The Lost History of Christianity -- Review
THE LOST HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia – and How it Died. By Philip Jenkins. San Francisco: Harper One, 2008. xi + 315 pp.
During my own studies of church history and the history of theology, as well as my forays into teaching the subject, the focus has always been westward, not eastward. We started in Jerusalem and quickly headed west via Rome to Geneva, Canterbury, and onto Boston and Los Angeles, by way of Cane Ridge. As for global Christianity, which would appear to be a modern reality, one that began in the 19th century and continued to expand into the 20th century. The idea that there could have been a strong and vital eastern church, one that existed largely without state support and sponsorship, seems incredible, and yet that’s the story told by Philip Jenkins in The Lost History of Christianity.
Jenkins tells the story of churches and movements that thrived over a millennium and then largely died out, though there are remnants of these churches here and there, spread across the middle east, Africa, and Asia. He speaks of a golden age that ran from about 300 C.E. to 1300 C.E., a time when the church stretched all the way to the Pacific, taking in places such as Tibet, China, and India. Perhaps the reason why we’ve paid such little attention to these churches is that most of them represented what the Orthodox and Latin churches considered a heterodox faith. Of course, we who are Protestants have little time for such communities, since we must give pride of place to churches that emerged from places like Germany, Switzerland, and England. Although part of the story focuses on the development and spread of these churches across the south and east, it’s also the story of how they died and then disappeared after the fourteenth century. In the end the book offers us a cautionary tale, a reminder that no matter how vibrant a church is, that doesn’t mean it cannot disappear.
The cautionary tale that is inherent in this book begins with the first sentence of the first chapter: “Religions die.” Anyone who thinks that his or her religion is safe, should heed the story of a religion such as Manichaeism; now dead it was “a religion that once claimed adherents from France to China” (p. 1). The other side of the story is the one that is missing from our consciousness. It’s the story of a “lost Christianity.” Jenkins is just the person to share this story, for much of his own work has focused on neglected, forgotten, and marginalized forms of Christianity. In books such as The Next Christendom (2002) and God’s Continent (2007), Jenkins forces us to focus on groups that are not necessarily front and center in our minds. In this latest foray, he introduces us to the eastern edges of the Christian story. As he does this, he challenges us to rethink our paradigms of what Christianity looks like, how it spreads, and ultimately, how it might die (as well as being reborn).
Although Jenkins looks at a variety of contexts, including those of the far east, he places his focus on churches that not only survived but thrived under Muslim rule. He doesn’t take a romantic view of Christian-Muslim relations. Even places like Muslim-dominated Spain weren’t always blissful and peaceful places. Christians and Jews were, for the most part, second class citizens. At the same time, especially early on, in part because the Arab conquest happened so quickly, leaving the Christian communities largely in place, Christians remained the majority of the population. As such, they provided their Arab rulers with a ready source of educated workers. Christians held important posts within Muslim governments, serving as civil servants, teachers, and administrators. They were also a source of tax revenue. So, at least early on there wasn’t a major push to gain conversions. Still, Christians faced tremendous obstacles along with occasional bouts of severe persecution. The reasons for decline and longevity of Christian communities under Islamic rule are complex and diverse, often being determined by local conditions. Local rulers played an important role, especially early on. Later, near the end of the “golden age,” other more global factors played important roles. In some places, such as Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia the church thrived well into the thirteenth century, centuries after the Arab invasions. At the same time, in places like North Africa, the church essentially disappeared almost over night, this despite the fact that the North African church produced such luminaries as Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine. It would appear from the evidence that while the church was deeply rooted in these cultures and communities, the same was not true in North Africa. Christianity was by and large an urban faith, and appears that in North Africa Christianity never penetrated very deeply beyond the urban and Romanized areas. Thus, when the Arab invasions swept through the area, important cities such as Carthage were destroyed, and the Latinized/urbanized Christians likely fled across the Mediterranean. But, even in places like Egypt, where the church was deeply rooted, in time it too diminished in size and influence.
