The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia and How It Died – The Dominant Eastern Churches' Demise

by Philip Jenkins

“Jenkins is one of America’s top religious scholars.”
 — Forbes magazine

The Lost History of Christianity by Philip Jenkins offers a revolutionary view of the history of the Christian church. Subtitled “The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died,” it explores the extinction of the earliest, most influential Christian churches of China, India, and the Middle East, which held the closest historical links to Jesus and were the dominant expression of Christianity throughout its first millennium. The remarkable true story of the demise of the institution that shaped both Asia and Christianity as we know them today, The Lost History of Christianity is a controversial and important work of religious scholarship that sounds a warning that must be heeded.

Genres: History, Religion, Nonfiction, Church History, Christianity, Christian, Theology

315 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2008

About the author

John Philip Jenkins was born in Wales in 1952. He was educated at Clare College, in the University of Cambridge, where he took a prestigious “Double First” degree—that is, Double First Class Honors. In 1978, he obtained his doctorate in history, also from Cambridge. Since 1980, he has taught at Penn State University, and currently holds the rank of Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of the Humanities. He is also a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion.

Though his original training was in early modern British history, he has since moved to studying a wide range of contemporary topics and issues, especially in the realm of religion.

Jenkins is a well-known commentator on religion, past and present. He has published 24 books, including The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South and God's Continent: Christianity, Islam and Europe's Religious Crisis (Oxford University Press). His latest books, published by HarperOne, are The Lost History of Christianity and Jesus Wars (2010).

His book The Next Christendom in particular won a number of honors. USA Today named it one of the top religion books of 2002; and Christianity Today described The Next Christendom as a “contemporary classic.” An essay based on this book appeared as a cover story in the Atlantic Monthly in October 2002, and this article was much reprinted in North America and around the world, appearing in German, Swiss, and Italian magazines.

His other books have also been consistently well received. Writing in Foreign Affairs in 2003, Sir Lawrence Freedman said Jenkins's Images of Terror was “a brilliant, uncomfortable book, its impact heightened by clear, restrained writing and a stunning range of examples.”

Jenkins has spoken frequently on these diverse themes. Since 2002, he has delivered approximately eighty public lectures just on the theme of global Christianity, and has given numerous presentations on other topics. He has published articles and op-ed pieces in many media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, New Republic, Foreign Policy, First Things, and Christian Century. In the European media, his work has appeared in the Guardian, Rheinischer Merkur, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Welt am Sonntag, and the Kommersant (Moscow). He is often quoted in news stories on religious issues, including global Christianity, as well as on the subject of conflicts within the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, and controversies concerning cults and new religious movements. The Economist has called him “one of America's best scholars of religion.”

Over the last decade, Jenkins has participated in several hundred interviews with the mass media, newspapers, radio, and television. He has been interviewed on Fox's The Beltway Boys, and has appeared on a number of CNN documentaries and news specials covering a variety of topics, including the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, as well as serial murder and aspects of violent crime. The 2003 television documentary Battle for Souls (Discovery Times Channel) was largely inspired by his work on global Christianity. He also appeared on the History Channel special, Time Machine: 70s Fever (2009).

Jenkins is much heard on talk radio, including multiple appearances on NPR's All Things Considered, and on various BBC and RTE programs. In North America, he has been a guest on the widely syndicated radio programs of Diane Rehm, Michael Medved, and James Kennedy; he has appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air, as well as the nationally broadcast Canadian shows Tapestry and Ideas. His media appearances include newspapers and radio stations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Brazil, as well as in many different regions of the United States.

Because of its relevance to policy issues, Jenkins's work has attracted the attention of gove

Reviews

[[Name Redacted] · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a complicated relationship with Philip Jenkins. I was incredibly impressed by his book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, but his books on pre-Reformation history contain some difficult and distressing errors. Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way contains a few out-of-left-field examples of his antipathy towards Mormons, Shakers & other non-Protestant, non-Catholic Christian groups. This book, "The Lost History", is likewise plagued by some odd ideological quirks, such as his insistence on referring to Egypt as an entity distinct from Africa and his dismissal of non-Protestant, non-Catholic African Christians as irrelevant or unimportant. He also huffily decries the use of terms like "Nestorian" and "Jacobite" by scholars because they were originally pejorative, yet he himself insisted on referring to "Mormons" and "Shakers" -- which are themselves pejorative titles imposed upon members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. And he adopts a superior, scolding tone when discussing Western Christianity's general ignorance of Eastern Christianities, but does his best to gloss over the Eastern Christianities' analogous ignorance of Western Christianity.

However, this work is also one of the best introductions to the topic he is tackling that I have ever encountered, frankly and honestly assessing the collapse of Christianity in the Middle East and Asia. Of particular note is his open and un-censored discussion of Islam vis-a-vis Asian and Middle-Eastern Christianity; his similar discussion of Buddhism & Christianity in Asia is also notable, but nowhere near as brave as his decision to confront how Christians have been treated in the Muslim world. He offers a refreshingly honest take on Islamic/Christian relations, free from both sentimental white-washing of Muslim atrocities and hysterical hyperbolizing of Christian suffering.

Likewise, his discussion of how backwards and intellectually stunted Western Christendom seemed when compared to Eastern Christendom is extremely effective in introducing to readers the historical reality of Christian life and thought beyond the borders of the Roman Empire. He doesn't deal with as many of the fine details as, say, the authors who contributed to A World History of Christianity, but he gives enough information to get the points across and includes plenty of references and footnotes.

I was particularly impressed with his careful debunking of modern academic (*cough*Pagels*cough*) claims that there were originally numerous equally-authoritative and powerful Christianities which were subsequently crushed by a repressive and narrow-minded Roman Catholic Church; by examining the paucity of works which were considered "Scripture" by the various Eastern Christian churches, he demonstrates that, by comparison, the Roman Catholic Church was actually run by hyper-inclusive, freewheeling "hippies". Almost all of the texts now cited as emblematic of "alternative Christianities" were unknown among Eastern Christians, or were wearily dismissed as well-known pious frauds of demonstrable falsity -- the Eastern Christians even rejected some of the documents which we now consider part of the "traditional" New Testament canon! These "alternative Christianities" were, Jenkins demonstrates, never anything more than late fringe movements which arose well after the canonical-NT documents were composed, and their "alternative" texts were usually written as sect-specific responses to or critiques of those earlier documents.

Of special interest is Jenkins' discussion of the origin of the term "genocide" and the list of atrocities committed well before World War II which are by-and-large ignored by the West.

Overall an excellent work marred by some curious decisions and assertions. If not for his persistent claims that Africa and Egypt are somehow distinct, I would have given it 4 stars.

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really what I was hoping for, nor what it's advertized as. Most of the book, I would say, is taken up with a) complaints that Europeans and their descendants know too little about the churches of the East and b) attempts to make the history of those churches 'relevant.' You know what? I would much rather have an actual history of them than an argument that we don't have a history of them - which is self-evident, and ignorance of these churches must be the reason most people would read this book; and an actual history than an explanation of why we should 'care' about that history. You know why I care? I'm curious, and it's interesting. The history which is told in this book is repetitive and rambling. On the up-side, at least he's trying, and he can write quite well in bite size chunks. But there's no attempt to link the chunks together. Too bad- hopefully Jenkins, or someone else, will actually try to write a solid history of what really is a crazy interesting time.

[David Sarkies · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Story of the Middle Eastern Church
19 December 2015

Well, here I am sitting on the Overland, one of the very few interstate trains that exist in Australia - when it comes to travelling interstate, or even to regional centres, most Australians rely upon the humble aeroplane, which is not surprising considering the train journey from Sydney to Perth takes something like four days to complete, and even travelling from Melbourne to Sydney takes something akin to 12 hours. The train I'm on happens to go from Melbourne to Adelaide, and while it used to have daily (or even twice daily) services, these days it only makes the trip twice a week, and even then it doesn't look like it's going to be around for all that much longer.

Anyway, as you can probably guess from the title, this book has absolutely nothing to do with trains, so I better start talking about this so called 'Lost History of Christianity'. I remember when I was reading this book a couple of years ago (actually I think it is more like five) I was sitting on the bus on the way to work and one of the pastors from my church got on the bus and started talking to me. Upon seeing the book he immediately asked me if it was revisionist history. Isn't it interesting that any book that happens to be about the history of something that isn't necessarily following the party line is automatically revisionist. Having studied history since, well, forever, I have come to realise that pretty much any book that claims to explore the history of a particular period is going to be the author's interpretation of the primary sources relating to that period. In fact there is no such thing as objective history – all history is coloured by the views of the people writing about it.

So, thus we come to this book, and I'm sure a book that has the words 'Lost History' in its title is going to be akin to one of those fringe books that you usually find hidden at the back of the book store on the religious shelf (as opposed to being on prominent display at your local church or Christian book store). Well, as it turns out this isn't actually a fringe book with some radical (or not so radical) interpretation of Jesus Christ or the Bible. In fact there is nothing in this book about Jesus marrying Mary Magdeline, having Simon of Cyrene replacing him on the cross, and then heading off to Britain to raise a family – the lost history in the title isn't that type of lost history. Rather the book is about a part of the church that generally doesn't make it into your average church history classes: the church of the Middle East.

Now, the book focuses primarily on the Nestorian Church, the church that developed to the east of the Euphrates (as opposed to the Greek Orthodox church that arose after the great Schism of the early middle ages). For some reason many Christian historians, when it comes to the church of the Middle East, actually pretend that after the Muslim invasion it ceased to exist. Maybe that is why those of us in the west don't seem to recognise that there are actually Christians among the many refugees pouring out of Syria. However the Church has a very long history in the middle-east, and despite the Uppayashid conquests of the 7th Century, not only survived, but actually thrived. In a way the Muslim overlords at the time accepted them as 'People of the Book' so did not put in place a policy of convert or die.

However, an interesting thing that I have been reading of late is how some scholars are now making claims that the period of Islamic ascendancy, where many of the ancient texts were preserved, and the study of mathematics and philosophy thrived in the Middle East, wasn't actually pursued by the Muslims but rather by the Christians. Considering what I have said about revisionist history previously, I suspect that such statements are clear examples, especially in today's anti-Islam climate.

However, as we are well aware, Christianity wasn't to survive in the Middle East, at least not as a minority religion. Jenkins doesn't just look at the period after the Muslim ascendancy, but also right down to the modern age with the invasions of the Early 21st Century and the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism. While the persecution of Christians have been going on for centuries (it began around the time of the Mongol invasions, particularly when one of the Mongol overlords converted to a rather radical form of Islam and began persecuting people left, right and centre), however it has always gone in peaks and troughs. Unfortunately, with every peak (and we are in one such peak at the moment), more and more of these ancient Christian sects are slowly being driven out of their homelands, to the point that they will no longer exists, not just in the Middle-East, but throughout the world (though this is also true of other non-Islamic faiths, such as Zoarastrianism).

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting look at the eastern arm of the Christian church, which survived for a thousand years under non-Christian polities (largely Muslim) and, arguably, flourished up through the 14th century AD. Only because of the vagaries of history (or the inscrutable machinations of God, depending upon one's point of view) did Western and Orthodox Christianity survive, that survival feeding the myths that the heterodox sects were suppressed by the Romans and that there were no Christians of any number outside of the empire. In fact, there were any number of Christians outside of the empire and in those darks days when Western Europe lay under the hands of the "barbarians" and the Eastern Romans were busy just trying to survive the Saracen onslaught, they enjoyed a vibrant intellectual life and greatly influenced the early Islamic empire both politically and theologically. Beyond that, they managed to evangelize as far afield as China and were influential presences in some of the most surprising places - like the courts of Mongol conquerors and Indian rajahs. Beginning around AD 1300, give or take a few decades, these communities began to disappear; Jenkins chronicles their survival and offers some reasons for their eventual destruction. (They were not entirely exterminated in many cases, however, but the believers had to go underground and avoid the attention of the governing polity.)

This is a very slim volume (only 262 pages of text) for the amount of ground it covers (over a 1,000 years of history and lands stretching from Gibraltar to Japan) so the reader is often left hungry for more information for just about every era Jenkins touches upon, especially as to causes since Jenkins is quite good at recognizing the variety of events that nurtured or killed Christian communities. For example, the disappearance of the North African church after AD 700 involved no large scale massacres of believers or serious persecutions but by 800, it's as if Augustine and Tertullian had never existed. In contrast, the Coptic church in Egypt commanded the alliegiance of a large minority of the population for centuries. It was finally broken only after generations of discrimination, persecution and the occasional pogrom.

The chapters "How Faiths Die" and "The Mystery of Survival" are provocative examinations of how beliefs live and die. For the believer of any stripe, some of Jenkins' conclusions may be a bit uncomfortable: There is no guarantee that any religion will survive no matter how successful it may appear at a given moment and some religions that appear "dead" can rebound spectacularly (consider that in AD 800, no one would have predicted that Western Europe and Christianity would be the dominant culture and faith a thousand years later; based on political and intellectual success alone, it should have been Islam).

The chapter "Ghosts of Faith" is an equally provocative look at the eastern Christian roots or influences on Muslim practices and beliefs, particularly among the Sufis. Jenkins even brings up the extremely tendentious argument that the Quran derives from Syriac Christian liturgies and gospels. While I have no brief for any particular scripture, I should note that Jenkins does seem to go out of his way to emphasize, perhaps overemphasize, the Christian influences on Islam.

On the whole, though, Jenkins is very balanced in his treatment of the various religious traditions. He is, after all, chronicling Christian disasters and the "villains" are often Muslims but he's careful to point out that some "deaths" stemmed from non-religious causes and that every religion has been guilty of discrimination and massacre.

While not, perhaps, a "must read," Jenkins is a welcome and interesting look at yet another aspect of history largely ignored in our assessments of the past and especially apropos considering current relations between the self-proclaimed children of Israel and Ishmael.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never read a history that so thoroughly convinced me that everything I thought I knew about a topic was wrong. The history of Christianity I was taught ran through Europe. Yet much of the populations Asia, the Middle East, and northern Africa were Christian for a hundreds of years, if not a millennium. And then they died out. Jenkins discusses the growth and death of these church communities in broad strokes with fairly detailed examples to help make his point. While Islam was Christianity's principal rival in many of these areas, the two religions more or less co-existed with occasional flare-ups one might have thought would define the interplay between them during that period. The real game-changer was the Mongol invasion. The Mongols gave more favorable treatment to Christians in their domain for a period but eventually swung toward the Muslims, right around the time the Mongol rule was ending. By this time, sufficient resentment had built up and Christian communities were persecuted. By the beginning of the 20th century, many Middle Eastern communities that had been majority Christian still had Christian minorities of roughly 10%. That figure diminished to around 3% at the end of the 20th century (the word "genocide" was coined in part to identify a different kind of crime, like the Turk's slaughter of Christian Armenians in 1915 or the Iraqi's killing of Christian Assyrians decades later). Fascinating book.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am going to write glowingly of several Christian groups in this review. It might seem like I am sympathetic to them. If I am, it is important to note that these groups are formal heretics on the post-Chalcedonian doctrine of Christ. That should be acknowledged. Now to the review. This book was sheer excitement. I consider myself fairly well-read on Eastern Church history. I’m not a scholar or an expert, but I know about as much as a layman could possibly know. I learned a lot. I got excited about what I learned.

Not only is this a fine narrative of church history, it’s also a good text on missiology (if you think that kind of stuff is important). It also has some geopolitical insights.

[1] This book teaches you how to interpret maps. We know a lot about Western and Roman Christian history. It is 3,100 miles from Jerusalem to England. We can assume Christian missionaries got to England at least by the second century. Let’s turn that 3,100 miles eastward. We now arrive in either Kyrgyzstan or Nepal. We know that Christians were in China by the 8th century. Even among the Mongols centuries later Nestorian Christians had a respectable presence.

[2] It’s the current rage among both low-church evangelicals and apostolic traditions like Rome to claim continuity with “the early church,” or even worse, “the first century Christians.” Romantic delusions aside, the church most closely resembling a Palestinian worship service would have been a Syriac church. They were Semites and spoke a widely-known Semitic language. Patriarch Timothy of Mesopotamia even claimed that his people were closer in habit to Abraham that Rome could be.

[3] Christians east of Syria would have been Nestorians. Christians south of Syria would have been miaphysites (or monophysites, depending on whether you want to use loaded language).

[4] Patriarch Timothy of Seleucia (800 AD) wielded wider influence over the Christian world than did either Pope or Charlemagne. He was also more widely read. Although under Islamic rule, there were thriving Christian metropolises in Iraq, Iran, and Turkmenistan.

[5] Is Islam violent? Yes. Did Islam’s violence eradicate Christian communities in the Middle East? Also, yes. However, most would draw the wrong conclusions from those facts. Initially, most Christian communities did quite well after the invasions. Muslim armies moved so rabidly they didn’t bother to eradicate Christian social structures. Indeed, that would have been counterproductive.

Early on Islam needed Christian thinkers and architects. If the Greeks were lost in the West, Syriac Christians were intimately familiar with them. One could make an argument that it was the Syriac Christians that passed on Aristotle to the Arabs. Moreover, early Muslim mosques were nearly identical to earlier Christian cathedrals. That’s not an accident.

[6] If a Christian apostasizes to Islam today, it would require a significant culture shift. If that happened in 9th century Syria, it wouldn’t be noticeable at all. Jenkins suggests that the Koran actually plagiarized sections of Syriac liturgies.

Moreover, Islam itself isn’t monolithic. Even Arabic changes. That’s not to mention the bigger differences between Shi’ite and Sunni. Jenkins even notes, quite positively, the influence of Alawites in today’s Syria (showing obviously that this was written long before the Syrian Civil War turned in Assad’s favor; no reputable publisher, Jenkins’ own views notwithstanding, would allow such positive light about Assad to be mentioned today).

The book is a dream. It is a fascinating account of a lost history of Christianity that ironically held sway in large sections from Syria to Japan to India.

[Suzannah Rowntree · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book could be the most important history text you've never read. It's written to be popular and readable by the layperson, but that doesn't make it historically lightweight. While I didn't always agree with the author's commentary, I came to the book after approximately ten years of intermittent study of the history of the Middle Eastern Middle Ages, so I have the background to assure you that the history in this book thoroughly checks out. (The one small thing I disagreed with in terms of history was that I think Linda Northrup, the pre-eminent authority on the history of the 13th century Bahri Mamluk sultanate, would have challenged the assertion that the crusader states at the end of the 13th century posed a meaningful military threat to the Mamluk sultanate, even in alliance with the Mongol Il-Khan of Baghdad - the threat was more an economic one, posed by the Italian trading empire of Genoa).

While I had glimpses of the picture before, I had never read an overarching history of the vast, now-vanished church that flourished across the Asian continent (as well as the northern parts of Africa) in the early and high middle ages. I had never read the details of how that church was snuffed out through long periods of low-level repression punctuated by fierce bursts of war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced conversions. I did not know that there were two main periods in which this took place: First was the fourteenth century, in which worsening climate conditions, famines, and the Black Death incited horrific violence as religious minorities across the known world were scapegoated, so that Christians in the Levant, the Middle East and Asia suffered similar pogroms as experienced by the European Jewish communities. Second, much later, were the genocides and ethnic cleansing of Armenians, Assyrians, and other deeply rooted Christian communities across the region in the early twentieth century. Today the mental image many people have of Asia is one in which Christianity has no role, nor has ever had a meaningful role, a perfect example of how the victors write the history books. Many people still understand the appropriation of Christian spaces such as Hagia Sophia (and thousands of other former churches), but how many understand that this has happened to people, too? The pioneering physician and polymath Ibn Butlan, for instance, is sorted into "Islamic medicine" by Wikipedia despite the fact that he, and many others like him, were actually indigenous Christians.

Reading this book convinced me that the loss of this history is a tragedy for two reasons. On the one hand, it is a tragedy because the long perseverance and suffering of oppressed minorities should be remembered wherever we find them; we should not merely listen to the victors. On the other hand, it is a tragedy because in losing that history, the worldwide Christian church has lost something supremely valuable: the concept of a fruitful, vigorous, and thriving church that nevertheless retains minority status. Christianity, Jenkins argues, has only very recently in history become a European faith. And European Christianity and its successors in Australia and America have always been, to some extent or another, allied with political power. We have never not had political influence, and as we move into a century in which that political influence seems to be fading, we're seeing in the rise of "Christian" nationalism a desperate grasp to preserve that political influence at the cost of everything else, even the central tenets of the faith. The history shows that the churches of Asia were largely uprooted, yes. But the history also shows vast centuries of the Asian churches flourishing, growing, and achieving remarkable feats of scholarship and culture, not only despite, but perhaps because of their minority status. As a Coptic lady told me a few of weeks ago during a discussion of her people's history, a lack of power can also mean an absence of corruption.

There's far too much in this book to encapsulate in a short review, but this is one that will stick with me and that I will be recommending eagerly to others interested in the histories either of the faith or the region. While I did not agree with the author on everything, I really valued this book for how fair and even-handed it was, neither downplaying the traumatic end of the Asian churches, nor ignoring the long centuries of coexistence and collaboration in which they thrived for so long. I will absolutely be reading more books from this author!

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Success has many parents and failure is an orphan. Jenkins shows how this saying is as true for the world's religions as it is for most anything else. The wide acceptance of Christianity and its growth in influence obscures the history of its losses. I like, many others, have not given much thought about how in the birthplace of Christianity it happens that Islam is the dominant religion.

The book begins with a description of how much of the world was Christian in the first millennium. Jenkins amplifies the strikingly illustrative map on pp. 12-13, (showing a heavy Nestorian Christian presence in the Middle East, India and even a presence in Beijing) with a description of how many churches were associated with each central unit, how they were staffed and their operations in general. They were clearly substantial institutions for their times. While the Nestorian branch of Christianity still exists, large areas of its former territories are now predominantly Buddhist or Islamic.

The next part of the book deals with the co-existence of religions in the first millennium, how they met, converged, adapted and fought. Interestingly, where the religions adapted to their communities and each other there was peace and permanence. The last part, all too short, covers why Christianity lost the ground it did.

It's been a few days since I finished the book and the ideas presented have been turning in my mind. Jenkins shows how religions, once they achieved dominance, could and did control and persecute non-adherents. If persecution could and most likely would follow dominance, the bigger issue becomes how dominance is achieved. The most thought provoking factor, for me, was language. Once you know which religion had its texts, prayers and liturgy fully in Arabic and which in Latin it takes no mental energy to project which one would take hold in the Middle East and which in Europe. Similarly, Jenkins writes about how the religions' abilities to integrate local customs and marriage and death rituals, and to build visible structures and momuments were also factors in their implantation and growth (or lack thereof) in new locations.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in this topic. Its clarity makes it excellent for the layman. I presume the content and its documentation also make it an important contribution for scholars who know these issues.

[Sherif Gerges · Rating 5 out of 5]

In contemporary mind, the Middle East and the Arab world are perceived as Arab-Islamic territories, an understanding anchored in the historical continuity of the religion that dates back to its founding. For example, reflecting upon Egypt, Syria, or Jordan, it may be challenging to remember that these regions were once bastions of Christianity, profoundly shaped by ecclesiastical traditions that similarly influenced much of European culture. It was only with the ascendancy of Islamic imperialism that Islam indelibly reconfigured the Middle East, progressively eroding its Christian antecedents until the disastrous genocidal episodes in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which have reduced middle eastern Christianity to a state of near obliteration.

This never happened to Western Christianity, namely because it faced no comparable persecution. Contradistinctively, in pluralistic and often hostile environments, Eastern Christianity faced different challenges compared to its counterparts in the West. From the eleventh to fifteenth centuries, Eastern Christians endured severe persecutions and massacres due to the rise of militant Islam, Buddhism, and the Mongol invasion. Jenkins highlights that such violence was often politically motivated as much as religious. His unsettling account extends into modern times, noting Islamic pressures on Christians in lands such as Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and of course Turkey. Jenkins asserts that second class citizenship, organized violence, including massacres, expulsions, and forced migrations, was a substantial cause of Christian decline in these regions.

However, Jenkins's account of Christianity's displacement by Islam in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia diverges from both conservative and liberal views of Islam, which to be honest I find quite intellectually honest and refreshing. He eschews the notion that Islam is inherently violent or inherently tolerant, but instead argues that while Muslim violence against Christians in conquered areas significantly contributed to Christianity's decline, it was not always due to a steadfast commitment to erasure. Instead, Muslim regimes often showed tolerance towards Christians, relatively speaking, although equally often suppressed and eradicated them via means of heavy taxation, the institutionalization of Arabic and subjugation all of which ultimately lead to a drastic reduction in Christian populations. This was particularly harsh in the case of Coptic Christians, who endured multiple attempts at genocide throughout the centuries.

In sum, much like Christianity, Islam demonstrated both a capacity for relative tolerance; albeit often relegating minorities to second-class status - and for severe violence and persecution. The latter was at times so effective that many Christians today remain unaware of this grim historical reality.

[Frederick Heimbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended for readers of religious history. Your understanding of the advance (and retreat) of Christianity will be incomplete without this book.

Jenkins tells the story of the Nestorians, Jacobites, and other Asian-based churches which were the first to be split off from the Orthodox and Catholics. Because they are deemed heretical and not merely schismatic, those branches of Christianity are ignored. That they were almost wiped out only makes them all the more invisible.

The startling revelation of this book is the scale of the Nestorian church. At its height it had hundreds of bishoprics in Asia and north Africa, reaching from modern day Tunisia to China. (China, contrary to the typical understanding, was introduced to Christianity four times; the current time appears to be the one that will stick.) It seems central Asia was an incredible salad bowl where, for centuries, no one religion held the upper hand politically, and Christians of various flavors, Zoroastrians, Manicheans, Buddhists, and later, Muslims all competed for converts in a marketplace of ideas. As each religion had its share of good and bad rulers, no religion gained or lost reputation through association with the state.

In fact, on that very point, Orthodox anger at Catholic misrule led many to welcome the rise of the Muslim ruling elite. In fact, according to Jenkins, early Islam looked more like a Christian offshoot than the highly distinct and hostile religion it is today. It's good to realize that for many years, in some cases, centuries, "Muslim" countries consisted of a Muslim minority ruling over Christians, Jews, and others. Christians remained majorities or pluralities for centuries after the Muslim wave of conquests in some places. (From another source I have learned that Syria, for example, may well have been a majority Christian country for longer in its history than a majority Muslim one.) Indeed, many of achievements of Muslim civilization, in the centuries it was more advanced than Christendom, were in fact the creations of the Christian intellectuals and artists on whom Muslim rulers depended. The only possible policy for such rulers was tolerance, and in many cases a kind of federalism operated, where each ethnic or religious community was responsible for policing its own members.

Speaking of Syria: it is a revelation to learn just how influential Syriac culture was to early Christianity, and how closely linked to the Christian founding fathers the Nestorian/Syrian church justifiably felt itself to be. The annihilation of this civilization is a loss to all humanity, and Jenkins feels it deeply.

The author is a liberal Christian, and his point of view is not hard to detect, becoming explicit in the final pages. I myself felt a lot of sympathy for his mourning over the Nestorians, even if I find their Christology unsympathetic. Other opinions expressed in the book are a bit jarring, like his repeated insistence that the holy books of all religions are equally vulnerable to misuse by violent men; I would give credit to Buddhism for being especially antipathetic to violence, and I would put Christianity somewhere close to second (although I am no expert in world religions). The author is no squish, however, and doesn't shy away from the darker episodes of the story of Islam, of whom Timur was a very dark episode indeed. and of which the darkest part commenced in 1300, part of a world-wide rise in violence that coincided with the rise of gunpowder -- when the great purging of non-Muslims from the Muslimdom began (and which is in its endgame today).

This book joins the author's other title, The Next Christendom, in promoting the author's thesis that Christianity is not now, nor was for many centuries after its founding, a one-continent affair. The picture we have -- Fortress Europe = Christendom -- was true really only from 1300 until 1492. Before that time, the heart of Christianity was in Syria; in the future, sub-Saharan Africa will bid for its heart and China will give Africa a run for its money.

[Sincerae Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this history and learned so much. The Lost History of Christianity is an excellent introduction to an obscure subject which the church in America never touches on. The author Philip Jenkins says that much of the information presented in this work is little known except by a few scholars.

This book eradicates the often held belief that Christianity is a Western religion. In fact Christianity was well matured in the Middle East, North Africa, and East Africa (Nubia and Ethiopia) before it became widely accepted in Western Europe. Jenkins writes about a forgotten and vibrant Christianity which stretched in Asia from Mesopotamia to Persia on to China to Central Asia and south into India. Once Christianity was established as far east as Japan. However, missionary work to Japan came much later than it had to the people of Africa and West Asia. Syriacs (Assyrian people) in places like Iraq and what is now eastern Turkey also played a huge role in the intellectual development of the faith. In fact Jenkins says Muslims co-opted into their religion the drive for learnedness from Syriac Christians. Many of the early translators of works from the ancient Greek classical world were Syriacs who worked for Muslim rulers.

Jenkins tells many stories of the long forgotten religious centers and greats of the eastern church. I was surprised to learn that the Christians of India were not converted by the British but had come to Christ centuries before British colonialism. Indian Christians believe the Gospel was brought to them by the Apostle Thomas.

Jenkins does not bash Islam, but he does tell how the religion hasten the decline of Christianity in parts of Africa and the Middle East and periodically brought brutal persecution. Some churches held on a long time and slowly died under Islam, but the light of the churches in Libya and Tunisia were extinguished almost overnight. Despite the death of these churches to the west, the Egyptian Coptics somehow continued to hold on until this very day.

This books' subject has really piqued my interest, and I plan to read more on the subject. I have long wondered why America Christians show little interest in learning about the Eastern roots of Christianity. We're often completely ignorant of followers of the faith in the Middle East, and the media is often silent about the flight of Christians from places like Iraq and Syria in recent years. Perhaps one reason for this is there is a centuries old bias that the West has long had against the Eastern church. The Western church felt the Nestorian and Jacobite Christians of the Middle East and Asia were heretics. The Middle East and Africa sprouted the original roots of Christianity not just the West in places like Greece and Rome because of the journeys of missionaries and martyrs of the faith like the Apostles Paul and Peter. The missionaries who traveled East with Christ's Great Commission and the churches they established and others that grew from the original Middle Eastern and African congregations deserve to be mentioned. Instead with American Christians, especially Protestants, the sole focus is on the history of the Western European church and Israel. More American Christians need to read this book, and maybe then will more compassion and concern for our brethren in the East may develop.

Philips Jenkins presents very important history and poses very important questions in this book.

[Roxana Chirilă · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did you know that, during the first millennium A.D., Christianity used to spread all the way from Egypt and Mesopotamia to the very ends of China, all along the silk road? That Ethiopia became Christian before most European countries ever did? That early Eastern Christianity and early Islam have a lot in common?

Philip Jenkins brings all of this to light in "The Lost History of Christianity". With a cry of outrage that so much of our history has been forgotten, he launches into an explanation of how Christianity flourished and fell in Asia and Africa (but mostly in Asia) and how Islam took over what used to be a mostly Christian territory, then proceeded to remove Christianity from it until about the beginning of the 20th century, when there wasn't that much left of it to remove.

It's a good read, overall. Some of the details are fascinating (such as the idea that Christianity might have influenced the spread of Buddhism, for example), and there's definitely a lot of info that you generally wouldn't be likely to find unless you went looking for it. (Such as Ethiopian Christianity, which is *old* - it's been there since the 4th century A.D.)

However, I couldn't help but feel the content wasn't as well-organized as it might have been - the chronology keeps going back and forth and I couldn't help but feel that some of the ideas were repeated over and over.

Also, while it's interesting to hear that early Islam and early Eastern Christianity had a lot in common, I would have loved to hear more about actual practices and beliefs, rather than having them mentioned in short by Jenkins. It feels as if he expects us to know what their practices and churches looked like, and he just fills in the historical details, with date and places and all that.

Another thing: while it's true I didn't know much about these topics to start with and while I quite agree with Jenkins that it's a shame some of this info isn't better known, it gets a bit old after you hear it about a million times. I know, I know, he's bringing out the *lost* history and feels the need to stress it, but I like being amazed on my own, not having an author tell me when to be surprised. (One of the reasons I can't watch old comedies nowadays is that they have that laugh track trying to persuade me into laughing).

The book ends, interestingly enough, with advice on how to keep your religion alive during centuries of invasions and persecutions, which is always useful, I suppose. I don't want to spoil this too much for any Popes and Dalai Lamas out there, but it has to do with geography, trying to spread your beliefs into as many groups as possible (so if one dies/leaves, the others survive), and a bit of politics. If I ever get around to starting my own enduring religion, like I've always wanted, I'll be sure to come back and refer to this.

[Libby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in the Dark Ages, when Sister Mary Floretta taught Church History at St. Joan of Arc School, I never heard about the Eastern, Asian or African churches that are the subject of this book. What is worse, they were never mentioned in my college courses on the history of the early church. How could all this history have happened and nobody saw fit to tell us about it? Well, that is one of the topics discussed in this well written, highly informative history. Not only does Jenkins give us the what, where and when, but we get a lot of how and why. I LIKE that.

Now I will say that I knew in a sort of vague way, that there were Christians in the extreme east, spilling from the Byzantines' territory into the Persian Empire. I even knew that many of them were members of "heretical" sects, Monophysites, Nestorians etc. But I only knew of them from extensive post-college reading in Byzantine history. My so called formal education had taught me nothing about them. Imagine my surprise to discover that there were THOUSANDS of them from Antioch to the Chinese capital of Chang An, and from Morocco to Ethiopia. They remained alive and active until well into the 1300's in Asia, and up to the present day in Syria, Egypt and Ethiopia. Jenkins fills us in on who they were. what they believed, when they flourished and diminished, where they retreated and how they survived or perished. He does all this in easy flowing prose that reads as easily as a good novel. Now what more could a history buff want? Well we get more! We learn how they got along with their Muslim conquerors and their Jewish neighbors. We learn how they influenced each other and how they fought and suffered. We learn several theories as to why some groups waxed while others waned. It is a fascinating story that is rarely presented to Westerners, whose entire concept of religious history tends to center in Western Europe.

If you love history, if you get a kick out of learning something new, if you want to learn the background of present day clashes in the Middle East, THIS is your book.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Few realize that while Christianity spread and took hold in Europe--it was also moving east and taking hold in Asia. Jenkins' book retells the history of this oft-forgotten story of how Christianity moved east--not through the Roman Catholic church, but by Christians who rejected the Council of Chalcedon. These Christians, known primarily as Nestorians and Monophysites, established bishoprics throughout Asia.

While the western Roman empire split with the eastern, the eastern "non-orthodox" Christians continued to live and thrive throughout Asia. With the rise of Islam, these Christians began facing challenges that ultimately led to their demise and were later forgotten having all but disappeared.

The book itself retells much of this history, while trying to understand and articulate why these Christians died away--both in an existential sense, as well as a theological one. It makes for fascinating reading.

Many of Jenkins' presuppositions and conclusions are materialistic, though he clearly has some theological training. Yet I am left concluding that Jenkins is more sociologist and anthropologist than theologian.

It seems fairly clear, especially in chapter 6 "Ghosts of a Faith" that the eastern Christians had largely abandoned whatever remaining orthodox faith and mission that had originally thrived. The Christians who were once a large percentage of the population of Muslim nations, had become too accommodating to their Muslim neighbors. Kevin Swanson writes in his book "Taking the World for Jesus": "When the Church is not busy implementing the Great Commission, it rots." This seems to me a good explanation of what happened to the eastern Christians. One could also look at the seven letters to the churches in Asia Minor in the Book of Revelation. Those churches were threatened with having their lamps put out due to their lack of faithfulness. Jenkins doesn't once bring these texts to bear upon the eastern Christians and their situation.

While I don't agree with many of Jenkins' conclusions, the book is a great read and I recommend it.

[Hannah Herrera · Rating 4 out of 5]

We think of the Christian church as so closely tied with western society but forget that it began in Africa, China, and the Middle East. This is a fascinating, and very detailed, history of what happened with the church in those areas since its beginning to where we are now. The author asks some very hard questions of Christianity and was extremely balanced in his presentation of the historical facts, as far as I could tell. Again, very detailed and not a read you can breeze through but I learned a ton.

[Jon Pentecost · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you didn't know that Christian communities existed and thrived in Asia and Africa during antiquity, you will learn about that in this book. But even then, you will not come away with a clear chronology. If you're considering reading this hoping to learn about such communities, I'd recommend Samuel Moffett's History of Christianity in Asia (vol 1). Moffett's goal is actually the history of the existence of Christianity in that region, whereas Jenkins focus on the question 'how do religions die' means the book is aiming at quite different questions.

