Tomkins - A Short History of Christianity

Enormous trousers, almost up to his armpits, is how I remember my history teacher. He rode a moped and smoked a clay pipe. And he would hold forth for hours on the French, American and agricultural revolutions, British parliamentary reform and medieval conspiracies, with special attention to those who were mad in the head, Im afraid, boys, mad in the head, while we scribbled in our little purple exercise books garbled notes which we would never and probably could never read, bored out of our burgeoning minds. Our survival tactic was to ask after his dearly beloved landlady, and his even more dearly beloved dog, Jill, on which subjects he would hold forth just as interminably (with slides on occasion); but at least we didnt have to take notes, at least it wasnt history. You just dont get teaching like that any more.

And what did I do with my spare time? All kinds of things, of course, including Space Invaders and embarrassingly ill-advised attempts to impress girls. But I also loved movies: I sat enthralled as Ben Kingsleys Gandhi stood up to British tyranny, or as John Merrick the Elephant Man held his misshapen head high in Victorian England. I wore out styluses as Bob Dylan mourned the lonesome death of Hattie Carroll. I followed the miners strike and the Falklands war on the news (which is what, if not history in daily instalments?). I wolfed down biographies of Eric Clapton and Billie Holiday, with their struggles with drugs and drink, and novels from Animal Farm to The Great Gatsby . I watched every episode of Blackadder , memorising quotes to swap in school the next day.

These things entertained, enchanted, fascinated, moved me. One way or another, they changed the way I saw the world and myself. I didnt particularly notice this. I didnt particularly notice that I was learning about the past. I was just hearing great stories, some more reliable than others, some upsetting, some funny, but all great stories. And I loved them, because everyone does. At least I didnt have to take notes. At least it wasnt history.

So, whatever the cover may have led you to believe, this is not a history book. This is a storybook. It is a true story, and it is our story, about our past and our world. It is a great story however well it has survived my telling of it with heroes and villains, and passion and betrayal, and big questions and big surprises, funny and sickening and inspiring and chastening.

It is your story whether or not you are a Christian yourself. Christianity infused the western world for over a millennium, shaping landscape, language, music, art, family life, the law, the shape of society, the very way our minds work. Trying to imagine what the world would look like today if Christianity had never taken off is like trying to imagine what life on the other side of the galaxy might be like. This is the story of how we came to be who we are.

I have tried to tell the story in a way that makes complete sense to someone coming to it from scratch; who doesnt know their Martin Luther from their Martin Luther King, or their John Paul from their George and Ringo. This means keeping religious jargon to a minimum, and I dont suppose anyone will feel that loss too keenly. Still, theres no way to avoid talking about Arians and Puritans, predestination and transubstantiation. I try to explain these things as were going along, but there is also a glossary at the back in case you need to refresh your memory at any point.

I wrote the book for all the people I know who dont know the story and would enjoy it. They tend to have a fair idea how it starts, with Jesus and his disciples, and parables and pharisees. And they tend to have a fair idea how it has ended up (so far), with George Bush and Bono and Benedict XVI, with tele-evangelists and terrorists. They just tend to be a little hazy about that 2,000-year hiatus in the middle. How on earth did we get from there to here? What has been going on round here for the last 2,000 years?

Some readers will perhaps be annoyed to find important and cherished episodes of the story brushed past with a cursory nod or even ignored altogether. My instinct is to say, Were covering a decade a page, what did you expect? But to be fair I have my own prejudices and passions, and what I choose to zoom in on and what I cut out doubtless reflect them. I have not tried to neutralise my prejudices though I have certainly been persuaded to tone them down here and there.

I think everything thats really important is here; but I have also tried to make room for the small, colourful details that may not be important to historians but matter to the rest of us the Protestant sausage, the crusading goose, the grass-eating monks and the unlikely escapades of the papal corpse.

The disadvantage of a true story is that I cant simply cut out or rewrite all the dull bits. But that doesnt necessarily mean you have to read them. If, for example, you find that the first half of part 2 drags, you can always jump ahead to the crusades, where things liven up rather.

Fiction has a power that factual stories cannot compete with, but the reverse is also true, and some stories are so important to us that we dont even think of them as stories. Every one of us carries around in his or her head versions of the two stories that bookend, as it were, this book the first Easter, and 9/11 and its continuing aftermath and our choice of versions has untold consequences, for ourselves and others. There are many such stories here, and if my telling of them helps anyone to rethink their own, then Im happy. But dont take notes. Its not history.

Stephen Tomkins

A little less than 2,000 years ago, a man appeared in the Roman province of Judea claiming to be a teacher from God. Many Jews left their homes and jobs and followed him, believing that he was the Messiah, their long-awaited, miracle-working leader. But he was executed by the Roman occupation, and his followers dispersed.

The name of this failed prophet was Theudas. He was not the only alleged messiah in this period you will of course be aware of another, and in fact there were quite a few. They all caused a local stir, and almost all met grisly ends. Jesus of Nazareth was by no means the most famous at the time. Worshipped today by 2 billion Christians (and revered by 1.3 billion Muslims), he is the most famous human being ever, but no mention of him written during his lifetime survives. Judea was an obscure backwater of the Roman empire, and neither the comings nor goings of its rabbis caught the attention of the non-Jewish world.