Jenkins’ millennium essentially stretches from the end of the age of antiquity – what we church historians might call the Patristic era to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in the mid-fifteenth century. By this time, eastern forms of Christianity were at a point of near collapse and even extinction. North Africa had long been de-Christianized, while in places like Syria and Egypt the church hung on, but barely. Indeed, even the churches of the Balkan countries were facing immense pressure as the Ottoman Empire expanded into eastern Europe. Ironically, just centuries earlier, while western Europe remained essentially uncivilized and unevangelized, eastern forms of Christianity flourished, Metropolitan sees existing in places like Herat in Afghanistan, Samarkand, and Basra. It’s true that many of these churches were considered heterodox by Catholic and Orthodox standards. Perhaps because they were considered suspect by the Byzantine church, made Nestorian, Coptic, and Jacobite (the monophysite Syrian church), made them more acceptable to Persian and Arab nations. Indeed, these churches existed, for the most part, without state support. At the same time they learned how to adapt and relate to other cultural and religious contexts. Forced by their context to engage with diverse cultures and belief systems, they interacting in amazing ways with Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and of course after the mid-7th century, Islam. Jacobite and Nestorian Christians found safe haven among these communities, in part because they represented a Christianity different from the one sponsored by the Byzantine Empire. Indeed, while the primary actors in this story may have been Muslim and Christian, these Christian communities interacted with and were formed by their interactions with groups such as Buddhists and Hindus. One of the stories told in the book is of the encounter between Nestorianism and Mahayana Buddhism – at about the same time as those Buddhist statues destroyed by the Taliban were being carved in Afghanistan in the 6th century – where Christians translated Indian Sutras into Chinese. Indeed, it seems likely that both Buddhism and Nestorian Christianity were transformed by their interactions.
The process of decline and conversion that left the Muslim world largely devoid of strong Christian communities was long and at times arduous. There were a number of factors that allowed for conversion – one of which was convenience. Over time it became clear that if one wanted to rise in society, one must convert. Conversion also meant seeing special taxes lifted. In a sense, to become a Muslim was to become a full citizen. Jenkins also notes that in many ways Islam positioned itself well as a successor to Christianity and Judaism. It offered itself to the populace as a cleaner more coherent version of Christian faith. The Koran included the biblical stories, though with a twist. Thus, the similarities between Christianity and Islam helped smooth the way for conversion. Indeed, he entertains the possibility that Islam is not only a successor of Christianity and Judaism, but a heterodox form of Christianity. He writes:
These explorations come near the end of the book, in a chapter entitled “Ghosts of a Faith,” where he shows how cryto-forms of Christianity continued to exist or Christianity influenced forms of the newer religion. For example, there are a number of elements of Sufi Islam that seem to have roots in Christianity. In addition, Sufism seems to have been especially strong in places like Asia Minor that had been Christian strongholds. Despite all the violence perpetrated on each side, Jenkins notes that Christianity and Islam are inextricably related, with each helping shape the other. He writes: “Underlying the struggle between Christians and Muslims is the fact that theirs is, ultimately, a conflict within a family, and no feud is more bitter” (p. 206).
In part, Jenkins seeks to retell a lost story, but he also is concerned about helping us understand why faiths survive and why they die. Many Christians assume that Islam essentially crushed Christianity with violence, forcing people to convert. But, while there are plenty of examples of violence, it’s clear that this wasn’t the only contributing factor, and the violence was perpetrated by both sides, Christian and Muslim. Even where violence is a part of the process, often it had less to do with religious teachings and more to do with nationalism. For example, there were times when Christians simply chose the wrong allies during periods of warfare. Alliances, for example, with the Mongols paid dividends at certain points, but when the Turks overcame the Mongols and came to dominate these areas, Christians were seen as political subversives. We’re invited to consider what might have been, had the Mongols maintained control and had they become Christian, which was quite possible. Then there were the Crusades, a military effort at conquest that was portrayed as a religiously motivated effort, which again cast Christian communities in a suspicious light. Migrations and other forms of population transfer, together with calamitous events, such as the plague, all conspired to undermine the Christian populace. Consider:
These communities survived long after the Muslim conquests, so we’re left wondering what might have been, had things ultimately been different than how they turned out.
The Lost History of Christianity is a joy to read. Jenkins tells this story with a certain vibrancy that keeps one wanting to continue on to the next page. Perhaps it is the very fact that we don’t know this story that makes the reading so enjoyable. The author, as far as I know, is a devout Christian, but that doesn’t keep him from being fair to all sides. He reminds us that violence is inherent in all our faiths, and that we must recognize the myths for what they are. He helps not only better understand the Christian faith, but also Islam – in all of its complexity. The cautionary tale is an important one, for we sometimes we take for granted the fact that Christianity is on ever expanding trajectory. Embraced by perhaps half of the world’s population, if not more, the global spread of the faith seems unstoppable. And yet, faiths can die as quickly as they emerge.
As the book closes, Jenkins invites us to reflect on the surprising nature of Christian faith, indeed, of religion itself. Faiths expand and contract and expand again. He notes that even as the Ottoman Empire was reaching its greatest expanse, expanding into the Balkans, Greece, and to the very gates of Vienna, to the west the Christian powers were exploring new territories across the Atlantic. In the early part of the 20th century, even as the last vestiges of an ancient Christianity was disappearing from Asia Minor, Christianity was spreading quickly throughout sub-Saharan Africa. He writes in this regard: “the history can be appreciated in its fullness only by acknowledging the defeats and disasters alongside the triumphs and expansions” (p. 261). Although Christians have believed that God speaks through history, too often we neglect to listen to that history. Although these ancient faiths have largely disappeared, we need not lose their testimony. We can give thanks that Jenkins has chosen to reintroduce us to this story.
