The Clapham Sect was a group of evangelical Christians, prominent in England from about 1790 to 1830, who campaigned for the abolition of slavery and promoted missionary work at home and abroad.The group centred on the church of John Venn, rector of Clapham in south London. Its members included William Wilberforce, Henry Thornton, James Stephen, Zachary Macaulay and others.Stephen Tomkins tells the fascinating story of the group as one of a web of family re...

David Livingstone has gone down in history as a fearless explorer and missionary, hacking his way through the forests of Africa to bring light to the people - and also to free them from slavery. But who was he, and what was he actually like?"He was an extraordinary character," according to biographer Stephen Tomkins, spectacularly bad at personal relationships, at least with white people, possessed of infinite self-belief, courage, and restlessness. He was an almos...

Worshipped by 2 billion Christians (and revered by 1.3 billion Muslims), Jesus Christ is the most famous human being ever.Yet how did this man from an obscure backwater in the Roman Empire achieve such extraordinary acclaim? How did religion founded in his name grom to become the most powerful on earth? What has been its relationship through history with that other giant of religions, Islam?In this fast-paced and entertaining book, journalist and historian ...

Have you ever wanted accessible introductions to the key figures of Christian history? In this book two expert authors draw on biblical scholarship to bring Jesus and Paul and their worlds vividly to life.Jesus and His WorldJesus Christ is probably the single most influential figure in world history, but who was this preacher from Nazareth? Can we be sure he existed? And if he did, what was the world like in which he lived?Placing Je...

'Wonderfully learned, wonderfully written, a microscopic examination of the acorn from which a truly mighty oak would spring. I learnt a huge amount.' - Tom Holland, author of Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind2020 sees the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower - the ship that took the Pilgrim Fathers to the New World. It's a foundational event in American history, but it began as an English story, which pioneered the idea of rel...

2020 sees the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower - the ship that took the Pilgrim Fathers to the New World. It's a foundational event in American history, but it began as an English story, which pioneered the idea of religious freedom.The illegal underground movement of Protestant separatists from Elizabeth I's Church of England is a story of subterfuge and danger, arrests and interrogations, prison and executions. It starts with Queen Mary's attempts to bur...

Diarmaid MacCulloch's epic, acclaimed history A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years follows the story of Christianity around the globe, from ancient Palestine to contemporary China.How did an obscure personality cult come to be the world's biggest religion, with a third of humanity its followers? This book, now the most comprehensive and up to date single volume work in English, describes not only the main facts, ideas and personalities...

A history of the Dark Ages "explain[s] very clearly why people in the early Christian era were so passionately concerned with issues of high theology.( The Economist ).Jesus Wars reveals how official, orthodox teaching about Jesus was the product of political maneuvers by a handful of key characters in the fifth century. Philip Jenkins argues that were it not for these controversies, the papacy as we know it woul...

The Reformation was the seismic event in European history over the past 1000 years, and one which tore the medieval world apart. Not just European religion, but thought, culture, society, state systems, personal relations - everything - was turned upside down. Just about everything which followed in European history can be traced back in some way to the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation which it provoked. The Reformation is where the modern world painfully and dramatically began, and...

Brush up on the people, places, and events every Christian should know about with this fascinating, accessible guide. Ideal for pastors and speakers.

Examines the beginning of the Christian movement during the first centuries AD, and the explosive force of its expansion throughout the Roman world

An expert on early Christianity reveals how the early church invented stories of Christian martyrs—and how this persecution myth persists today.According to church tradition and popular belief, early Christians were systematically persecuted by a brutal Roman Empire intent on their destruction. As the story goes, vast numbers of believers were thrown to the lions, tortured, or burned alive because they refused to renounce Christ. But as Candida Moss reveals in T...