Have you ever wondered why the Christian Church has played such an important role in the secular affairs and in the politics of the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds?

From its modest beginnings in the Near East, the Christian Church evolved to be one of the major social institutions of the world. It began with a handful of followers of Jesus Christ, and today, the number of Christians is around 2.5 billion. The growth of the Christian Church is one of the most remarkable events in human history.

Generations of historians have marveled at the development of the Christian Church. It began as a modest undertaking by Christ's disciples and appears today as a multi-faceted global enterprise comprising some 30,000 Christian denominations. All of these offer unique understandings of the life of Christ and how the story of his life should be brought to the unbelieving peoples of the world.

Much of the Christian Church's history may seem to be of minor importance, such as theological debates in the Middle Ages over the true nature of Christ. However, every dispute and controversy played a critical role in the shifts in Christian beliefs and their expression in organized churches.

The intriguing story told in this book, recounted in everyday language, deals head-on with some of the most divisive ideas in humanity's history. For it is religion that is at the heart of secular society's organization today, whether it is to separate church and state or to combine the two.

In this fascinating retelling of how the Christian Church came to be what it is today, you will learn:

• The historical truth about the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire.
• How early Christian scholarly writers interpreted the life of Christ.
• Why differences over the true meaning of the Holy Trinity caused the formation of separate churches.
• How the Crusades, the rise of Christian universities, and the spread of monasticism affected the church and its teachings.
• What Martin Luther and his contemporaries thought about the organization of the church.
• How scholars in German universities advanced the thinking of Protestant theology.
• Why new denominations proliferated among Protestants.
• How the Catholic Church and the pope responded to the challenge of Protestantism.
• How the United Kingdom and America came to have such an abundance of different denominations.
• And much more!

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