This book offers an engrossing portrayal of the early years of the Christian movement from the perspective of the Romans.

This book, which includes a new preface by the author, offers an engrossing portrayal of the early years of the Christian movement from the perspective of the Romans. "A fascinating . . . account of early Christian thought. . . . Readable and exciting."--Robert McAfee Brown, New York Times Book Review "Should fascinate any reader with an interest in the history of human thought."--Phoebe-Lou Adams, Atlantic Monthly "The pioneering study in English of Roman impressions of Christians during the first four centuries A.D."--E. Glenn Hinson, Christian Century "This gracefully written study . . . draws upon well-known sources--both pagan and Christian--to provide the general reader with an illuminating account . . . [of how] Christianity appeared to the Romans before it became the established religion of the empire."--Merle Rubin, Christian Science Monitor

Many of the problems afflicting American education are the result of a critical shortage of qualified teachers in the classrooms. The teacher crisis is surprisingly resistant to reforms and is getting worse. This analysis of the causes underlying the crisis seeks to offer concrete, affordable proposals for effective reform. Vivian Troen and Katherine Boles, two experienced classroom teachers and education consultants, argue that because teachers are recruited from a pool of underqualified candidates, given inadequate preparation, and dropped into a culture of isolation without mentoring, support, or incentives for excellence, they are programmed to fail. Half quit within their first five years. Troen and Boles offer an alternative, a model of reform they call the Millennium School, which changes the way teachers work and improves the quality of their teaching. When teaching becomes a real profession, they contend, more academically able people will be drawn into it, colleges will be forced to improve the quality of their education, and better-prepared teachers will enter the classroom and improve the profession.

of the Pope." --Book Jacket.

Describes the first 1,000 years of Christian history, from the early practices and beliefs through the conversion of Constantine as well as documenting its growth to communities in Ethiopia, Armenia, Central Asia, India and China.

In this challenging and vividly written book Dr. Wilken shows that there never was a golden age in the Christian past. Christian hope did not come to fulfillment in the age of apostles, nor in the time of Constantine, nor in the Middle Ages, nor during the Reformation, nor in the revivals of the 19th century, nor in the movements of renewal in our own time. The history of Christianity is a story of imperfection and fragmentation, but also a history of hoping and striving for an end that cannot be seen yet bears on the present. With lively examples from the Christian past Wilken shows that change has been an abiding feature of Christian tradition. Often those who proposed new ways of thinking and acted in unexpected ways turned out to be more faithful than those who repeated the old formulas. As much as the past may give specificity and concreteness to renewal in the present Christian hope is set on things that are yet to be.