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30 Key Moments in the History of Christianity: Inspiring True Stories from the Early Church Around the World
Not yet published
Expected 27 Jan 26For many Christians, our understanding of the history of the church universal jumps straight from what we read in the New Testament to a basic understanding of the Reformation. We're missing more than a millennium! And it was a busy, fascinating, tumultuous thousand-or-so years during which Christianity spread across three continents. In places as distant and different from each other as China, Sudan, and Britain, the gospel was spreading, the church was growing, and believers were expressing their faith in myriad ways.
In this inspiring book, you'll learn about 30 key moments in the history of Christianity that illuminate the incredible diversity and unity of the faith. Combining a global scope with intimate storytelling, professor Mark W. Graham challenges you to expand your knowledge of Christian history and your appreciation for cultural and political differences among believers. The result will be a wider view of the church, a deeper understanding of other expressions of the faith around the world, and a greater connection to the cloud of witnesses who have gone before us.
In this inspiring book, you'll learn about 30 key moments in the history of Christianity that illuminate the incredible diversity and unity of the faith. Combining a global scope with intimate storytelling, professor Mark W. Graham challenges you to expand your knowledge of Christian history and your appreciation for cultural and political differences among believers. The result will be a wider view of the church, a deeper understanding of other expressions of the faith around the world, and a greater connection to the cloud of witnesses who have gone before us.
272 pages, Paperback
Expected publication January 27, 2026
2336 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
With 30 vignettes acting as snapshots of Christian history around the globe, this book seeks to fill the gap in knowledge of the church's first thousand years of existence after the book of Acts. It's a thread of continuity in how God has preserved the church after Pentecost until today, with significant events shaping how the church persevered through hardships and expanded during unexpected favour. Providing a fairly neutral perspective on events without criticizing its outcome or speculating on people's motivations, this book comes replete with multiple footnotes for anyone interested in diving deeper and further into each of the instances mentioned.
Common themes abound around the persecution of Christians in early church history, along with decisions or circumstances that left the door open for neighbouring religions to make a headway into the culture. Despite this, the church’s faithfulness becomes a remnant that God has used throughout history to draw people to Himself, making it clear that nothing can prevail against the body of Christ. Readers interested in biographical descriptions of past Christians or poignant movements of the Spirit in the early church will appreciate this curated collection of how God has been at work in various nations and peoples, drawing parallels to what the church is encountering today.
Review link: https://christianshelves.blogspot.com...
Many thanks to Baker Publishing Group for providing a complimentary copy of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
Common themes abound around the persecution of Christians in early church history, along with decisions or circumstances that left the door open for neighbouring religions to make a headway into the culture. Despite this, the church’s faithfulness becomes a remnant that God has used throughout history to draw people to Himself, making it clear that nothing can prevail against the body of Christ. Readers interested in biographical descriptions of past Christians or poignant movements of the Spirit in the early church will appreciate this curated collection of how God has been at work in various nations and peoples, drawing parallels to what the church is encountering today.
Review link: https://christianshelves.blogspot.com...
Many thanks to Baker Publishing Group for providing a complimentary copy of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
From the Apostles to 1000 CE Done Right
Thank you to NetGalley, Mark W. Graham, and RBmedia for this advanced audiobook in exchange for an honest review.
CW: Violence, persecution, martyrdom, massacres, religious violence, forced conversions
Mark W. Graham's 30 Key Moments in the History of Christianity: Inspiring True Stories from the Early Church Around the World covers church history from right after the apostolic age through about 1000 CE. Most of us learn about the New Testament in church, maybe get some Reformation history, and that's it. There's over a thousand years we just skip. This book tackles that gap.
William Sarris reads the audiobook. His tone works perfectly for educational content like this. He pronounces all the names and places correctly, which impressed me given how many different regions and languages show up. The reading pace ran slow for me so I sped it up, but that's just how I listen to things. The narration itself is solid.
The forward talks about how church history books tend to be either scholarly or popular, not both. Graham wants to write something that reaches people beyond just those studying doctrine. I think he pulls it off. I've done research in this area and found it engaging. Someone coming to this fresh would probably enjoy it too.
Each chapter has three parts: Background, The Moment, and The Lesson. You can read these chapters in any order you want. They work as stand-alone pieces. Graham tells you when something connects to another chapter and where to find it. This makes the book useful for research or for doing a book study at church. Right at the start, the author mentions this would make a good book study. I completely agree with that.
The research and references are strong. There's a good appendix at the end. Graham uses scripture throughout. He presents complicated historical figures without trying to make them simpler than they were. When he talks about Constantine, he says "All humans are indeed irreducibly complex, but some are more challenging to understand than others." That's the approach he takes with everyone.
