Contesting Orthodoxies in the History of Christianity
Contributions by Dr James Carleton Paget, Professor Morna D. Hooker, Anik Laferriere, Professor Korey Maas, Professor Euan Cameron, Ethan H. Shagan, Felicity Heal, Dr Sarah Apetrei, Revd Canon Dr Judith D. Maltby, Alison Dight, Professor Eamon Duffy, Canon Professor Michael Snape, Hannah Cleugh, Ellie Gebarowski-Shafer, Ashley Null, Alec Ryrie, Jonathan Yonan Edited by Ellie Gebarowski-Shafer, Ashley Null, Alec Ryrie
Publication date:
10 September 2021Length of book:
392 pagesPublisher
Boydell PressDimensions:
234x156mmISBN-13: 9781800102774
Examines the pursuit of orthodoxy, and its consequences for the history of Christianity.
Christianity is a hugely diverse and quarrelsome family of faiths, but most Christians have nevertheless set great store by orthodoxy - literally, 'right opinion' - even if they cannot agree what that orthodoxy should be. The notion that there is a 'catholic', or universal, Christian faith - that which, according to the famous fifth-century formula, has been believed everywhere, at all times and by all people - is itself an act of faith: to reconcile it with the historical fact of persistent division and plurality requires a constant effort. It also requires a variety of strategies, from confrontation and exclusion, through deliberate choices as to what is forgotten or ignored, to creative or even indulgent inclusion. In this volume, seventeen leading historians of Christianity ask how the ideal of unity has clashed, negotiated, reconciled or coexisted with the historical reality of diversity, in a range of historical settings from the early Church through the Reformation era to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These essays hold the huge variety of the Christian experience together with the ideal of orthodoxy, which Christians have never (yet) fully attained but for which they have always striven; and they trace some of the consequences of the pursuit of that ideal for the history of Christianity.
Christianity is a hugely diverse and quarrelsome family of faiths, but most Christians have nevertheless set great store by orthodoxy - literally, 'right opinion' - even if they cannot agree what that orthodoxy should be. The notion that there is a 'catholic', or universal, Christian faith - that which, according to the famous fifth-century formula, has been believed everywhere, at all times and by all people - is itself an act of faith: to reconcile it with the historical fact of persistent division and plurality requires a constant effort. It also requires a variety of strategies, from confrontation and exclusion, through deliberate choices as to what is forgotten or ignored, to creative or even indulgent inclusion. In this volume, seventeen leading historians of Christianity ask how the ideal of unity has clashed, negotiated, reconciled or coexisted with the historical reality of diversity, in a range of historical settings from the early Church through the Reformation era to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These essays hold the huge variety of the Christian experience together with the ideal of orthodoxy, which Christians have never (yet) fully attained but for which they have always striven; and they trace some of the consequences of the pursuit of that ideal for the history of Christianity.
This is a fine collection of essays, alive with provocative reflections, all centred on the threefold theme of 'the making, breaking and enduring of orthodoxies'. Readers will gain nourishment here and not be disappointed.