Review of "The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died"

Abstract

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.”[1]  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.  [1]I took several seminal ideas for this review from other reviews especially on the Amazon.com website.