Christ Book Critique Everett Ferguson's book Church History, Volume One: from Christ to Pre-Reformation explores the relationship between the church and secular historical events. Since the inception of the Christian religion, those in positions of leadership have utilized the faith in the religion to extend power to the followers, often coming into conflict with secular leaders such as kings and queens. The book covers an extended period of time and deals thoroughly with the various struggles of the Christian religion and specifically the Catholic Church. The book also explains the writing of the Christian Bible and explains the ways that the religion spread until it eventually became the most influential belief practice in the western world. In the text, the author makes several arguments regarding this dynamic which deal with specific periods in Christian history including the first rise of Christianity in the waning Roman Empire, the growth of the papacy as the supreme power in the Christian religion, and finally the conflicts that arose between Christians and other...

The Roman Empire had been the preeminent power in the world for a long time when Christianity began to have an impact on the society. More and more people were becoming interested in the monotheistic religion and were shying away from the Roman religion with its many Gods and hedonistic mythology. The conversion of the populous was what led Roman leaders to accept the new faith, rather than an individual change to the belief system. Rather than a theological issue, the conversion to Christianity was in fact political (Ferguson 2005, 88). Ferguson is not the first person to put forth this theory about Roman conversion, but he does provide factual data concerning the declination of the political power of those who help onto Roman polytheism. It is possible that the leaders of Rome became interested in Christianity in the centuries following…