The Christian story and the world’s story I can’t remember precisely when I fell in love with history, but it was surely in the first innings of my reading life. Granted, this was easier in the days when history was written and taught as, well, history – meaning drama, heroes and villains, great arguments, wars and revolutions, and all that other dead white male stuff. I was fortunate in that my third-grade teacher, the estimable School Sister of Notre Dame Sister Miriam Jude (then a postulant known as Sister Florence) had sold World Book encyclopedias on the side during her days as a Philadelphia public school teacher and talked my parents into buying a set. Thanks to the World Book, I was off to the historical races. Then there were Random House’s “Landmark Books,” wonderful history-for-young-readers, written by real historians, not overly dumbed-down, and costing something like $.95 or $1.25 for a hardback. I owned dozens, and read more than a few of them several times. Thus prepared, high school and college history were fun, not drudgery, and to this day, reading good narrative history is a never-failing pleasure. History, that is, like Robert Bruce Mullin’s “A Short World History of Christianity,” recently published by Westminster John Knox Press. It is no easy business, getting two millennia of Christian history into 283 readable pages. But Professor Mullin has done the job, in a readable style that makes the fruits of his impressive ample scholarship available to a general audience. Mullin is a master at sketching brief portraits of key figures in the Christian story. He neatly disentangles the great – and often daunting – trinitarian, christological, and mariological controversies of the first centuries in a thoroughly accessible way. Unlike many, perhaps most, historians of Christianity, he understands that the Christian contest with Islam has been a defining experience of Christian history, ever since the armies of Islam broke out of the Arabian peninsula and swept across what was, in the seventh century, one of the vital centers of the Christian world – North Africa. His description of the accomplishments of the often-deplored Middle Ages is both just and enlightening, as are his depictions of the Reformation, the Catholic Counter- Reformation, and the European wars of religion. His attention to the tremendous missionary expansion of Christianity in the 19th and 20th centuries is a useful reminder, in this Pauline year, that great Christian missions didn’t stop with St. Paul – or St. Francis Xavier, for that matter. What’s the relationship between the story told so well by Robert Bruce Mullin and the history I inhaled with those World Books? When history was taught properly, the sequence was usually organized by chapter headings that read something like “Ancient Civilizations,” “Greece and Rome,” “the Dark Ages,” the Middle Ages,” “Renaissance and Reformation,” “the Age of Reason,” “the Age of Revolution,” “the Age of Science,” “the Space Age,” or some such. From a Christian perspective, however, that is history read on its surface. For there is another way to schematize the human story. Its chapter headings would run something like this: “Creation,” “Fall,” “Promise,” “Prophecy,” “Incarnation,” “Redemption,” “Sanctification,” “Proclamation,” “the Kingdom of God.” That story – the biblical story, if you will – does not, however, run parallel to the “real” story as taught in the history textbooks. The story that begins with “Creation” and culminates in “the Kingdom of God” is the human story, read in its proper depth and against its most ample horizon. For the central truth of history is that history is His- story: the story of God’s coming into time and our learning to take the same path that God takes toward the future. In “A Short World History of Christianity,” Robert Bruce Mullin offers us, not a theological interpretation of history but a concise narrative of the church’s life in the world – the church’s life between “Redemption” and “the Kingdom of God.” To know that story is to see how, in specific personalities and communities, both the Spirit promised to the church and the ancient enemy have been at work, shaping what the world regards as “history.” It’s a story every literate Catholic should know. George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D. C. We are all in this together Question: What do the economy, the presidential election and “High School Musical” all have in common? Answer: We are all in this together. We are all well aware of the turn in the economy. The stock market, banking and credit and our sense of fiscal security seem quite uncertain. This is true no matter if you were “Joe the Plumber” or “Bill the Billionaire.” Whatever happens next, we are all in this together. We recently celebrated our nation’s democracy through the election process. We each had a role to play in ensuring a peaceful transition of our nation’s leadership. We had a voice in our future. And, whether “our” candidate lost or won we will share in a common future together. The release of the Disney movie “High School Musical 3: Senior Year,” offers another opportunity for a reprise of the all-too-familiar anthem “We’re All In This Together.” The storyline, very popular with tween-agers (young people ages 10-12), follows the adventures of the Wildcats of East as they prepare for graduation. Each of these examples offers us a glimpse of the interconnected nature of the human community. As Catholics, our understanding of God as loving community of three Persons helps us to recognize that all of us are one human community: the Body of Christ – the church. Unfortunately, when it comes to our sinful attitudes, words and actions, we try to “downplay” their seriousness by telling ourselves that “nobody was hurt.” Our individual sin does have consequences on those around us – diminishing our own capability to recognize the damage done not only to our honor but also to the integrity of our relationships. Sin brings alienation in a world desperately seeking harmony. Too often, when we are able to note the ills of the world around us, we are quick to point the finger towards the other guy – an impersonal institution – anywhere else to deflect acknowledgement of our own culpability. It is easy to accept the notion that I personally value equality and find that bias due to race, gender or sexual orientation might be somebody else’s problem. Yet, this notion is rejected when we use inappropriate humor that offends the dignity and worth of a person created in God’s own image and likeness. It is easy to bemoan the poor and disadvantaged peoples in Third World countries and how our systems oppress them. But our choices in wearing the latest fashion or drinking the trendiest coffee while ignoring the work conditions and unjust wage of the workers make us accomplices in injustice. Bemoaning injustice and inequality can become part of our talk at a water-cooler or a cocktail party. We can wonder when leaders, the government, or even the church might fix the problems, and, therefore, wash our hands of our own responsibility. Yet, the wisdom found within “High School Musical” reminds us: We’re all in this together. Once we know that we are all stars made in the image of God – and see that we’re all in this together – we better understand that love of neighbor is inseparable from love of God (cf. CCC, 1878). And it shows when we stand hand in hand (to) make our dreams come true. Solutions to the world’s ills will not be resolved in individualistic heroic actions. Our world will change only when we join together. Our joining together is ensured to succeed if we collaborate to connect in with the plan and design of our Creator. And, this is the “Good News:” No matter how unfair the world seems, God is with us challenging us to be in right relationship with one another. The life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is a sign to us that God joins along with us in singing “We are all in this together.” D. Scott Miller is the coordinator for adolescent faith formation for the Archdiocese of Baltimore. This is the fifth in a series of articles about the six-week fall session of Why Catholic? Church view on same-sex marriage prevails; other ballot efforts fail WASHINGTON – In voting on 2008 ballot questions across the country, the Catholic Church’s view against same-sex marriage prevailed, but most Catholic efforts to influence voting related to abortion, assisted suicide, embryonic stem-cell research and gambling failed. Voters approved California’s Proposition 8, which would amend the state constitution to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, by a 52 percent to 48 percent margin, although opponents said the counting of absentee ballots could change the outcome. Similar proposals were approved in Arizona (57 percent to 43 percent) and Florida (62 percent to 38 percent). Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles thanked the Catholic community for the passage of Proposition 8 in a Nov. 5 statement. He said the success also was the result of “an unprecedented coalition of many faith communities and other citizens who understood the importance of maintaining the bedrock institution of marriage as has been lived out since recorded history.” California is one of three states where same-sex marriage is currently allowed, and the California bishops had said the amendment would affirm “the historic, logical and reasonable definition of marriage” without removing any benefits from other contractual arrangements such as civil unions or domestic partnerships.