One of my favorite things about this book is how Graham keeps pointing out that the early church wasn't some perfect golden age. He doesn't romanticize it. Christians got persecuted, but they also did the persecuting. There's a chapter about Hypatia's death in Alexandria that shows early Christians as the ones causing harm instead of experiencing it.
The global perspective really stood out to me. This isn't just Rome and Europe. We get Persia, Armenia, North Africa, Yemen, Britain. Graham makes the point that the church was global way earlier than we usually think. Armenia becomes the first Christian nation around 310 CE. Graham points out this is the first example of Christian nationalism, and it becomes a template for what we'd see later in history from other nations like Rome, France, the UK, and much later, the USA.
Graham connects what happened back then to what's happening now in ways that make sense. When he talks about forged letters being used at an early church council, he brings up anonymous online attacks and deepfake videos today. He says these come from "Christians who imagine their cause is just and desire quick victories even at the expense of openness and truth. Wisdom can never be in such corners." Those connections made the history feel current instead of ancient.
The pacing works at just under seven hours. Thirty moments without feeling like too much. Topics include the Council of Nicaea and arguments about whether Christ is divine, persecution in the Persian Empire, how Pelagianism spread in Britain, a massacre in Southern Arabia in 544 CE that might have influenced Islam's arrival a century later. The variety keeps things interesting.
What got me was realizing how much those old theological fights still matter. People got kicked out of the church for believing things that a lot of modern evangelicals believe now without knowing the history. The quote I used shows that perfectly. The Nestorians and Monophysites were exiled, but their ideas are around today in different forms.
This works for a lot of people. If you really know this time period already, you probably know most of what's here. But most people sitting in church on Sunday don't know this stuff. This would be great for a church study group like the book suggests. Also good for educators, historians, anyone wanting to understand how Christianity developed and spread globally in those first thousand years.
Graham says "God often works with the most flawed, unlikely, unlikable of vessels." That shows up throughout the book. These weren't perfect people. They were complicated humans making choices that affected Christianity for centuries.
I'd love to see Graham write more books like this. Maybe covering the next thousand years, or if there are too many events, breaking it into two books of 500 years each. This would make a great series for introducing actual church history to people who wouldn't otherwise get this important information.
Well-researched and accessible church history that covers the first millennium most of us never learned about.
"One might instead wonder what those early Nestorians and Monophysites would think of the significant percentage of regularly surveyed evangelicals who respond true to the statement, Jesus Christ is the first and greatest being created by God."
Thank you to NetGalley, Mark W. Graham, and RBmedia for this advanced audiobook in exchange for an honest review.
CW: Violence, persecution, martyrdom, massacres, religious violence, forced conversions
Mark W. Graham's 30 Key Moments in the History of Christianity: Inspiring True Stories from the Early Church Around the World covers church history from right after the apostolic age through about 1000 CE. Most of us learn about the New Testament in church, maybe get some Reformation history, and that's it. There's over a thousand years we just skip. This book tackles that gap.
William Sarris reads the audiobook. His tone works perfectly for educational content like this. He pronounces all the names and places correctly, which impressed me given how many different regions and languages show up. The reading pace ran slow for me so I sped it up, but that's just how I listen to things. The narration itself is solid.
The forward talks about how church history books tend to be either scholarly or popular, not both. Graham wants to write something that reaches people beyond just those studying doctrine. I think he pulls it off. I've done research in this area and found it engaging. Someone coming to this fresh would probably enjoy it too.
Each chapter has three parts: Background, The Moment, and The Lesson. You can read these chapters in any order you want. They work as stand-alone pieces. Graham tells you when something connects to another chapter and where to find it. This makes the book useful for research or for doing a book study at church. Right at the start, the author mentions this would make a good book study. I completely agree with that.
The research and references are strong. There's a good appendix at the end. Graham uses scripture throughout. He presents complicated historical figures without trying to make them simpler than they were. When he talks about Constantine, he says "All humans are indeed irreducibly complex, but some are more challenging to understand than others." That's the approach he takes with everyone.
One of my favorite things about this book is how Graham keeps pointing out that the early church wasn't some perfect golden age. He doesn't romanticize it. Christians got persecuted, but they also did the persecuting. There's a chapter about Hypatia's death in Alexandria that shows early Christians as the ones causing harm instead of experiencing it.
The global perspective really stood out to me. This isn't just Rome and Europe. We get Persia, Armenia, North Africa, Yemen, Britain. Graham makes the point that the church was global way earlier than we usually think. Armenia becomes the first Christian nation around 310 CE. Graham points out this is the first example of Christian nationalism, and it becomes a template for what we'd see later in history from other nations like Rome, France, the UK, and much later, the USA.
