Church history is not merely a record of what human beings have done in Christ's name, but an ongoing account of what Christ himself has been doing with, through, and at times despite the people who have carried his name.
Organized into seven parts named for facets of God's building work — the God who begins, preserves, leads through history, reforms, sends his people, restores, and is still building — each part asks not only what happened, but what the promise of Matthew 16:18 looked like being kept within it.
One chapter confronts directly the gravest failures committed in Christ's name — the Crusades, the Inquisitions, complicity in slavery and colonial abuse, silence under Nazism, and the modern crisis of institutional abuse — because God's faithfulness becomes more visible, not less, when honestly measured against human failure.