The Study of Church History: Making Myths and Chasing Dreams? Nicholas Groves. One of the most outrageous things I have ever been told is that church history is ‘irrelevant’. It was the more outrageous as it was said to me by a group of Anglican Readers-in-training to whom I was teaching church history. Purely by chance, the overwhelming ‘tone’ of the group was evangelical, and they claimed it was irrelevant as it distracted them from the serious business of expounding the Scriptures, and they attended the course with ill- disguised impatience, solely as completion was a requirement of eventually gaining their licences. They were not impressed by my argument that ‘those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it’, 1 and that by paying attention to old disputes they might keep themselves from falling into error. A perceptive colleague remarked that the truth was more likely that they felt threatened by the idea of such study, as it was going to make them examine some very basic preconceptions. They exhibited a very negative attitude. A positive attitude is demonstrated by a class on church history I started in October 2007 for adult students who had attended various other historical and literary courses I had taught. I asked for names a month in advance, and twenty signed up. Some of these students are very much involved in their various churches, others are merely curious, and have no formal connexion with any church, and this makes for some extremely interesting discussions! But they are all fascinated by the emergence and growth of what by anyone’s reckoning is a, if not the, major influence in shaping western society: thought, art, literature, architecture – even social structures. As I write, we have 1 George Santayana, 1863-1952; Spanish philosopher.