Presented by Diarmaid MacCulloch - one of the world's leading historians and Professor of History of the Church at St Cross College Oxford, A History Of Christianity considers the evolution of the Christian faith and its four main forms: Orthodoxy, Oriental Christianity, Western Catholicism and Protestantism. In this fascinating series Professor MacCulloch explains how Christianity first spread east, extending into Syria, Central Asia, India and the Far East. He explores the extraordinary and unpredictable rise of the largest single body of Christian devotion in the world, the Roman Catholic Church, and reveals how confession was invented by monks in a remote island off the coast of Ireland. As the series progresses it charts Eastern Orthodox Christianity's fight for survival after its glory days in the eastern Roman Empire and looks at the Reformation and the rise of Protestantism as well as the evangelical revival and the American-led rise of Pentecostalism.