Early Christian Traditions (New Church's Teaching): 6

Like other books in the series, this is a highly accessible volume, clearly and gracefully presented. It’s accompanied by useful questions for discussion and pertinent suggestions for further reading. Lyman wears her considerable scholarship comfortably, even invitingly. For the general reader, hers is an engaging introduction to the inescapable paradoxes of faith lived out in action, as experienced by our foremothers and fathers.

Lyman aims to give her readers an introduction to the people, places and traditions which are common to all Christian denominations. A useful, all-round evaluation of Christian history, this book would be a useful resource for anyone beginning to study the establishment of the church in the first centuries after Christ.

Lyman quite aptly describes her book as an ‘historical appetizer.’ As such, it works best as a jumping off point for further discussion and reading in the early history of the Church. Lyman writes, ‘Understanding our past is essential to dreaming our future.’ In this book she has invited her readers to take a first step in such an understanding that will lead to vital, Spirit-filled dreams.

Rebecca Lyman’s Early Christian Traditions should be especially useful to those . . . who know that the early Church is important to Anglicanism but not quite why or how. Lyman’s book is a thoughtful, accurate and highly readable introduction. It reflects the best recent scholarship by giving attention to matters such as diversity in early Christian thought and practice, the roles of women, and the ongoing interdependence of Christianity and Judaism, as well as to familiar issues of creed, liturgy and order.

The era of the early Christians is one that perhaps we don’t think of often. . . . Early Christian Traditions presents a readable and valuable introduction to this period of history.

This book offers a useful and concise history of the dynamics, issues and activities of the early church.

This volume provides not only an excellent introduction to the early church but also an answer to the question of why Anglicans at the dawn of the twenty-first century should be interested in the first five Christian centuries. The author avoids the name, date, battle (or, in this case, dogma) approach to history. She sets Christianity in its context in the ancient world and gives us insights to it both as a persecuted sect and an imperial religion.