to command the allegiance of the Roman emperor. Christianity is discussed in relation to how it appeared to both Jews and pagans, and how its Christian doctrine and practice were shaped in relation to Graeco-Roman culture and the Jewish matrix. Among the major figures discussed are Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Constantine, Julian the Apostate, Basil, Ambrose, and Augustine.Following a chronological approach, Henry Chadwick's clear exposition of important texts and theological debates in their historical context is unrivalled in detail. In particular, theological and ecclesial texts are examined in relation to the behaviour and beliefs of people who attended churches and synagogues. Christians did not find agreement and unity easy and the author displays a distinctive concern for the factors - theological, personal, and political - which caused division in the church and prevented reconciliation. The emperors, however, began to foster unity for political reasons and to choose monotheism. Finally, the Church captured the society.

The Early Reformation on the Continent offers a fresh look at the formative years of the European Reformation and the origins of Protestant faith and practice. Taking into account recent work on Erasmus and Luther, Owen Chadwick handles these and numerous other figures and with sensitivity and understanding. Emphasis on the context provides a balanced view of the raison d'être for the changes which the reforming communities sought to introduce and the difficulties and disagreements concerning these. The structure of the book is distinctively original. Rather than following a conventional chronological progression, Owen Chadwick takes a much broader perspective and arranges his material thematically. Whatever the topic - the Bible, clerical celibacy, moral questions of adultery and divorce, purgatory, hymns, excommunication, the role of the State in worship and pastoral activity, education, the Eucharist - the reader is taken back to its origins and development through the history of the western Church and given an authoritative, accessible, and informative account.

This pioneering study of Australian, New Zealand, and Pacific Christianity opens up new perspectives on Christianization and modernization in this richly complex region. The reception of Christianity into Pacific cultures has produced strongly Christian societies. Based on research in widely scattered archives, this book not only deals with regional interactions but pays careful attention to developments in microstates, and to the variety of indigenous religious movements, which were earlier regarded as deviations from Christian orthodoxy but are now seen as significant adaptations of Christian teaching. In Australia and New Zealand too, European Christian beginnings have been given local emphases, producing Churches with distinctive identities.Lay leadership is emphasized - not only in the Churches but as part of the Christian presence in the realms of politics, business, and culture. The broad liturgical, theological, constitutional, and pastoral developments of the 19th and 20th centuries are mapped, as a context for the striking changes which have taken place since the 1960s. The dynamics of religious change and conflict, the ambiguities of religious authority, and the destructive effects of Christian colonialism on indigenous communities, especially Australian aborigines, are all frankly dealt with.The decline of the institutional impact of the Churches in Australia and New Zealand is explored, as is the growth of partnership between government and Churches in education, social welfare, and overseas aid and development. Interchange in personnel and ideas is strikingly illustrated in the missionary activities of the regional Churches and their cultural impact.The author's involvement in Church and community leadership, ecumenism, and theological education makes this volume in the Oxford History of the Christian Church a valuable addition to the series, describing both continuities with world Christianity and little-known local developments.

The study of the Reformation in England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland has usually been treated by historians as a series of discrete national stories. Reformation in Britain and Ireland draws upon the growing genre of writing about British History to construct an innovative narrative of religious change in the four countries/three kingdoms. The text uses a broadly chronological framework to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the pre-Reformation churches; the political crises of the break with Rome; the development of Protestantism and changes in popular religious culture. The tools of conversion - the Bible, preaching and catechising - are accorded specific attention, as is doctrinal change. It is argued that political calculations did most to determine the success or failure of reformation, though the ideological commitment of a clerical elite was also of central significance.

The greatest Christian split of all has been that between east and west, between Roman Catholic and eastern Orthodox, a rift that is still apparent today. Henry Chadwick provides a compelling and balanced account of the emergence of divisions between Rome and Constantinople. Drawing on his encyclopaedic command of the literature, he starts with the roots of the divergence in apostolic times and takes the story right up to the Council of Florence in the fifteenth century. Henry Chadwick's own years of experience as an ecumenist inform his discussion of Christians in relation to each other, to Jews, and to non-Christian Gentiles. He displays a distinctive concern for the factors - theological, personal, political, and cultural - that caused division in the church and prevented reconciliation. His masterly exposition of the complex issues discussed at the Ecumenical Councils (issues that eventually led to the separation) is characteristically clear and fair. This is a work of immense learning, written with sensitivity and spirit. Its fascinating detail and full analysis make it invaluable to anyone interested in how this lasting rift in the Church developed.

Keith Robbins, building on his previous writing on the modern history of the interlocking but distinctive territories of the British Isles, takes a wide-ranging, innovative and challenging look at the twentieth-century history of the main bodies, at once national and universal, which have collectively constituted the Christian Church. The protracted search for elusive unity is emphasized. Particular beliefs, attitudes, policies and structures are located in their social and cultural contexts. Prominent individuals, clerical and lay, are scrutinized. Religion and politics intermingle, highlighting, for churches and states, fundamental questions of identity and allegiance, of public and private values, in a century of ideological conflict, violent confrontation (in Ireland), two world wars and protracted Cold War. The massive change experienced by the countries and people of the Isles since 1900 has encompassed shifting relationships between England, Ireland (and Northern Ireland), Scotland and Wales, the end of the British Empire, the emergence of a new Europe and, latterly, major immigration of adherents of Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and other faiths from outside Europe: developments scarcely conceivable at the outset. Such a broad contextual perspective provides an essential background to understanding the puzzling ambiguities evident both in secularization and enduring Christian faith. Robbins provides a cogent and compelling overview of this turbulent century for the churches of the Isles.

Robert Frykenberg's insightful study explores and enhances historical understandings of Christian communities, cultures, and institutions within the Indian world from their beginnings down to the present. As one out of several manifestations of a newly emerging World Christianity, in which Christians of a Post-Christian West are a minority, it has focused upon those trans-cultural interactions within Hindu and Muslim environments which have made Christians in this part of the world distinctive. It seeks to uncover various complexities in the proliferation of Christianity in its many forms and to examine processes by which Christian elements intermingled with indigenous cultures and which resulted in multiple identities, and also left imprints upon various cultures of India. Thomas Christians believe that the Apostle Thomas came to India in 52 A.D./C.E., and that he left seven congregations to carry on the Mission of bringing the Gospel to India. In our day the impulse of this Mission is more alive than ever. Catholics, in three hierarchies, have become most numerous; and various Evangelicals/Protestant communities constitute the third great tradition. With the rise of Pentecostalism, a fourth great wave of Christian expansion in India has occurred. Starting with movements that began a century ago, there are now ten to fifteen times more missionaries than ever before, virtually all of them Indian. Needless to say, Christianity in India is profoundly Indian and Frykenberg provides a fascinating guide to its unique history and practice.