CH-101 History of the Christian Church

The church you belong to has a story. Follow it from the apostles in Jerusalem to the churches of the Global South today, and find your own church's place in it.

This course follows a WWES edition of Williston Walker's history of the church (1918), carried forward to today. It moves in six units from the early church, through the great councils, the Middle Ages and the Reformation, to the age of missions and the worldwide church of our time. The book tells what happened and why people acted as they did, and you learn to describe a dispute fairly.

What you will study

• The apostles, the early church and its answer to false teaching
• Nicaea and Chalcedon: what the church confessed about Christ
• Monks, popes and scholars in the Middle Ages
• Calls for reform before Luther: Wycliffe, Hus and the councils
• The Reformation: Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist and English, and the Catholic response
• How the church has answered "What makes a person right with God?"
• The Enlightenment, the revivals and the great century of missions
• Pentecostal and charismatic movements, self-led churches and the shift of Christianity to the South

Course materials

• History of the Christian Church (Williston Walker), a WWES edition
• The Bible