History of Christianity I

This survey course invites students to encounter the story of Christianity from the end of the New Testament era to the eve of the Reformation. The title “History of Christianity” (rather than an institutionally focused “Church History”) points to this course’s attention to the spread of Christian communities across Asia, Africa and Europe, and the theological, devotional, ethical, and missional responses they developed in the form of ideas, practices and institutions, which contributed to the “Great Tradition” of the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic” church amidst serious internal conflicts and external pressures that occasionally threatened its very existence. This multi-centered approach to the history of Christianity as a worldwide movement from the earliest times will acknowledge both the crucial role of Western Christianity to the emergence of European Christendom during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages and the often-overlooked theological, liturgical, and missionary achievements of the Christian communities of Africa and Asia during the same period.