Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch Page B

1990). On the early modern witch-craze which has so fascinated post-Enlightenment Europeans for good or ill, a sensible short introduction is G. Scarre, Witchcraft and Magic in 16th and 17th Century Europe (Basingstoke, 1987), and a superb set of case studies is to be found in J. Barry, M. Hester and G. Roberts (eds.), Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief (Cambridge, 1996). K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971), provides a formidable mound of data on the subject. L. Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London, 1994), is one thoughtful perspective on the problem, while a study of rare subtlety is S. Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997).

19: A Worldwide Faith (1500- 1800)
    The beginnings are superbly introduced in D. Abulafia, The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus (New Haven and London, 2008), and breathtaking in its ability to range across the globe is F. Fernandez-Armesto, Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration (Oxford, 2006). A good background survey is still J. H. Parry, The Spanish Seaborne Empire (London, 1966). Phenomenal in his learning on Catholic world mission and a brilliant writer was C. R. Boxer, who complements Parry in his The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415-1825 (London, 1973), sweeps over the field in The Church Militant and Iberian Expansion 1440-1770 (Baltimore, 1978), and expounds his particular passion in The Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1650 (Berkeley, 1967). A work equally bidding fair to achieve classic status is M. Brockey, Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579-1724 (Cambridge, MA, 2007), and a fascinating and quirky companion to the early days of Christian mission is J. D. Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (London, 1984). Authoritative on its previously neglected subject is J. K. Thornton, The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641-1718 (Madison, WI, 1983).

20: Protestant Awakenings (1600- 1800)
    Astride the field is what may be the culmination of a scholarly career spent explicating the worldwide links of early Evangelicalism: W. R. Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge, 1992). The most central composer of the Western Christian tradition is enjoyably approached through W. Mellers, Bach and the Dance of God (London 1980), and C. Wolff, Bach: The Learned Musician (New York and London, 2000); equally one might wish to contemplate Bach's achievement through the recordings conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner. A classic exposition of British self-understanding and imperial expansion is L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven and London, 1992). A deeply felt survey from a great Methodist historian is E. G. Rupp, Religion in England 1688- 1791 (Oxford, 1986), and a usefully different if perhaps skewed perspective may be gained from J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1660-1832: Religion, Ideology and Politics during the Ancien Regime (Cambridge, 2000). D. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London, 1989, and subsequent expansions), has the same centrality for a narrower but still vast field. A splendid introduction to one of Christianity's most significant founder-churchmen from the present doyen of British Methodist scholarship is J. Walsh, John Wesley: 1703-1791. A Bicentennial Tribute (London, 1993), and H. D. Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (London, 1989), likewise avoids Methodist hagiography. D. Hempton, Methodism: Empire of the Spirit (New Haven and London, 2005), helps to show why Wesley's legacy continued to be so important. A good introduction to early anglophone colonization in North America is C. Bridenbaugh, Vexed and Troubled Englishmen, 1590-1642 (Oxford, 1968), while the relationship between Old and New Worlds is usefully complicated by F. J.