Jenkins tells the story of churches and movements that thrived over a millennium and then largely died out, though there are remnants of these churches here and there, spread across the middle east, Africa, and Asia. He speaks of a golden age that ran from about 300 C.E. to 1300 C.E., a time when the church stretched all the way to the Pacific, taking in places such as Tibet, China, and India. Perhaps the reason why we’ve paid such little attention to these churches is that most of them represented what the Orthodox and Latin churches considered a heterodox faith. Of course, we who are Protestants have little time for such communities, since we must give pride of place to churches that emerged from places like Germany, Switzerland, and England. Although part of the story focuses on the development and spread of these churches across the south and east, it’s also the story of how they died and then disappeared after the fourteenth century. In the end the book offers us a cautionary tale, a reminder that no matter how vibrant a church is, that doesn’t mean it cannot disappear.
The cautionary tale that is inherent in this book begins with the first sentence of the first chapter: “Religions die.” Anyone who thinks that his or her religion is safe, should heed the story of a religion such as Manichaeism; now dead it was “a religion that once claimed adherents from France to China” (p. 1). The other side of the story is the one that is missing from our consciousness. It’s the story of a “lost Christianity.” Jenkins is just the person to share this story, for much of his own work has focused on neglected, forgotten, and marginalized forms of Christianity. In books such as The Next Christendom (2002) and God’s Continent (2007), Jenkins forces us to focus on groups that are not necessarily front and center in our minds. In this latest foray, he introduces us to the eastern edges of the Christian story. As he does this, he challenges us to rethink our paradigms of what Christianity looks like, how it spreads, and ultimately, how it might die (as well as being reborn).
Although Jenkins looks at a variety of contexts, including those of the far east, he places his focus on churches that not only survived but thrived under Muslim rule. He doesn’t take a romantic view of Christian-Muslim relations. Even places like Muslim-dominated Spain weren’t always blissful and peaceful places. Christians and Jews were, for the most part, second class citizens. At the same time, especially early on, in part because the Arab conquest happened so quickly, leaving the Christian communities largely in place, Christians remained the majority of the population. As such, they provided their Arab rulers with a ready source of educated workers. Christians held important posts within Muslim governments, serving as civil servants, teachers, and administrators. They were also a source of tax revenue. So, at least early on there wasn’t a major push to gain conversions. Still, Christians faced tremendous obstacles along with occasional bouts of severe persecution. The reasons for decline and longevity of Christian communities under Islamic rule are complex and diverse, often being determined by local conditions. Local rulers played an important role, especially early on. Later, near the end of the “golden age,” other more global factors played important roles. In some places, such as Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia the church thrived well into the thirteenth century, centuries after the Arab invasions. At the same time, in places like North Africa, the church essentially disappeared almost over night, this despite the fact that the North African church produced such luminaries as Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine. It would appear from the evidence that while the church was deeply rooted in these cultures and communities, the same was not true in North Africa. Christianity was by and large an urban faith, and appears that in North Africa Christianity never penetrated very deeply beyond the urban and Romanized areas. Thus, when the Arab invasions swept through the area, important cities such as Carthage were destroyed, and the Latinized/urbanized Christians likely fled across the Mediterranean. But, even in places like Egypt, where the church was deeply rooted, in time it too diminished in size and influence.
Jenkins’ millennium essentially stretches from the end of the age of antiquity – what we church historians might call the Patristic era to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in the mid-fifteenth century. By this time, eastern forms of Christianity were at a point of near collapse and even extinction. North Africa had long been de-Christianized, while in places like Syria and Egypt the church hung on, but barely. Indeed, even the churches of the Balkan countries were facing immense pressure as the Ottoman Empire expanded into eastern Europe. Ironically, just centuries earlier, while western Europe remained essentially uncivilized and unevangelized, eastern forms of Christianity flourished, Metropolitan sees existing in places like Herat in Afghanistan, Samarkand, and Basra. It’s true that many of these churches were considered heterodox by Catholic and Orthodox standards. Perhaps because they were considered suspect by the Byzantine church, made Nestorian, Coptic, and Jacobite (the monophysite Syrian church), made them more acceptable to Persian and Arab nations. Indeed, these churches existed, for the most part, without state support. At the same time they learned how to adapt and relate to other cultural and religious contexts. Forced by their context to engage with diverse cultures and belief systems, they interacting in amazing ways with Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and of course after the mid-7th century, Islam. Jacobite and Nestorian Christians found safe haven among these communities, in part because they represented a Christianity different from the one sponsored by the Byzantine Empire. Indeed, while the primary actors in this story may have been Muslim and Christian, these Christian communities interacted with and were formed by their interactions with groups such as Buddhists and Hindus. One of the stories told in the book is of the encounter between Nestorianism and Mahayana Buddhism – at about the same time as those Buddhist statues destroyed by the Taliban were being carved in Afghanistan in the 6th century – where Christians translated Indian Sutras into Chinese. Indeed, it seems likely that both Buddhism and Nestorian Christianity were transformed by their interactions.
