Review of
Philip Jenkins
The
Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the
Middle East, Africa, and Asia¡Xand How It
Died
New
York: HarperCollins, 2008
Reviewed By Rev. Mark
R. Kreitzer, D. Miss., Ph. D.
Visiting Professor,
Reformed Theological Seminary, USA.
Published, Review
& Preview, in the July 2009 issue of the multi-lingual online journal www.GlobalMissiology.org
In this fascinating volume, history
of religion scholar Philip Jenkins, Penn State Professor of history provides
readers with what he terms as ¡§the lost history of Christianity.¡¨ For a thousand years during the European
middle age, the actual core of the Christian movement was Jerusalem
with large orbs spreading out east from there toward what is now Iraq
and Iran (Persia),
west toward Europe, and south toward Ethiopia. The Church of the East (pejoratively
called ¡§Nestorian¡¨ by the Western Church)
had large and significant communities as far as China,
Tibet, and India. The Lost History of Christianity
popularizes what Kenneth Scott Latourette termed ¡§The Thousand Years of
Uncertainty.¡¨ From the time of Christ to about 1400 AD and especially in the
millennium from 400 to 1400 the Christian movement was huge in Africa
and Asia. He
shows that at least until the Muslim invasions in the Eighth Century and then
for a few centuries afterwards, these two regions were very possibly the
centers of the Christian movement rather than Europe.
It was from Christianized Asia and Africa,
for example, that monastic mysticism, great strides in theology and even
scientific knowledge came. Jenkins further demonstrates that the some of the
largest Christian denominations during the much of European Middle Ages were
what the Roman and Greek churches called ¡§heretics¡¨¡XMonophysites and
Nestorians. Especially this last movement, better known as the Church of the
East, was a far reaching web reaching as far as Tibet
and China. Along with the Eastern Orthodox Church,
the Asian and African members of now almost forgotten churches dominated the Middle
East in the centuries before the Muslim conquest and then provided
most of the architectural, administrative, and scholarly backbone for the Arabic
Empire.
As the title states, Jenkins shares
the story of decades of peace punctuated with years of persecution and horror
for the Christians, as the Muslims gradually became the majority in the once
Christian dominated lands of the Middle East. Sadly, only in the last century and
especially in the last thirty to forty years is the last remnant of these once
great Christian denominations being totally eradicated from Turkey, Iraq,
Lebanon, and Palestine. Jenkins
provides the history and background context to the present religious strife in
the Middle East, South East Asia,
and the band of states just south of the Sahara in Africa.
As we in the West become renewed in our knowledge of how Christianity was
gradually destroyed, we can understand what possibly could happen to Europe
if the present demographic trends continue. Muslim Europeans are rapidly growing
while Europeans of former Christian states are failing to have children. That negative growth combined with
massive Muslim immigration could lead to the development of a totally
Islamicized Eurabia in the next half a millennium if God does not revive and
renew the Christian movement in Europe through the power
of the Spirit and the Gospel.
I also particularly valued the
Lessons section in the last chapter entitled: ¡§The Mystery of Survival.¡¨ First was the penetrating insight on the
reason that the very orthodox North African church, except for with in Egypt,
virtually became extinct within one century after the Muslim onslaught. ¡§Where the African church failed was in
not carrying the Christianity beyo9nd the Romanized inhabitants of the cities
and the great estates, and not sinking roots into the world of the native peoples¡¨
that is the barbarians (Berbers) that Paul speaks about. The ¡§African church,¡¨ he further writes,
had made next to no progress in taking the faith to the villages and the
neighboring tribes, nor, critically, had they tries to evangelize in local languages¡¨
(229-230). This is a critical
insight for the Korean and American churches, for example. The Koreans seem to have ceased
evangelizing whole sections of the rural areas and the Americans have abandoned
the now largely multi-ethnic and increasingly immigrant dominated cities. Jenkins concludes: ¡§Christianity in this
region remained a . . . colonists¡¦ religion¡¨ (230) in contrast to that of Egypt
which ¡§did reach the hearts of their natives, and from early times¡¨ in ancient
Coptic, their mother tongue (230).
The Coptic Church was based on a ¡§network of monasteries and [rural]
village churches¡¨ unlike North Africa west of Egypt.
Last, Jenkins correctly points out
that the Church of North
Africa, like Medieval Europe, had a very visible
presence in church buildings, other ecclesial real estate, and
monasteries. The grave weakness
was that these could be easily plundered and destroyed, and ¡§once these were
gone, so were many of the forces that kept believers attached to the faith¡¨
(235). He then makes a very
relevant observation about a form of Christianity that could have withstood the
onslaught of Islam in order to grow even among the conquerors. ¡§Retroactively,
we could even think of a Christianity that looked more Protestant, in the sense
of placing more control and initiative in the hands of ordinary believers,
whose decentralized church life would depend less on institutions than on
direct access to the scriptures¡¨ (236).
He tempers this ideal somewhat by noting that the monastic and episcopal
forms ¡§were so deeply engrained in Eastern tradition¡¨ and the Protestant ideal
of direct access to Scripture had to await the inventing of the printing press.
(236) Yet still this is powerful
lesson for the evangelical movement now rapidly growing in Iran
and other Muslim countries. Could
the Lord God be cleaning out the old-line denominations based on monasteries,
priests, salvation by faith plus works and, in my opinion, idolatrous icons and
statues in order to replace it with the New Testament faith of the
apostles? I believe so.
In conclusion, Jenkins interacts
with many other scholars on the subject while powerfully and graciously
demonstrating strong evidence for his perspective. What I especially appreciate
is that this volume is written in a very readable and interesting style filled
with both the broad stroke needed to give perspective and wonderful historical
details that add human interest. Although
he gives facts and figures such as the huge number of churches and bishoprics
that the Churches in the East encompassed, yet this was done in such
fascinating narrative that it carries your interest throughout. All in all this is a very important new
work that updates and repopularizes K. S. Latourettes¡¦ work. I heartily recommend it and plan to keep
using it in my History of the Expansion of Christianity classes.