A Nearly Infallible History of Christianity

A Nearly Infallible History of Christianity

Being a History of 2000 Years of Saints, Idiots and Divinely-Inspired Troublemakers

Nick Page, Hodder and Stoughton

Here's a little review of the best book I read last year.

It takes a lot to get me interested in church history. At Bible College, I was so bored and exasperated by lectures on it that I passed the hours away by drawing sketches of my tutor and fellow students. So the prospect of reading a 450 page book that tells the story of church history from New Testament times to the second decade of this century did not have me salivating with relish.

However, the subtitle of Nick Page’s book “Being a history of 2000 years of saints, idiots and divinely-inspired troublemakers” offered some hope. Could it be that this was a Horrible Histories approach to the long, often lamentable but sometimes exhilarating story of the global expansion of Christianity? I only had to open the first page to find that the answer was a resounding yes.

It’s got a fast-moving narrative, hilariously captioned cartoons, character portraits of key people that include the all-important question “Could you have a drink with him/her down the pub?”, maps of the Roman Empire that always seem to include Milton Keynes and hundreds of puns and witty footnotes. There is also a recurring grumble about the unfathomably dominant place the organ has occupied in church music down the years. Nick Page writes in an airy, tongue-in-cheek style that entertains but, make no mistake, this book is very well researched, really instructive and deeply perceptive. I lost count of the “Ah, so that’s why…” moments.

Some of it is quite depressing of course. There have been so many diabolical popes and rotten bishops living in fine palaces, fathering illegitimate children, whilst inflicting unnecessary councils, stupid wars and vicious purges on good people that you just despair. That’s not Nick Page’s fault of course. But if some of what has passed for Christianity down the ages doesn’t make those who call ourselves Christians seriously indignant we should be given 100 lines for just not caring enough.

The saving grace - literally - is that, in every century, God raises up radicals, charismatics, prophetic misfits and Spirit-filled pests who blow the dust off the Bible and raise awkward questions, often at the cost of their lives. “So why did Jesus live in poverty, oppose organised religion and tell people to love -not kill- their enemies then? Why does your joyless ecclesiastical bureaucracy seem to have absolutely nothing in common with the church in the apostolic era, Your Holiness?” In every generation, some inspired and courageous soul brings Christianity back from the brink of irretrievable ruin by pointing at Jesus and loudly saying "ahem".

Page shows that, from the beginning, Christianity has flourished best when it eschews all that ridiculous pomp and worldly influence and gets back to being the counter-cultural revolution of love that Jesus always intended it to be.

This Nearly Infallible History is the exciting tale of simple faith that keeps rising again just when it seems dead and buried for good. Just like at the start of the story…