Silence: A Christian History

How should one speak to God? Are our prayers more likely to be heard if we offer them quietly at home or loudly in church? How can we really know if God is listening? Here the author of the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Reformationand Christianity: The First Three Thousand Yearsexplores the vital role of silence in Christian practice and history. Diarmaid MacCulloch shows how Jesus chose to emphasize silence as an essential part of his message and how silence shaped the great medieval monastic communities of Europe. He also examines the darker forms of religious silence, from the church's embrace of slavery and its muted reaction to the Holocaust to the cover-up by Catholic authorities of devastating sexual scandals.