Posted: Jan 24, 2011 8:24 am
tim wrote:While I must say that, for a non-believer, the rather theological final chapters about how the rise and fall of religions is not due to "blind chance" but have a divine purpose (typically, a "mysterious" one) seemed a little gratuitous, Jenkins never pretends he is anything other than a Christian historian of Christianity and, to his credit, does a far better job of objective analysis than many non-Christian polemicists pretending to be historians (eg Charles Freeman and Richard Carrier, to name two repeat offenders).
That does seem a little strange idea to make, what if the Romans had taken on a more aggressive/active and total persecution of Christians like in the example of emperor Wuzong, rather than their (mostly) passive and non-confrontational - don't ask, don't tell policy... would Christianity have had a chance in it's infancy?
The podcast idea sounds interesting.