By Steven Mauch · Contributing Writer
Mark Graham, professor of history at the college, recently wrote a book titled “30 Key Moments in the History of Christianity,” which Baker Publishing Group officially published Tuesday.
The book shares 30 key moments in church history between A.D. 112 and around A.D. 1000. “Readers will gain a fuller appreciation of how the ‘one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church’ spread, triumphed and struggled over 10 centuries,” Graham said in a Grove City College press release.
Graham is the chair of the Department of History and, for more than two decades, has taught numerous classes on the premodern world.
“(The book) really did begin when I was doing a series of little moments in the history of our people at Covenant Orthodox Presbyterian Church, so for two years or so … I did a five-minute introduction to Sunday school (per lesson When two church members asked why Graham did not focus specifically on these early moments in the history of Christianity during his Sunday school lessons, Graham was inspired to start work on the book. “I have to do something with this, because I was really incorporating a lot of material from an old class I used to teach called Rise of Christianity, a class I teach called Byzantine and Islam, a class I teach called Medieval Europe; so it really was an incorporation of some of the material that I teach here at the college, but in a very different type of setting,” Graham said. “I’m not in a very different type of setting,” Graham said.
“addressing students; I’m not addressing scholars. In this book, I’m addressing the children of God. I’m addressing our people. … That’s why I decided to write it.”
Graham noted that he wanted to make copies of the work more broadly available since he didn’t see anything quite like it out there.
Graham mentioned that most Christians are not familiar with a lot of stories and that he added a twist to a few of the well-known stories so that the reader will learn something new about the event.
“I hope the reader is encouraged, and I hope at times the reader is provoked,” Graham said.
Graham also said that he wrote the book so that readers can read it in 15- to 20-minute portions before going to bed.
He discussed how we today can learn from the history of “our people,” including the trials they faced and the highs and lows they went through. “Sometimes Christians think, ‘Well, the history of Christianity is what we read in the Book of Acts,’” Dean of the Calderwood School of Arts and Letters Paul Kemeny said regarding the book. “Like, Christianity and the Mediterranean basin, right? And then Western Europe, Protestant Reformation, America, world history.”
“We’re fortunate to have (Graham) teaching here,” Kemeny added.
The book is available for purchase on Baker Publishing Group’s website (bakerpublishinggroup.com).
“What I want the Grove City College Community to know is how helpful they’ve been, even if it’s questions in class over time that have kind of shaped and reshaped the way I’ve done something, or when students (have been) encouraging professors to answer the question of, ‘Why does this matter?’ Graham said. “And that’s shaped me and the way I do history.”
