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Peter Stanford 26 October 2022 3:30pm BST What draws some of us to organised religion is a combination of believing and belonging. The former is that sense (or hope) that there is something

more to life than meets the eye, a guiding hand or spirit behind the highs, lows, inequalities and unfairness of our existence. The latter is the desire deep-rooted in the human psyche to be

part of a group – in this case, a group that together seeks to bring order and justice to the chaos, through collective rituals, holy texts and codes of behaviour. It is the “belonging”

part of this equation that lies at the heart of Peter Heather’s ambitious account of the rise and rise of Christianity, from “a small near Eastern mystery cult” in the 4th century to the

13th-century institution, based in Rome, that exerted extraordinary spiritual, political, economic, cultural and social power across Europe. Looking back from the 21st century, he argues,

the danger is to see that ascent as somehow inevitable – a tendency fuelled by the Church’s own propaganda about its success back then being proof of their unique hot line to heaven. But

there were many moments over those centuries, as he chronicles, where wrong turns and false prophets could have led to oblivion. He quotes that still striking and unsettling gospel story

where Jesus tells a wealthy young man, wanting to join his followers and “have treasure in heaven”, that he must first give away everything he owns to the poor, “for it is easier for a camel

to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God”. Such a pronouncement, embedded in the essential texts of Christianity, was effectively

signalling that it was not a religion for the ruling classes, but for the oppressed. That could, Heather suggests, have condemned it to remain “a marginal, rigorist sect forever”. But the

Church – the structure that initially grew slowly, later rapidly, to fill the vacuum after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West – cleverly managed to smooth the rough edge off

Jesus’s words by preaching instead that, in the case of those like the wealthy young man, salvation was still possible, because with God all things were possible. Likewise, at the Council of

Nicaea in 325, what was originally a small community of apostles, missionaries and martyrs, whose faith was unshakeable, even unto death, and whose lives were models of propriety, was

deliberately opened up to those hitherto rejected as sinful or flawed. Early intensity, Heather shows, gave way to an almost unconditional welcome: “a safe home of the less-than-perfect, who

now began to flock to the Church in much greater numbers”. In other words, Christianity – while better known for nurturing from the pulpit among the faithful a reputation as a fixed point

in a changing world, upholding the “eternal truths” that Catholicism remains fond of referring to when refusing to ordain women or allow same-sex marriages – was also prepared to reinvent

itself radically in order to grow in numbers, reach and hence power. Professor Heather teaches medieval history at King’s College, London. One of the many delights of this weighty book is

the abundance of little-heard (at least by this reader) but illuminating and intriguing stories that he weaves into the narrative to show how Christianity endlessly reinvented itself to

maintain a winning formula. In particular I liked the story of the 4th-century Bishop Eustathius of Sebaste who led an ascetic group of Christians – subsequently, of course, condemned – in

which women could act as priests as long as they cut their hair and wore men’s clothes. Were they, Heather wonders, seeking too literally for the taste of an expansionist Church to live out

the famous line of Saint Paul in his Letter to the Galatians that there is no longer to be Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, for all are one in Christ? It is one of many

passages in the book that delivers on the author’s pledge to give “the religious opposition as much time as ‘official’ Christianity”. Yet at the same time I had to look up where Sebaste is

or was (in modern-day Turkey), one of many helpful details that must have been a casualty of condensing such a wide sweep of history over so many territories into a just-about-manageable

volume of 700 pages. There is just so much to say, so much colour to include, that at times Heather assumes too much prior knowledge. That aside, the tale of how Christianity, from unlikely

beginnings, became one of the great mass-member institutions of the world is expertly and entertainingly told. Academics like Heather with a flair for writing accessible prose are rare.

Better still, the lessons to be learnt from its triumph – for decline only comes after the period Heather covers – are relevant not only to those with an interest in faith, but to all who

puzzle over which movements, messianic or not, secular as well as spiritual, succeed and which fail. ------------------------- _Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion is published by Allen

Lane at £35. To order your copy for £30 call 0844 871 1514 or visit __Telegraph Books_