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O’er the continents and islands

Jane Shaw on a superb history of the spread of Christianity around the world

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The Cambridge History of Christianity: Enlightenment, reawakening and revolution 1660 –1815
Stewart J. Brown and Timothy Tackett, editors

Cambridge University Press £100 (978-0-521-81605-2)
Church Times Bookshop £90

THIS IS the seventh volume in the new Cambridge History of Christianity, covering a period in which not only the doctrine and authority of the Church, but also the authenticity of Christianity itself, were questioned by the cultural and intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment, and the Churches also had to face the challenge of political revolution. In addition, it was a period that saw the emergence and rapid growth of lively and lasting revival movements.

This volume is as excellent as others in the series, representing what is best in current scholarship on the histories of Christianity. While the traditional areas of church politics, institutional change, and intellectual shifts are ably covered, so too are the social history of lived religion, and the significance of gender to religious belief and practice.

But what marks out this new series most determinedly from the great series of the 20th century, still much thumbed and used — the Penguin volumes of the 1960s, and the Oxford History of the Christian Church — is its attention to the world beyond Britain, Europe, and North America. Here, this volume does not disappoint, with fascinating chapters on Christianity in Iberian America, in Africa, and in south, south-east, and east Asia.

None of this makes for a lack of coherence — and due credit must go to the editors here — but rather for a rounded picture, and the possibility of fascinating connections and comparisons. We learn, in the European context, that it was in England that women had the most chance of exercising religious leadership because of the emergence of so many groups preaching spiritual equality in the 17th-century Civil War, and because of the rise of Methodism in the 18th century.

Christopher Brown’s first-rate chapter on Christianity and the campaign against slavery and the slave trade dovetails beautifully with Lamin Sanneh’s survey of Christianity in Africa, in which Sanneh reminds us that “it is relevant to the story of Christianity in modern Africa to point out that what became the United States contained the largest population of Africans anywhere outside Africa.” The vast majority of these Africans were slaves, some 700,000 by 1790. Reading these chapters together, we see how interlocking relations between Britain, North America, and Africa were forged, for good and ill, in this period, and with what repercussions for Christianity.

R. G. Tiedemann’s interesting chapter on Christianity in East Asia reminds us that controversies about culturisation and context, so often associated with the impact of 19th- and 20th-century Protestant missionaries, have earlier roots. Roman Catholic missionary activity in late-17th-century China gave rise to the Rites Controversy: how could the name of God be expressed in Chinese, and could Christians take part in ceremonies honouring Confucius and the cult of ancestors? The stream of papal decrees addressing this controversy reminds us that the Roman Catholic Church’s influence reached far beyond Europe.

These examples give just a taste of this excellent volume: a history for the 21st century, it is highly recommended.

The Revd Dr Jane Shaw is Dean of Divinity, Chaplain and Fellow of New College, Oxford, and Canon Theologian of Salisbury Cathedral.

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