Latourette's books

TomVols · Apr 8, 2002

What do you think of Kenneth Scott Latourette's 2 Volume "History of Christianity" ?

rlvaughn · Apr 16, 2002

Tom, I have no personal experience with Latourette, though I have heard some good things about his work. This excerpt of a review by Andrew F. Walls might be interesting to Board regulars.

Kenneth Scott Latourette was the first, and until recent years, almost the only major historian to write the history of Christianity in a way that dealt seriously with its presence in all six continents. He is now mainly remembered as a historian of missions. In his view, though, it was mission that determined the nature and meaning of Christian history...Latourette redirected Christian scholarship by presenting missions as the history of Christianity itself, not as an appendix to "church" history...Latourette's best works are his multi-volume global studies: A History of the Expansion of Christianity, Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, and A History of Christianity. At the time of their publication, these works represented the most comprehensive attempt to cover Christian history in all parts of the world and in all its traditions...For Latourette, Christian history is not about institutions; it is the story of the spread of the influence of Christ on earth. In the course of that story, people who have taken or been given titles such as Marcionite or Montanist, Nicene or Arian, Nestorian or Chalcedonian, Catholic or Protestant or Orthodox have all been part of a Christian movement. Waiving questions of orthodoxy, Latourette asks each group how far it advanced the influence of Christ...Latourette has been accused of superficiality in his concept of expansion, of theological naiveté, and of an essentially secular optimism. Still, his analysis of Christian expansion has some depth...He sees Christian expansion in three dimensions. In addition to the statistical and geographical dimension, he is concerned with the number and quality of movements of renewal, and with the influence of Christ on individuals and civilizations. His optimism derives from his faith in God's providence and Christ's ultimacy, and he freely points out that Christian history is marked by recession as well as advance...The principal defect of his work for today's readers is not his fault. He wrote before much research became available on Christianity in the non-Western world...But if any historian prepared readers for the situation of the early twenty-first century, in which non-Westerners constitute the majority of Christians, it was Kenneth Scott Latourette.

- Andrew F. Walls, a scholar at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Edinburgh; Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today, Intl./Christian History magazine; Issue 72, Fall 2001, Vol. XX, No. 4, Page 44
Click to expand...

Latourette's books

TomVols New Member

rlvaughn Well-Known Member
Site Supporter

Useful Searches

Latourette's books

TomVols New Member

rlvaughn Well-Known Member Site Supporter

rlvaughn Well-Known Member
Site Supporter