Part of the already-teeming and constantly-expanding library of VSI works produced by Oxford University Press, this succinct text—which “provides a candid portrait of Christianity’s past and present,” the publisher says of the book—is greatly appreciated: it is “…clearly and engagingly written”; indeed, “…it is difficult to imagine,” one UK blogger reckoned, “how a better book could be written.” Another, an Australian, called it “a helpful foil to the often romanticized and triumphant accounts of Christianity’s expansion”; read it, and you’ll “get a taste of how Christianity is presented when there is no grinding of the theological axes which preoccupy the churches.”
It’s authored, this individual explains, by “one of the most prominent and prolific sociologists writing on religion.” Linda Woodhead, professor of sociology of religion at Britain’s Lancaster University, has written widely on the role of religion in contemporary society; over the last 20 years, she has penned, co-authored, or contributed to, 73 publications. Woodhead, according to this critic, warrants that “there is one particularly decisive fault line which runs through and across all types of Christianity: ‘More than modern science, it is modern liberal values and a turn to subjective experience which have challenged and divided Christians.’”
Christianity: A Very Short Introduction,
by Linda Woodhead
Oxford University Press, 2004
