"The Evolution of Christianity takes a unique approach to church history. Marshall D. Johnson examines twelve crises that motivated the evolution of Christianity. Some of these crises in the church developed because of conflict with critics outside of the church. For instance, Christianity's conflicts with Darwinism and evolution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provided the Christian church with a new foundation for its view of the authority of Scripture and its variety of understandings of the relationship of the Bible to science. Some of these crises arose out of a desire on the part of insiders to reform the church. Thus, the Reformation of the sixteenth century altered the nature of the church dramatically, creating a "new branch" of Christianity, Protestantism. Monastic reform also sought to change the church from the inside in the Middle Ages." "Johnson chronicles the story from the first century and the "birth and adolescence" of Christianity to postmodernism, a feat that no other introduction can claim. His chapters on the Christian conflict with Islam make his introduction an even timelier book."--Jacket.