Graham connects what happened back then to what's happening now in ways that make sense. When he talks about forged letters being used at an early church council, he brings up anonymous online attacks and deepfake videos today. He says these come from "Christians who imagine their cause is just and desire quick victories even at the expense of openness and truth. Wisdom can never be in such corners." Those connections made the history feel current instead of ancient.
The pacing works at just under seven hours. Thirty moments without feeling like too much. Topics include the Council of Nicaea and arguments about whether Christ is divine, persecution in the Persian Empire, how Pelagianism spread in Britain, a massacre in Southern Arabia in 544 CE that might have influenced Islam's arrival a century later. The variety keeps things interesting.
What got me was realizing how much those old theological fights still matter. People got kicked out of the church for believing things that a lot of modern evangelicals believe now without knowing the history. The quote I used shows that perfectly. The Nestorians and Monophysites were exiled, but their ideas are around today in different forms.
This works for a lot of people. If you really know this time period already, you probably know most of what's here. But most people sitting in church on Sunday don't know this stuff. This would be great for a church study group like the book suggests. Also good for educators, historians, anyone wanting to understand how Christianity developed and spread globally in those first thousand years.
Graham says "God often works with the most flawed, unlikely, unlikable of vessels." That shows up throughout the book. These weren't perfect people. They were complicated humans making choices that affected Christianity for centuries.
I'd love to see Graham write more books like this. Maybe covering the next thousand years, or if there are too many events, breaking it into two books of 500 years each. This would make a great series for introducing actual church history to people who wouldn't otherwise get this important information.
Well-researched and accessible church history that covers the first millennium most of us never learned about.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Baker Books sent me a pre-release copy of "30 Key Moments in the History of Christianity" by Mark W. Graham in exchange for an honest review.
This review is rather unique among the reviews I've done, as I've seen some of what's gone into the writing of this book. I studied under Dr. Graham at Grove City College. I was privileged to hear several of his lectures that have become chapters in this book. I even assisted in some of the research that went into this book (pg. 264). All that is to say, I greatly appreciate Dr. Graham and his work, and as such I had high expectations going into this book. It did not disappoint!
Each chapter has three sections: the background, the moment, and the mathema (the lesson). These chapters are brief and need not be read in the order in which they are presented. Dr. Graham helpfully cross-references other relevant chapters throughout his work. He does a truly commendable job making these snapshots from the first millennium of our history accessible to layman and scholar alike. I think this book will be of tremendous benefit to the church as a whole. Dr. Graham saw a need, and he met the challenge nicely. I can't recommend this book highly enough! Stop what you're doing right now and order yourself a copy. You'll be glad you did!
This review is rather unique among the reviews I've done, as I've seen some of what's gone into the writing of this book. I studied under Dr. Graham at Grove City College. I was privileged to hear several of his lectures that have become chapters in this book. I even assisted in some of the research that went into this book (pg. 264). All that is to say, I greatly appreciate Dr. Graham and his work, and as such I had high expectations going into this book. It did not disappoint!
Each chapter has three sections: the background, the moment, and the mathema (the lesson). These chapters are brief and need not be read in the order in which they are presented. Dr. Graham helpfully cross-references other relevant chapters throughout his work. He does a truly commendable job making these snapshots from the first millennium of our history accessible to layman and scholar alike. I think this book will be of tremendous benefit to the church as a whole. Dr. Graham saw a need, and he met the challenge nicely. I can't recommend this book highly enough! Stop what you're doing right now and order yourself a copy. You'll be glad you did!
January 23, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of this book!
If you love reading about early church history you will devour this book! Mark W. Graham does a great job taking some heavily debated topics and explaining them in layman’s terms. He breaks down the persecution of early Christians, First Council of Nicaea, and the lack of acceptance in early Christianity post resurrection and ascension. If you know your Bible, you will appreciate his OT and NT references. Dr. Graham did a remarkable job laying out the arguments from scholars on the divinity of Christ and how Christianity survived in different countries. If you are looking for a flyover of early church history, this book is a good place to start!
If you love reading about early church history you will devour this book! Mark W. Graham does a great job taking some heavily debated topics and explaining them in layman’s terms. He breaks down the persecution of early Christians, First Council of Nicaea, and the lack of acceptance in early Christianity post resurrection and ascension. If you know your Bible, you will appreciate his OT and NT references. Dr. Graham did a remarkable job laying out the arguments from scholars on the divinity of Christ and how Christianity survived in different countries. If you are looking for a flyover of early church history, this book is a good place to start!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews