Book Review

Subject : History of Christianity from 1st – 18th Century

Book Review:
Louise Pirouet. Review of Christianity Worldwide. New Delhi: ISPCK, 1993.1-239.

1. About the author – Louise Pirouet (1928–2012) was a Ugandan-British teacher and researcher.
Pirouet was born to missionary parents in Cape Town, South Africa. She gained her PhD at Makerere
University in 1968. She subsequently taught at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. From 1978 to 1989
she was Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at Homerton College, Cambridge. The African chapters
were contributed by Dr Louise Pirouet, then teaching at the University of Nairobi, who took part in a
number of Church History research projects both there and in Uganda and was later involved in work on
behalf of refugees, first from the civil war in the Southern Sudan and then from Amin's Uganda. Dr
Pirouet also gallantly undertook to act as co-ordinating editor for the book as a whole. Hers has been the
difficult task of filling in some of the gaps and drawing together material from outside her own region of
study. as well as creating a balance between the widely differing viewpoints of the various contributors
and achieving a reasonably uniform level of language and perspective. She has also provided a short
chapter on Western Europe and North America, not as a history of events there, on which plenty of
introductory volumes are already available, but rather as a simple analysis of the changing ideas,
attitudes and developments, both inside and outside the Church, which have chiefly influenced the
modern missionary movement and growth of the Church worldwide. She died 21 December 2012.

2. Purpose of the Book – The purpose of the book to help readers to understand what type of
problem facing Christian in different area of the world today. How Christian important part played in
society, and making Christianity at home in their various culture. Some political movement turn to
world view. In the nineteenth and twentieth century’s, Christianity increases to become a worldwide
religion, and about a sector of the world’s population now identify themselves as Christians. The
Purpose and make use of this Book As readers will notice at once, this book consists of material
contributed by a quantity of different authors, each with their own individual style and approach. Also,
even though some general trends in people's ideas and ways of life can be seen as common to every
continent, the actual political situation and shape of events since the year 1800 have differed extremely
as between one region of the world and another.

3. Review of content – These will help readers to understand why thinks happened as they did, to
discern for themselves how the ideas and events of the past have helped to shape the church of today,
and to consider what the relationships between Church in one region of the world and those in another.
In the nineteenth and twentieth century’s Christianity made great advances. It has become a world-wide
religion, and about a quarter of the world's population now identify themselves as Christians. The
beginnings of this period of expansion were traced in Guide to Church History. The present looks at
some of the effects of that expansion through the eyes of Church Historians in different parts of the

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world. We start by noting briefly in this Introduction some of the developments in society and in
Christian life in the West which made the expansion possible.

3.1.New ideas of political and civil liberty :- In England, the seventeenth century led to civil
war, and eventually to the revolution of 1688, which limited royal power and made the monarch
answerable to Parliament. In the eighteenth century the French revolution against the power of the
monarchy and the aristocracy, and colonial revolutions in North America and in the Spanish American
colonies, went much further. They spread new ideas about individual human rights and personal
Freedom, and about giving the people a voice in government.
In the nineteenth century, however, it began to be recognized that something seriously wrong was
happening in North America. The same people who had fought to free themselves from domination by
the English were themselves denying freedom to large numbers of black slaves. Members of the Society
of Friends (Quakers) were the first to see this clearly, and were the first group of Christians to debar
from worshipping with them anyone who bought and sold slaves. Earlier missionary work had been
hindered by the growth of slavery, and by the failure of Christians to act against it, so this was a very
important development. But it was not until the twentieths century that people in the West began to see
that colonialism also violated human rights.

3.2.The evangelical awakening : - The founding of Protestant missions in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries resulted largely from a movement of spiritual renewal known as the Evangelical
Awakening' which began in North America. The movement spread to Germany and Britain, and also to
Scandinavia, and not only led to a new growth in personal Christian commitment, but also awakened
people to the need for social reform. Christian philanthropists began to try to improve conditions in the
prisons, to support legislation to protect workers and children, and to put an end to the slave-trade and to
slavery. Quakers as well as Evangelicals were active in this movement for reform. Some historians
suggest that these reforms had little to do with an awakened Christian social conscience. They wish to
explain everything in economic terms, and claim that people had realized it was more profitable to use
machines and properly paid workers than to use slave labour. Better working conditions would result in
greater productivity, and there were so many slaves in the United States already that there was no longer
any need to import more from Africa. The facts do not altogether support these economic arguments.
For instance, if the reason for abolishing the slave trade was that it was no longer profitable, then why
did it take so long to get the trade abolished? And why did slave-traders still find it so profitable to carry
slaves, that for fifty years after abolition they continued to risk all the dangers of trading illegally? of
course economics do affect the course of history. but it is not sensible to try and explain everything in
economic terms. Certainly economic and technological developments eventually made the abolition of
the slave-trade easier for those whose conscience had been awakened.

3.3. Revolution in Scientific thinking: - Like the social change that resulted from the Industrial
Revolution, the change in ways of thinking and of understanding brought about by new scientific
discoveries had an important effect on the way Christians approached the task of evangelism. Among
other things, science had taught people to think in terms of biological evolution. Human history, let
alone the history of the universe, is now known to be much longer than was previously recognized, and
scientists find that the universe is much emptier and vaster than our ancestors ever dreamed. Important
advances were also made in medicine, and some of these were of great importance for the missions.
Two of the most important discoveries from the point of view of missions were that quinine could be
used to combat malaria, and that vaccination could protect people from smallpox. These discoveries

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have been enormously important for people living in tropical countries, including missionaries, as
indeed have many of the discoveries and new developments in tropical medicine-for example in the
treatment and prevention of leprosy and which have resulted from the work of medical mission.

4. Positive effects: - These new missions were only concerned to send people from their own
countries to evangelize other parts of the world. The nations of Western Europe were no longer
Christian nations (though people often spoke as though they were) Most of them were secular states in
which people were free to follow their own consciences in matters of religion. Spain and Portugal were
exceptions to this: they remained officially Catholic states. But elsewhere freedom of conscience meant
that people were allowed to belong to any branch of the Christian Church they liked, to practise any
religion they chose, or to practise no religion at all. In the towns and cities of nineteenth-century Europe
and America many people were completely indifferent to religion as they are today. There were,
therefore 'Home missions. The Salvation Army is an example of a home mission which grew into a
denomination, and now has overseas missions of its own. Almost all Churches ran home missions, since
Europe and America needed to be evangelized afresh. In North America the population had to be
reconverted to Christianity after emigration from Europe had weakened people's religious allegiances.

5. Negative effects:- We shall notice that in Asia, Africa and elsewhere, newly converted Christians
quickly took up the work of evangelizing their own people. Missionaries from Europe and North
America were not alone in the work of spreading the gospel. In this book we shall see how much the
world-wide Church owes to thousands of indigenous catechists, teachers and evangelists in every land
who became missionaries to their own people. We shall notice that wherever the gospel has been
preached, there is a concern to make the Church 'at home in the local culture. By the nineteenth century
Christianity had become so much at home in European culture that missionaries often found it difficult
to distinguish between what was essentially Christian, and what was an adaption to European culture.

6. Conclusion: - People of different nationalities and who have lived and worked in different
continents have contributed to the writing of this book. They have widely differing points of view about
these issues. In putting their contributions together we have tried to present something of the differing
opinions that Christians hold. The discussion questions at the end of cach chapter may help readers to
make up their minds about some of the issues raised, especially in so far as they affect the life of the
Church in their own countries.