The SCM Core Text: Modern Church History, provides an introduction to global Christianity from 1648 (1688 in Britain) to the present. The book aims to help students understand the processes, movements and individuals shaping the Christian landscape during this period, whether operating within the church or outside it.

It takes a wide and inclusive approach, offering a survey of Christianity in all its forms - Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox and locally-instituted.

Geographically, careful attention is given to developments in the West and the Orthodox heartlands, but a deliberate attempt has been made to offer a global perspective and to portray the sheer diversity of Christianity in its more recent manifestations.

Beginning with the reaction to Lutheranism, it charts the rise of Pietism in Europe throughout the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries, the influence of John Wesley and the Methodists, in the UK and the ‘Great Awakening’ in North America. The early chapters summarize the developments within the Christian Church in the UK, with detailed coverage of the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish situations, throughout the 19^th Century.  This is followed by a summary of the various schools of thought to have developed through the 20^th Century, including the church’s reaction to the two world wars in Europe, fundamentalism in the USA. The book also provides specific coverage of the religious situation in North America throughout the modern period covering the development of separate black churches, the ‘New Evangelicalism’.

Timothy Grass is a freelance writer and editor, and an Associate Tutor in Church History at Spurgeon's College, London.