The Church of the Revolutionary Age: Christian Brotherhood, Volume 2 - Hardcover

by Henri Daniel-Rops (Author)

By Henri Daniel-Rops

The Church of the Revolutionary Age: Christian Brotherhood, the tenth installment in Henri Daniel-Rops' magnificent History of the Church of Christ, explores the complex phenomenon of the "separated brethren"-all those who believe in and follow Jesus Christ, but are not in communion with the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. This volume focuses on the non-Protestant Christian groups, surveying (1) the Eastern Orthodox Church, its Byzantine heritage, its pilgrim identity, and its liturgical, monastic, and mystical dimensions; (2) the incidence of division in the Church since its inception, from the fifth-century schisms to the heresies of Arius and Nestorius and beyond (the effects and fruit of which are still evident in the present day); and (3) the emergence of ecumenism as the means toward achieving Christian unity, its proponents and detractors, and its prospects at the opening of the Second Vatican Council.

Christ prayed that his followers may be one. Yet the history of his Church bears witness to the dreadful words of the Prophet Zechariah: "Strike the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered." With justice to its formidable and sensitive subject, Daniel-Rops' The Church of the Revolutionary Age: Christian Brotherhood is an absorbing account of the successes and failures of the sheep to be no longer separated, but unified in faith.

Henri Daniel-Rops (1901-1965), the nom de plume of Henri Petiot, was a French Catholic historian. His bibliography comprises seventy books-written over a span of just thirty years-and includes Sacred History, Jesus and His Times, and the monumental, ten-volume History of the Church of Christ. He also served as editor for the Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism, which consisted of one hundred and fifty volumes. Phenomenally successful in his own time, Daniel-Rops made religious history accessible and popular; in 1955, he was elected to the Académie française and in 1956 he received the Order of St. Gregory from Pope Pius XII.