What does infallible mean? Well, Google seems to think (as well as perhaps consider itself) something that's perfect and cant be critiqued. This book, however chocked full of fact, followed by more facts, some light Saturday night takeaway humour, then some biblical "facts", is hardly perfect. So an ironic title, well Nearly!
Nick Page isn't an historian, nor is he a theologist. He's a writer and professional god/dog lover. With over 70 published titles to his accreditation, mostly aimed at religion and Bible education, you'd have thought that this book, perhaps his most successful to date, would be one that might stand out from the crowd as controversial.
A history of Christianity is a fact followed by fact followed by a fact that might be a fact? This is questionable, as it comes out of the Bible. The Bible claims to be the word of God, but just so happens to have been re-written a few times because maybe that wasn't what God was trying to say? We all know that Christianity has a bit of a dodgy past and it's all in here. Apart from the very interesting stories raised from the content of the Gospel of St Thomas, whom the Catholic church have never gone to include as official scripture because let's face it; why would you want to include the musings of a man that says you can worship Jesus anywhere you like and don't need to give money to an organisation in order to do so?
Nick himself being a regular speaker in churches has clearly approached this book one sided rather than being able to write a criticism of the church. Nevertheless, don't let this put you off. I happen to have a great interest in the history of religions and this is the best one thus far that I've read on Christianity. The claim that the book is funny depends greatly on your sense of humour. Personally, I didn't find the odd random reference to something modern day all that funny and rather than just what it actually is, a poor attempt at humour.
Not worth the three weeks it took me to read it, there's a lot there that I've forgotten, but if you have a hard on for god and find church humour a blast, then this is the book for you.
You can buy A Nearly Infallible History of Christianity from Amazon and all good book shops.