Twelve Churches

<p><b>A <i>New Yorker</i> best book of 2025</b><br>'brilliantly inventive'. -<b> Tom Holland</b><br>'learned, highly informative and readable'. - <b><i>Literary Review</i></b><br>'thoughtful, humane and open-minded'. - <b><i>Kirkus Reviews</i></b><br>'A brilliant book'. - <i><b>Library Journal</b></i><br><i>'</i>witty writing'. - <b><i>The Times</i></b><br>'Hugely accomplished and endlessly readable'. - <b><i>The Spectator</i></b><br><br><b>***</b><br><br><b>With his trademark reverence and revelry, The Revd. Fergus Butler-Gallie travels through time and place to get to the heart of the religion he is so passionate about. </b><br><br>In this book he takes us from Bethlehem and the birth of Christ some 2000-odd years ago, to the immediate present and future of Christianity. He brings together a Baptist Church in the segregationist American South with a medieval monastery in the heart of the Greek countryside; the Vatican - beautiful, imposing, vainglorious, the seat of Catholicism - with a sparse, tiny private church above the rocky coastline of Southern Japan. <br><br><i>Twelve Churches</i> is a quest for a new people's history of Christianity, told through the stories of twelve churches scattered across the globe. Through a patchwork of interlinking and varied human stories, Butler-Gallie takes us on a physical and historical journey, exploring the role of hope, faith and beauty in Christianity, but also its fraught relationships with sex, violence and power. <br><br>The story of Christianity is, he shows, the story of our modern world: it's a story of who we should be, as well who we sometimes are.</p>