American Historical Review
"Despite the diversity in structure and focus, the essays together provide a broad and coherent picture of how the dominant tradition of Christianity developed intellectually and institutionally, and how it spread throughout the world. The extensive bibliographical essays that accompany each chapter provide excellent guidance for future reading."
Virginia Seminary Journal
"This study is a valuable addition to the available historical resources for an understanding of Christian history."
World Christian
"In the 2,000 years since Christ was born, the Christian faith has spread around the world. A World History of Christianity is filled with stories of faith from Christians in other lesser-known parts of the world that have been forgotten or ignored. . . A solid overview and a good introduction to more specific areas of study."
CBA Marketplace
"Although self-consciously scholarly, the essays are easy to read, often anecdotal, and remarkably thorough."
Heiko A. Oberman
"I do not know of any other handbook, textbook, or encyclopedia that combines such wide geographical scope with such a remarkable depth of information and interpretation."
History: Reviews of New Books
"Adrian Hastings and the international team of scholars working with him have produced one of the most useful texts available for studying the history of Christianity in its various manifestations and expressions around the world. Designed for the classroom and as a reference work, A World History of Christianity takes the reader from the very beginnings of the Christian movement through to the 1990s. . . The authors provide a balanced and inclusive overview of the development of Christianity through the centuries. The book also offers fascinating details and enlightening glimpses into the periods covered. . . Hastings and the authors are to be commended for presenting this varied material within a coherent and readable framework. Compared to other contemporary single or multivolume resources on the history of Christianity, this book is unparalleled in its ease of use and breadth of coverage."
International Bulletin of Missionary Research
"The sure editorial hand of Adrian Hastings and the sturdy work of his contributors have combined to take an important step toward a genuinely global history of Christianity. Recent general histories have made increasingly sincere gestures toward this same goal. But the weight of convention has to date mostly prevented others from reflecting the world's current distribution of believers, where the demographic balance, but not yet the historiography, has shifted from North to South. This volume marks a breakthrough. . . This unusually fine book closes with thirty-five pages of well-selected bibliography, ten helpful outline maps, and a full index of names and places."
Christianity Today
"The fourteen historians who contribute to A World History of Christianity do what no single historian could do with much detail: write about Christianity in places far from Europe and North America, while doing justice to the places that have engrossed most historians of Christianity."