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author
J. Steven Paul
J. Steven Paul was sometimes devout and at other times simply a cultural Christian. Despite his connection to the religion, he struggled for sixty years to understand the rationali...view moreJ. Steven Paul was sometimes devout and at other times simply a cultural Christian. Despite his connection to the religion, he struggled for sixty years to understand the rationality of the Christian message. No matter how simple his ministers tried to make the concepts, they never were satisfying or sensible to the author's way of thinking. Finally, he decided to take a deep dive into the history of the religion to see if he could make a more serious connection with it, or maybe even leave it behind completely.This book is his unbiased investigation of Christian history, identifying the development of its traditions, its key turning points, and its influence on the world throughout the last two millennia. It isn't so much a study of their beliefs, but instead, stories about the various ways Christians have acted based on different interpretations of their scripture.Multiple topics — from the creation of the religion and its scripture to religious wars, heresy hunters, inquisitions, witch hunts, slavery, colonization, the Enlightenment, the Holocaust, and even recent, twenty-first century events— are traced chronologically through the centuries to understand how they shaped our current Western civilization.view less