W. Robert Godfrey

particularly violent people.

So you have this ideal that dominates, but then there's the reality of people trying to work out that idea, live with that idea, and shape that ideal to their own interests.

So we are going to look at a very interesting period in which

There is an effort to create a Christian civilization, and that effort is in a number of ways important to us today, both as Protestants, but also just as Christians trying to think through our relationship to our culture in our time.

Now, we're setting for ourselves a demanding task.

If I were to give you 25 minutes…

and say, summarize for me the 20th century.

Would that be demanding?

How much time would you give to the First World War and to the Second World War and to communism and to fascism and to America's role in the world, the rise and fall of the British Empire?

A lot of things to cover.

Twenty-five minutes on the 20th century.

That's what we're doing here.

We have about 25 minutes per century.

And so we're going to be moving, I hope not at a breakneck speed.

That's never a good idea.

But it does mean we're going to have to often paint with a kind of broad brush, going to have to skip some things that would be very valuable to talk about.

But what I'm hoping is that we will be able together to see the big issues of how the Middle Ages moved and that we'll be able to illustrate that with some particulars as we go along.

The Middle Ages is a time of great persons and great stories, Robin Hood, and of great books.

And so we'll be trying to illustrate the broad issues that we're looking at as we go along with some particulars.

And I hope you'll find it both stimulating and useful and interesting.