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    Church History in Plain Language: Fourth Edition
    Unavailable
    Church History in Plain Language: Fourth Edition
    Unavailable
    Church History in Plain Language: Fourth Edition
    Audiobook21 hours

    Church History in Plain Language: Fourth Edition

    Written by Bruce L. Shelley

    Narrated by Adam Verner

    5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    With more than 315,000 print copies sold, this is the story of the church for today's listeners. Dr. Bruce Shelley makes church history come alive in this classic book that has become not only the first choice of many laypeople and church leaders but the standard text in many college classrooms. What separates Dr. Shelley's book from others is its clarity of language and organization. Church History in Plain Language treats history as the story of people-their motivations, the issues they grapple with, the decisions they make-and the result is that history reads like a story, almost as dramatic and moving as a novel. Yet there is no fiction here. Dr. Shelley was a respected scholar whose work was painstakingly researched and carefully crafted for historical accuracy.

    The fourth edition of Shelley's classic one-volume history of the church brings the story of Christianity into the twenty-first century. This latest edition of the book, revised by R.L. Hatchett, contains information concerning Gnosticism and its ongoing relevance, the theology of the early church and Reformation, and most extensively the rapid global extension and transformation of Christianity since 1900.

    Church History in Plain Language, 4th Edition makes history easy to follow and retain by dividing the Christian story into the great ages of the church:

    • The Age of Jesus and the Apostles
    • The Age of Catholic Christianity
    • The Age of the Christian Roman Empire
    • The Christian Middle Ages
    • The Age of the Reformation
    • The Age of Reason and Revival
    • The Age of Progress
    • The Age of Ideologies
    • The Age of Global Expansion and Relocation

    The continuing popularity of this book attests to its success in achieving its purpose-to make church history clear, memorable, and accessible to every listener.

    Features include:
    Vivid stories of major persons in the church's story
    Concise explanations of key movements
    Contemporary developments related to the spread of the gospel
    The explosion of Christianity in the southern hemisphere

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateDec 3, 2013
    ISBN9781469253251
    Unavailable
    Church History in Plain Language: Fourth Edition

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    Reviews for Church History in Plain Language

    5/5

    64 ratings10 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I thought I knew church history... I was wrong! Thank you for all the information in this book....
    • 5/5
      This is a look at the power of renewal. God is always doing a new thing in all peoples and places. Excellent!
    • 5/5
      Fascinating, understandable and incredibly easy to listen to and follow due to the focus on telling the stories of people - highly recommend.
    • 5/5
      What a great audio book. Definitely recommend it. Enjoy it
    • 5/5
      This was my first adult book on overall Christian (Church) history, and I benefited from it greatly. It was recommended to me by a scholar as the best self-teaching book for Church History, and I will happily refer others to it as I found it clearly written, informative, anything but dry, and a great starting place. The librarian in me would have liked full footnotes rather than his sparse endnotes, but I believe Dr. Shelley’s purpose was an accessible and non-intimidating overview and in my opinion he succeeded.I wish I had known that there was a third edition published at the end of 2008, as I would have waited for that edition rather than reading the one I did. Several areas I would critique I hope are addressed in the new edition, which I do not have access to at this time. Namely, I would love to see another few chapters on the internet and increasing globalism, the emerging church models, today’s Christian politics in America, and the impact of Islam — both radical and moderate. In addition, the bibliographies at the end of each chapter suggesting further reading were mostly from the 60s and 70s. I hope that they are updated, or at least annotated indicating which ones are standards in the subject. Finally, Dr. Shelley — as broad as he has tired to be — becomes more obviously Protestant as the work progresses. In several areas (such as between Trent and Vatican II) I would have liked to learn what the Roman Catholics were doing other than the odd persecution or repression, and the Eastern Orthodox seem to vanish for him from just after the Great Schism until the Bolsheviks. Every author has his or her bias, however, and it would be interesting to read an Orthodox or a Roman Catholic work of such scope and see what the author included and what was left out.I heartily recommend this work to any interested in Church History and happily add that no previous theological training is necessary. Know that the author has his biases going into it and be aware of them, but don’t let that prevent you from mining the riches this work contains.
    • 4/5
      I bought my first copy of this book several years ago. I ended up giving it to a friend who was interested in learning about the history of Christianity. I picked up another copy not long after that. This is not an exhaustive history of Christianity. However, it is an exceptionally good starting point for figuring out which aspects of Christian history you want more detail on. He provides just enough info to cover the major points. I would consider this the highly abridged version of church history. The one thing I do wish he would have spent more time on is the modern day church as we know it in the west. Other than that, I recommend this for anyone who wants to know more about the history of Christianity but doesn't know where to start.
    • 4/5
      This is a very good overall history of the Christian church. I bought it as a resource for a research paper and when the paper was done I read the book front to back. It is not a complete history, but an overview, accurate but not "academic".
    • 5/5
      I've got to buy this book. Gee, imagine that church hasn't always been done how we do it. Interesting read alongside Barna's Revolution.
    • 4/5
      Good reading making a very complicated subject digestable
    • 5/5
      If you're looking for an overview of Christian history, this is great. He has quite a bit of detail (it's 500 pages), but it doesn't go into excessive detail, and it reads more like a novel than a textbook. Anybody could read this book and understand the basics of church history without prior background. One main complaint: he provides chapter notes & references at the end of the book, but they are not numbered; it's things like "the quote from Polycarp came from...." So if you are wondering where he came up with something, you have to look in the back and see if he gave any reference or not. More often than not, he didn't. I know this book is designed to be in an easy reading style rather than "textbook-ish," but he has some very interesting stories from church history that I wish he provided sources for somehow. This book was great for giving me a framework that will be useful when I delve into something a little more detailed (probably Pelikan and/or Latourette).