Owen Chadwick (1916–2015)

A traditional, excellently-written account: all big names and grand events and things that sound, to 21st century ears, rather bizarre (indigenous Americans weren't able to compete in the "adult world"?) Chadwick focuses on Britain, as is the wont of British people last century; he is surprisingly sanguine about the reformers, excusing all of their murders, insanities and horrors by mentioning, yet again, that "everyone agreed reform was needed." Perversely, he argues that i) the Reformation in England was a political event with religious consequences (seems fair) and ii) nobody much cared that the Reformation came. It's very difficult to read this after Duffy and so on have done so much work to show that, for a good many people in Britain at least, the reformation was a traumatic destruction of a way of life; but even common sense should have suggested that the reformation in England can't have been both bureaucratically imposed by a walking penis and accepted whole-heartedly by the population.

But, as I said, very nicely written, and good on the ideas of the main figures.… (more)

This in-depth, fully illustrated book is by a former Cambridge professor, From its beginnings as a Jewish sect through the 20th century, his perspective is guaranteed to show you things you never knew before. The last hundred years, for instance, has been without doubt the bloodiest onslaught against religion in all of human history, Page 255 begins with a section of "Conscience and War" -- the conscience of Christianity -- and outlines the positions of that Church as a whole, from pacifism to outright instigator, is there just and unjust war? Is there on weapon more immoral than another? He notes in 1139 the crossbow was declared such -- except against the Saracens --by the Church. Up to the hydrogen bomb and bacterial warfare "the generals took no notice..." OCT 2004… (more)