Though I learned some things, I was largely disappointed. Part of that was because I thought this was a book about the history of Christianity in places like Asia and Africa; it's not about that so much as the decline of Christianity in those places. Part of it was because I had high expectations based off of other Jenkins books I've read, and this just seemed like much shallower analysis. I think that's probably due to his relative disinterest in the dogma of such churches--his interest is primarily sociological. As such, he doesn't give much meaningful data about what these churches believed, what their theological issues were that they sorted through, their polity, their engagement with culture, and so on.

Due to that (as well as a seeming happiness to broaden the tent pegs of historic Christianity beyond the pale of orthodoxy), as a Christian who believes that belief is the defining marker of a true Christian community, there was little for me to work with from what he presented. At times, it seems clear that he intends to include communities who called themselves Christians, but who were seemed to be quite deviant from historic orthodoxy. Other times, it seems he places communities further outside of orthodoxy than they themselves would have understood (eg, describing the Church of the East (in Persian empire) as 'anti-Chalcedonian' may be true if you only look at the Nestorius/Cyril controversies, but fails to reckon with the Church of the East's affirmation of Chalcedon in 560's).

His sociological approach to Christianity, and focus on the 'demise' of these groups means he spends a lot of time on communities who continued to exist in part because they conceded to restrictions against evangelism/accepting converts. I'm not sure you can rightly call a group meaningfully Christian if its solely an ethnic identity-marker, and not deeply investing in gospel proclamation to other groups around them. If Jenkins had established clearer terms on what makes a community or group 'Christian' the book would have been helped on many fronts. His only requirement seems to have been that they called themselves 'Christian', a requirement that groups like Mormons and JWs also easily fulfill.

[Scott Wozniak · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a really important message—but wasn’t executed very well.

Our modern understanding of Christianity is usually intertwined with European history so tightly that many people believe that’s all there is to Christianity in history. However, this book reveals that Christianity was not only also present in other parts of the world, up until nearly 1000 AD the overwhelming amount of Christians in the world were in Asia and Africa. Thousands of churches in hundreds of cities covered to the land. They were bishops and archbishops, theological councils, hundreds of monastic orders, and church buildings everywhere. They were kings and emperors who were either Christian in faith or had a Christian advisor they honored highly. Christians were prominent as far east as China and were a significant factor in the Mongol and Arab wars (with Genghis Khan).

However, I can’t give this really interesting idea five stars because of two major problems. First the book starts off really slow with lists of places in details and names, but no stories and no insights. It does get better as the book goes, but it continues to lean on lists rather than pulling us into the world at that time and explaining why.

Also, this book was not written by a follower of traditional Christian faith. The definition of what it means to be a Christian is very loose. He specifically mentions that some of the groups he calls Christian have been deemed heretical by all the major branches of Christianity today (that means different enough from the fundamental beliefs that they are not of the same faith). But then he immediately dismisses that as valid and says that we shouldn’t be concerned with “minor differences.” He openly discusses how multiple faiths are all valid, going so far as to say that Islam and Christianity really are sister faiths and should learn from each other. So much of what he discusses by the end would be far outside of what Christians would recognize as Christian. (I also know the other faith followers would reject the idea that we should mingle and that everyone is equally valid.) this means all the theological portions of this book are sloppy or just plain in accurate. For examplee, he dismisses any biblical ideas that are uncomfortable to modern people, therefore they must be no longer applicable.

So, the general concept is really interesting and really important. But this was not treated very well, either in writing style or written by someone who believes in the Christian faith fully.

[Hank Pharis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very interesting and arresting book. Jenkins identifies a blind spot in most accounts of church history. Most church history book focus on where Christianity has spread and ignore where it has died out. But Jenkins demonstrates that at least a portion of "Christendom" once thrived in
the Middle East, Africa and Asia before dying out. (I say "Christendom" because many of these groups were not "othodox" Trinitarians and thus there is debate as to whether many of these groups were legitimate forms of Christianity. But that's another debate that Jenkins does not address. He assumes they are Christian groups without commenting on these debates.)

But in 800 A.D. Timothy, the Bishop of Seleucia (near modern Baghdad) was "much more influential than the Western pope in Rome, and on par with the Orthodox patriarcch in Constantinople." At that time "perhaps a quarter of the world's Christians looked to Timothy as both spiritual and political head."

The number of Christians in Asia fell between 1200 and 1500 from 21 million to 3.4 million. During the same years, the proportion of the world's total Christian population living in Africa and Asia combined fell from 34 percent to just 6 percent.

In the sixth century, there more than 500 bishops ministering in what today are Libya, Algeria and Tunisia. Two centuries later there were no bishops or churches left.

In the 1970s 5-6 percent of the population in Iraq was Christian. Today less than 1 percent are Christian. But 40% of those refugees fleeing Iraq are Christian. Jenkins says in an interview:
"Across much of the Middle East, the last century since 1915 has been catastrophic in terms of the
destruction or annihilation of churches."

Why did Christianity decline in these areas? Jenkins says: "The largest single factor for Christian decline was organized violence, whether in the form of massacre, expulsion, or forced migration."
(141) Elsewhere Jenkins says: "Churches die by force. They are killed." The primary groups attacking Christians were Muslims and Mongols.

(Note: I'm stingy with stars. For me 2 stars means a good book. 3 = Very good; 4 = Outstanding {only about 5% of the books I read merit this}; 5 = All time favorites {one of these may come along every 400-500 books})

[Andy Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Detailed history of Christianity in the Middle East and Asia

I learned many new facts about the growth of Christianity in Asia and the Middle East and its demise. I knew about the spectacular growth of the Nestorian branch of the Church and the Monophysites, but I was not aware of the details of their organizational structure, their learning, and libraries, nor their evangelization methods.

Also, I just assumed they were wiped out quickly and completely by the spread of Islam. Not so! It was a slow and sporadic death spread over hundreds of years from 700 to 1400. As Dr. Jenkins put it, it was a slow ratcheting up of persecution over the centuries. The political and cultural connections between these Asiatic churches to their local cities, nations, and cultures were also a revelation. Dr. Jenkins also covered the various coping mechanisms the churches used under persecution and asked and answered why the Coptic church of Egypt survived in contrast to its contemporaries.

The final chapter, where Dr. Jenkins asks the meaning of the rise and fall of Christianity within entire nations and regions was both the most frustrating and satisfying for me. It was frustrating because he did not examine Biblical prophecy nor Jesus' teaching that such persecutions were guaranteed for the church. A comparison of the seven letters to the churches of Revelation with the causes of the fall of various churches would have been very fruitful.

The last chapter satisfied me because Dr. Jenkins acknowledged the universality of the church, in that it may decline in one area and grow in another. He also speculated on the long-range view of God, allow mysterious disasters to His people for His purposes, and yet, in the end, the Church grows.

[Ed Cyzewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must-read for Christians who want to learn about a relatively unknown segment of Christian history. This book is particularly helpful in establishing many of the core beliefs of western Christianity in the broader and ancient roots of the church. For example, many liberal scholars say that the canon and the theology of Christ was changed as a result of Constantine's meddling, but the church east of Constantinople, all of the way to Japan, recognized a similar list of biblical books and generally found a great deal of common ground with the beliefs of western Christians.

This is a particularly heart-breaking book to read because it documents the obliteration of Christianity in the East, but it is also helpful in understanding how Christianity, Islam, and politics have interacted throughout the past centuries.

[Michael Butler · Rating 3 out of 5]

5 stars for the content. 2 stars for the organization.
For a book like this, a chronological timeline of the history of the church in the east seems like it would be most suitable, yet there was little structure to this book. There was no hint of chronology, but instead the chapters focused on near- indistinguishable themes, making the reading quite dry and repetitive. Yet this is a very important area of Christianity history that's often neglected, and for that reason alone I would recommend reading this.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable study of history that was largely unknown to me--like most people I associated the History of Christianity predominantly with Europe. It was amazing to learn the the Persian Empire of the first 500 years of the CE was just as amenable to the spread of Christianity as the Roman Empire. The book also includes thoughtful analysis of the decline and "extinction" of faiths and their survival and resurgence. Highly recommended.

