Complemented by more than 150 photographs and illustrations, a vivid history of the Roman Catholic Church chronicles the various ways in which the church has shaped human history and religion since its inception, documenting the contributions of key figures through the ages, the impact of important events and movements, and its role in the modern world.

Unfashionably, Norman writes extensively in Anglican Difficulties about authority, the deposit of faith, and tradition. God, he argues, provided a structured order in human relationships in order to coerce his people into a condition in which moral life can be pursued. This is a book that will delight or enrage people in equal measure. Either way, it will be widely noticed.Edward Norman is Chancellor of York Minster and is considered one of the most persuasive and articulate exponents of what has been termed the "new right" in the church of England. His previous books include Secularisation, Out of the Depths, and An Anglican Catechism, all available from Continuum.

The grandeur of St Peter's, the Baroque ecstasy of the churches at Cholula in Mexico, the intimate peace of Fairford Church in Gloucestershire...Throughout the world, amidst the increasing materialism of largely secular societies, churches attract travellers, tourists, historians and worshippers as almost never before. The reasons for this apparent paradox are not difficult to see, and they point to the widespread appeal of this spectacularly illustrated book. The clarity, knowledge and insight of Edward Norman's chronological survey are supported and enhanced by a brilliantly researched collection of illustrations and photographs. The result is a perfect mix between the most-loved master buildings - from Hagia Sophia to Tokyo Cathedral - and the freshness of the less familiar - a mission church in Paraguay, a Baroque shrine in Goa. And we see how every age has found its own way of expressing its particular vision, down to modern times, 'the great age of Christian expansion', when the initiative seems to be shifting away from Europe to South America and Africa. The totality of Christian worship, a union of theology, spiritual experience and art, has nowhere been more fluently and movingly conveyed.

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Victorian Christian Socialism began as a protest against industrial evils by a group of Anglicans in 1848 - the year of the great Chartist demonstration. In F. D. Maurice it had a prophet and a thinker whose ideas inspired subsequent Christians, so that the ideals of the original Christian Socialists began to spread to other Churches. The result was a series of critiques of the England of their day, rather than a systematic 'movement', and is best analysed, as it is in this book, through an examination of the leading figures, who in addition to Maurice include Charles Kingsley, Thomas Hughes and John Ruskin. The present study is not a collection of biographical studies, however, but a history of Christian Socialism constructed around the most influential of its advocates. They are shown to have been ethical and educational reformers rather than politicians, but in their ability to stand outside the common assumptions and prejudices of their day they achieved social criticism of lasting value. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Secularisation is not a systematic attempt--of the sort which might be made by a social scientist--to describe and identify every feature of a fading religious landscape. It is a landscape, indeed, which was once familiar, and yet which now appears almost unrecognisable to those who have lived within it all their lives...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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An account of the adaptability of the plants and animals of salt marshes to the seasonal fluctuations of their environment and the marshes' geological history and ecological importance