Christianity

A Very Short Introduction

By: Linda Woodhead

Narrated by: Jennifer Van Dyck

Exploring the cultural and institutional dimensions of Christianity and tracing its course over two millennia, Linda Woodhead provides a fresh, lively, and candid portrait of Christianity's past and present. Addressing topics including the competition for power between different forms of Christianity, the churches' use of power, and its struggles with modernity, this new edition includes up-to-date information on the growth and geographical spread of Eastern Christianity, reflecting the global nature of Christianity in our ever-shifting contemporary culture. At a time when Christianity is flourishing in the Southern hemisphere but declining in much of the West, this Very Short Introduction audiobook offers an important overview of the world's largest religion.

©2004, 2014 Linda Woodhead (P)2021 Tantor

A nice survey of Christianity

"Thus the dominant trend in Christianity became one that submits itself to a higher power, and which strives to bring life into conformity with a transcendent standard that both inspires and judges."
-- Linda Woodhead, Christianity: A Very Short Introduction

A nice survey of Christianity. Woodhead does a commendable job at describing the basic tenets, growth, and culture of Christianity. I personally enjoyed her approach to the different types/forms of Christianity (Church, Biblical, Mystical) and how those three forms impacted growth patterns during the last two thousand years.

Linda Woodhead MBE seems to have a soft-spot for both Feminist and Marxist approaches to history. This provocative approach might turn off some readers, but I actually think gender is a huge piece of the theological puzzle that needs to be explored whenever discussing the growth, doctrine, and history of Christianity. I also enjoyed how she discussed the relationship of the growth of the Early Church to the Roman (later Holy Roman) Empire and other developments later with the Orthodox Church's relationship with Russian, etc.

This VSI wasn't a "perfect" capture of Christianity, but I'm not exactly sure how an historian/theologian could approach such a broad subject in such a short space without leaving major things out (aka religious traditions that seem to not fit easily within her big theory).

Not the same.

I understand that sometimes the reader of an audio book may add a few extra words. But the book the I have in my hand is not the same book she is reading. This was one of the worst experiences I’ve had with an audible reading. I like to read along with the recording but the was literally impossible to do. I waisted my “money” and my “credit”.

Not well-described by the Publisher's Summary

There are a few facts the prospective reader should be aware of up front. First, the author has an MA in theology and religious studies. The history and development in Christianity is a large and complex topic. I doubt that the author's background is quite up to the task.
Second, this is an investigation of Christianity through the lenses of such 20th-century ideologies as a Foucauldian emphasis on power and a rather essentialist feminism, added to a clear preference for 19th-century Romanticism, with its emphasis on subjective feeling and transgression. My own impression is that the history of Christianity is here interpreted anachronistically, according to those 19th- and 20th-century ideologies. To call forth the people and events of two millenia of Christianity in the cause of present ideologies (either as precursors of present values, or as failures to live up to present values) is of interest to many readers. My own interest is in trying to find out what Jesus, Paul, John the Baptist, the early Christians, and their successors and predecessors actually did and thought, and not in how they measure up when judged by recent ideologies.