[Michael F]

A readable survey of a fascinating and overlooked topic. The book spends a little too much time in the first few chapters stressing how surprising the former existence and size of these churches is—you don’t need to go on telling me how modern westerners don’t know this and how shocking that is every time you tell a fact. Just let the facts and let me draw conclusions.

Jenkins is correct, however, that there is a huge hole in the way we learn church history. I would have liked more discussion of the main reason for this hole: the fact that the eastern churches were declared heretical at Ephesus and Chalcedon. Why did the split happen? Do the technical distinctions in Christology make much difference in belief or practice? Jenkins should have handled these questions, at least briefly. I also would have liked more detail about these churches themselves: what did they believe? What did their services look like? I understand that Jenkins is trying to be brief, and that answering those questions for such a huge range of time space would require many books, but a few examples would have been good.

What Jenkins does focus on is the question of how these churches survived and even flourished under non-Christian governments, and how they were eventually strangled or wiped out. This discussion is quite good and I learned a lot, especially about Muslim-Christian interactions. Besides the importance of remembering the past for its own sake, Jenkins draws out lessons for the present day about how Christianity can survive as a minority religion.

Anyway, most of these flaws are due to the book’s brevity, which also makes it easy to read. I recommend the book, particularly if you know little or nothing about the subject. He does a good job introducing all of this to a non-specialist.

If you know a lot about these churches, you may find the book tedious and lacking depth. In that case, I would only read it if you want to know how churches went extinct.

[Wes F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jenkins has done a great service to Christendom in writing this book on its "lost history." Yes, so much of the Middle East, Central & East Asia, and N. Africa were once vibrantly Christian. Jenkin's historical trek through the centuries & characters of these formerly Christian majority areas is very insightful, as well as encouraging. He does a great job of asking the questions of why things changed--and what caused the demise of Christianity in these areas; there are complex reasons & answers to those questions. Jenkins also does a great job in showing that there were a variety of expressions of Christianity in these areas--some more indigenous than others. But, there are good lessons to be learned from all of them and the history--whether good or bad--of each of them. I read this book in conjunction with another insightful book just reviewed: Transcending Mission, by Michael Stroope. Very interesting to read these 2 books side by side, as they cover some of the same territory, especially in regards to the idea & history of "mission." I got this ebook as a birthday present. Read on my iPad.

[Joseph Hazboun · Rating 5 out of 5]

An eyeopener on a flourishing Christian community that mainstream history ignores. The contributions of the Christians in forming the "Islamic Civilisation" are enormous and should be acknowledged. More importantly, Christians in the East -in the Arab World - survived for 1000 years under the various caliphates. It was mostly under "non-Arab muslims" that Christianity diminished and almost disappeared in the East, i.e., under the mongols, the mamelukes and the turks. This should be highlighted especially for today's Arab muslim community so that they get a chance to better understand their history, their Islam and the relationship between Arab Christian and Muslim communities.

[David Corleto-Bales · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book about the "lost history" of Christianity; one of my year's top ten best. Once, Christians were the majority from North Africa all the way to India--and had sizable communities beyond, even to China. By the 8th century, Nestorian Christians had established settlements in China, and Christianity was the majority religion in the Middle East until the coming of Islam, and for centuries afterward. Jenkins pieces together how many Islamic traditions were borrowed from Christianity and Judaism. As late as 1900, the Ottoman Empire, (ruled by a Muslim sultan from Constantinople) was only 50% Muslim and 46% Christian; in subsequent years a terrible ethnic cleansing of Christians created a Turkey that is over 97% Muslim. Certain groups of Christians disappeared, others lingered on as "lost groups." Early explorers like Marco Polo in the 13th century and the Portuguese in the 16th century encountered weird groups of enigmatic "Lost Christians" in places like China and India that had lost touch with their origins. This is an amazing book, and doesn't lament the fact that Christianity was supplanted by Islam but simply explains how it happened and why. It again proved to me how complex the first millenium was and how little it is understood in contemporary times. A very, very fine read. Interesting chapters on the Christian churches in Japan, Arabia and Egypt.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

The eastward expansion of the church in the first few centuries after Christ. The incredible network of diocese across Africa and Middle East, even into India China. The Ethiopian church as one of the most ancient and continuous churches today -- great story of them receiving European missionaries and wondering who the outsiders were! The Coptic church and the reasons for its survival (besides providence... which he downplays until the end!), compared to the churches of North Africa: wide social spread of its congregants (as opposed to Christianity just being the religion of the ruling outsiders from Europe in Northern Africa -- when left, as in colonial times, they often took the religion with them. It hadn't permeated the locals.), the decentralized nature of its leadership (An argument for presbyterianism as a form of church governance) as its leaders were less identifiable and targetable.

The times of harmony/co-existence between Christians and Muslims. Even up until the 12th century, Eastern churches maintained, operated, and launched their churches. Peter Brown, in the early Muslim centuries: "Islam rested as lightly as a mist along the contours of what had remained a largely Christian landscape."

Things gradually changed: Apostasy for social gain ("Without blows or tortures, people slipped towards apostasy with great eagerness.") The conversion curve: Within regions ruled by Islamic governments, Mulslims reached 40% of the population by 850, and 100% by 1100. Mongols were allies/tolerant of Christianity, as opposed to Muslims.

This systematically began to change into the 13th and 14th century: Turks torturing and massacring without pity -- Ephesus is obligterated in 1304. An incredible intolerance of Christianity across Asia and Egpyt. Mamluks jihad against Syria and Armenia. Armenia goes into 200 years of a dark age. Georgia, Ethiopia, and Nubia -- all heavily Christianized -- are targeted. Among many other things, he says this time of war and instability was because it was literally a colder century: Less food to go around and more disgruntlement, naturally resulting in targeting scape goats, rich Christian societies, and infidels who are bringing divine wrath.

Muslims into southeast Europe -- the Ottomans. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 (the "day the world ended"), Ottoman Turkish forces destroy the Hagia Sophia and turn it into a Mosque. (Into the 1910-30s, where there was not a genocide so "unprovoked, widespread, or terrible" as what the Turkish government did to the Christians in Anatolia and Armenia in 1915.

Decline was in two distinct phases: The 13-14th century where Christianity was reduced to minority status (Syriacs most of all, Copts in Egypt least of all). And the minorities were marginalized, regulated, discriminated against, and continually persecuted. Second was was in the late 19th and early 20th century: Christians have ceased to exist in the area altogether as organized communities. "For all the reasons we can suggest for long-term decline, for all the temptations to assimilate, the largest single factor for Christian decline was organized violence, whether in the form of massacre, expulsion, or forced migration." Only a hundred years ago, this would have been very foreign to see no religious diversity.

