Hey all,
It looks like I might finally be getting a semi-professional writing project (yay me!) that deals with something I’m interrested in- comparative religion. Unfortunately, a lot of the project is going to deal with something I’m not real knowledgable about- religious history. Can anyone suggest some good, not-too-huge (as I have a feeling I’m going to be reading a lot of them) texts on western religious history? Thanks a ton!
This is a college standard:
A Concise History of the Catholic Church
Sure, it’s just the history of the Catholic Church, but the CC is the longest-lived and most dominant religious denomination of western civilization. This book will give you a reference point onto which you can hang the other books you read.
Una Ecclessia
here i stand by roland bainton. short biography of luther and great overview of the reformation.
A History of God by Karen Armstrong.
The Faith: A History of Christianity by Brian Moynahan is a good work that’s fairly recent.
For a survey of many religions other than the Abrahamic (but still falling short in many areas–the author died before all planned volumes were complete), I recommend Mircea Eliade’s A History of Religious Ideas. I do caution that his work on shamanism, while excellent for shamanic religions strictu sensu (the religious practices of Siberian tribes) is excellent, it should not be extended to cover other ecstatic religions as much as Eliade liked to do.
For a brief and good survey of non-classic shamanic practices (as “shamanism” is often popularly used), I recommend I.M. Lewis’s Ecstatic Religion.
Both of these works, espeically Lewis’s, are surprisingly readable, although Eliade does get into lots of detail.