Great last chapter, "Endings and Beginnings." Father Sebastian, in the novel, "Silence," wonders why God is silent as His church is annihilated in Japan (18th century). A few explanations, which Jenkins says are more/less respectable:
- Judgment from God. But then, why not always, why were the most devout with no signs of worse sinful lifestyles the ones who were persecuted? Judgment at times, yes. As the one explaining factor for God's providence over the Middle East? Not likely.
- God's timing is not our own. We can't really say "extinct" -- the church springs up anew, and is revitalized in old regions. A 10th century monk claimed that Christianity was dead in China. Now it has 90 million Christians there.
- Islam/Christianity complement one another (Ick!). I disagree with Jenkins: "If Islam is not understood as the scourge that God applies to faithless Christians--and nor is it the only true faith--then...might Christians someday accept that Islam fulfills a positive role, and that its growth in history represents another form of divine revelation, one that complements but does not replace the Christian message? ...Christian theologians must of necessity give thought to the nature of Islam, whether they see it as a global adversary in a spiritual cold war, as a Christian heresy, or as an equally valid path to God? (Ick!) That rethinking has obvious implications for understanding the closely linked history of the two faiths. Do churches simply die? Or does something positive rise from their ruins?" [I think this makes a mockery of Christian martyrs, to suggest that their replacement via sword and mosque is just a beautiful evolution of an equally valid path to God. Woe to those who call evil good! It's also ridiculous: Now, after over 1,500 years -- now? -- modern theologians think that the two are complementary? Islam is a bastardization of Christianity, and the "linkage" between the two exists only because of that fact.
- In reading the new testament, we shouldn't be surprised that the church goes out of style with governments, states, armies, and powers. It's a wonder that it was ever in agreement. Despite it all, Christianity is the world's most numerous religion, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. At the same time as the Middle East persecutions of the 1900s was the era in which Christianity began its epochal growth in Africa.
And so, Father Rodriques, the "silence" is not because God is not speaking. The other silence can be found because people are unable or unwilling to listen to what is being said. "Christians believe that God speaks through history; and only by knowing history can we hope to interpret momentous events like the Japanese persecutions and the fall of the Asian churches... to break the silence, we need to recover those memories, to restore that history. Charles Olson: the chain of memory is resurrection."

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much more information on the Eastern Churches and insights into the history of failure than my students usually get. Jenkins argues we need to read about and understand the history of churches in places where they didn't flourish otherwise we are too seduced by the connections between the church and power.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

The main premise of this book is that we in the West have a very distorted view of the 2,000 years of Christianity: that after its emergence in the Levant its primary axis of expansion was into Europe, with some tendrils that pushed tentatively into North Africa, East Africa, and Asia but were eventually extinguished by the coming of Islam, if not before.

I probably know as much about the history of my own religion as the average person, yet I had never read anything to make me seriously consider any other version of the story, until now. Jenkins' point, if I may oversimplify, is that Europe wasn't a backwater for Christianity per se, but it certainly wasn't the main theater for many centuries. The churches in Egypt, Ethiopia, Carthage, Anatolia, and even into modern Iraq, Iran, and the -stans of the former Soviet Union were thoroughly Christianized, and there were thriving—occasionally even dominant—Christian societies and colonies as far away as islands in the Indian Ocean, China, and Japan. It's a fascinating picture that reads like alternative history, except it's the actual history, not the one we "know."

Jenkins stops a little short of saying that Islam is the major enemy—dare I say slayer—of Christianity in this sad story. Without being an apologist for Islam, he sometimes, half-heartedly, tries to make the case that the displacement of Christianity by Islam, and the utter disappearance not only of Christian worship and traditions but amazing Christian centers of education, wasn't all bad because Moslem scholars picked up the baton and either continued to advance science and philosophy or at least kept Western learning alive by being the bridge between the classical Greeks and the European Renaissance. But he also shows how this trope ("the Moslems gave us the concept of zero, which we use in modern math and science! They were brilliant astronomers!" etc.) isn't really as true as we've been led to believe. Two hundred years into the Moslem conquest of neighboring Christian lands, Jenkins says,

...Eastern Christians played such a critical role in building Muslim politics and culture, and they still had a near stranglehold over the ranks of administration. Their wide linguistic background made the Eastern churches invaluable resources for rising empires in search of diplomats, advisers, and scholars. Eastern Christians dominated the cultural and intellectual life of what was only slowly becoming "the Muslim world," and this cultural strength starkly challenges standard assumptions about the relationship between the two faiths. It is common knowledge that medieval Arab societies were far ahead of those of Europe in terms of science, philosophy, and medicine, and that Europeans derived much of their scholarship from the Arab world; yet in the early centuries, this cultural achievement was usually Christian and Jewish rather than Muslim. It was Christians—Nestorians, Jacobite, Orthodox, and others—who preserved and translated the cultural inheritance of the ancient world—the science, philosophy, and medicine—and who transmitted it to centers like Baghdad and Damascus. Much of what we call Arab scholarship was in reality Syriac, Persian, and Coptic, and it was not necessarily Muslim. Timothy [catholicos of the East] himself translated Aristotle's Topics from Syriac into Arabic, at the behest of the caliph. Syriac Christians even make the first reference to the efficient Indian numbering system that we know today as "Arabic," and long before this technique gained currency among Muslim thinkers.

To be sure, infighting among Christian factions—Latin/Catholic vs Orthodox/Eastern, but also Western against the eastern flavors, Nestorians, Jacobites, Manichaeans, and others—served to weaken the whole of Christendom just as Islam burst out of previously Christian and Jewish Arabia. Shortly thereafter the pagan Mongols flooded west and threatened all the societies they encountered. Their ruling clans were heavily proselytized by Christian and Moslem missionaries, and at first they leaned Christian; but seeing the successes of Islam against divided Christianity, they eventually chose to back the Moslem strong horse and thus changed the history of the world and arguable its two major religions.

There's much, much more to this story and Jenkins tells it very well. While reading the book, I sometimes was annoyed that he seemed too soft on Islam and its evils, but I am admittedly biased. In fact, he is quite even handed and shows the glories and faults of both religions equally. And it's not a duality between Cross and Crescent; he also examines the influences of Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and other belief systems and how they played roles in the evolution, decline, and disappearance of Christianity over much of the Old World.

In the end, Jenkins' assessment of the shrinkage of Christianity and ascent of Islam is a little too pollyanna-ish for my tastes, but there's no denying how well-researched, well-written, and thought provoking this book is.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book which shatters the myth of Christianity as simply a product of "Western Civilization." Jenkins shows how for 1400 years the locus of global Christianity was northern Mesopotamia. The Pope in Rome presided over a Christian backwater compared to thousands of bishoprics across Asia and Africa who looked to the Bishop of Babylon. Who were these Christians, what did they believe, and what happened to them? Jenkins covers all these fascinating questions and more.

The Asia of 500 - 1500 was a swirling cauldron of geopolitical conflict with the players espousing many religions. Christianity, Islam, Manicheanism, Judaism, Buddhism, and more all embedded and flowed. Even when an empire espoused one religion, it had millions of subjects who believed other faiths. Ultimately, Christianity in Asia and Africa came into decline and near-extinction because of intense persecution prompted by Christians identifying their faith as taking sides in ongoing geopolitical conflict. Muslin caliphates were largely benevelont toward the Christian population, preferring conversion through culture rather than coercion. But when the Christian Latins landed in Syria and Palestine for the Crusades and Christian Mongols swept down from Turkestan, Muslim Arab rulers identified indigenous Christians as a fifth column to suppress. Still, less politically active groups of Christians, such as the Pontic Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians survived until the Turkish nationalists' genocides at the end of World War I. Today, only the Coptic Church of Egypt survives as a large-scale portion of the local population. Jenkins explores how the Copts were organized and able to pass down their religion successfully despite persecution for a thousand years.

For Christians today, this is a book of history, but it also has devotional aspects. God is not dependent upon Christianity in any one country. Europe or America could be 100% secular but the Earth have a vibrant Christianity. And, of course, are Christians in America today living like the Copts or like the Syriacs who politicized their religion?