The process of decline and conversion that left the Muslim world largely devoid of strong Christian communities was long and at times arduous. There were a number of factors that allowed for conversion – one of which was convenience. Over time it became clear that if one wanted to rise in society, one must convert. Conversion also meant seeing special taxes lifted. In a sense, to become a Muslim was to become a full citizen. Jenkins also notes that in many ways Islam positioned itself well as a successor to Christianity and Judaism. It offered itself to the populace as a cleaner more coherent version of Christian faith. The Koran included the biblical stories, though with a twist. Thus, the similarities between Christianity and Islam helped smooth the way for conversion. Indeed, he entertains the possibility that Islam is not only a successor of Christianity and Judaism, but a heterodox form of Christianity. He writes:
“Today, an observant Christian who chooses to convert to Islam would face countless cultural issues, and the religious change would affect every aspect of belief and practice, not to mention daily life. That contrast was far less marked in the early centuries of Islam, which took many years to define itself as a separate religion, and which includes in its deepest strata many traces of older Christian (and Jewish) influence. We see this in the oldest texts of the religion, as well as in many of the practices that today seem so unfamiliar and ‘oriental’” (p. 184).
These explorations come near the end of the book, in a chapter entitled “Ghosts of a Faith,” where he shows how cryto-forms of Christianity continued to exist or Christianity influenced forms of the newer religion. For example, there are a number of elements of Sufi Islam that seem to have roots in Christianity. In addition, Sufism seems to have been especially strong in places like Asia Minor that had been Christian strongholds. Despite all the violence perpetrated on each side, Jenkins notes that Christianity and Islam are inextricably related, with each helping shape the other. He writes: “Underlying the struggle between Christians and Muslims is the fact that theirs is, ultimately, a conflict within a family, and no feud is more bitter” (p. 206).
In part, Jenkins seeks to retell a lost story, but he also is concerned about helping us understand why faiths survive and why they die. Many Christians assume that Islam essentially crushed Christianity with violence, forcing people to convert. But, while there are plenty of examples of violence, it’s clear that this wasn’t the only contributing factor, and the violence was perpetrated by both sides, Christian and Muslim. Even where violence is a part of the process, often it had less to do with religious teachings and more to do with nationalism. For example, there were times when Christians simply chose the wrong allies during periods of warfare. Alliances, for example, with the Mongols paid dividends at certain points, but when the Turks overcame the Mongols and came to dominate these areas, Christians were seen as political subversives. We’re invited to consider what might have been, had the Mongols maintained control and had they become Christian, which was quite possible. Then there were the Crusades, a military effort at conquest that was portrayed as a religiously motivated effort, which again cast Christian communities in a suspicious light. Migrations and other forms of population transfer, together with calamitous events, such as the plague, all conspired to undermine the Christian populace. Consider:
“At least before the twelfth century, the Eastern churches found little difficulty in maintaining their organizations, in operating their churches and monasteries, or in launching new mission ventures beyond the borders of Muslim political authority. Ancient empires had regularly granted minority communities a large degree of self-government, extending to issues of personal law, and even their own courts, and this had usually been the situation of Christians within the Persian Empire. The Muslims took over this situation quite seamlessly. In fact, Christian legal authority might actually have increased under Muslim rule, as Christians formally codified their laws to match the Quranic law of the occupiers” (p. 110).
These communities survived long after the Muslim conquests, so we’re left wondering what might have been, had things ultimately been different than how they turned out.
The Lost History of Christianity is a joy to read. Jenkins tells this story with a certain vibrancy that keeps one wanting to continue on to the next page. Perhaps it is the very fact that we don’t know this story that makes the reading so enjoyable. The author, as far as I know, is a devout Christian, but that doesn’t keep him from being fair to all sides. He reminds us that violence is inherent in all our faiths, and that we must recognize the myths for what they are. He helps not only better understand the Christian faith, but also Islam – in all of its complexity. The cautionary tale is an important one, for we sometimes we take for granted the fact that Christianity is on ever expanding trajectory. Embraced by perhaps half of the world’s population, if not more, the global spread of the faith seems unstoppable. And yet, faiths can die as quickly as they emerge.
As the book closes, Jenkins invites us to reflect on the surprising nature of Christian faith, indeed, of religion itself. Faiths expand and contract and expand again. He notes that even as the Ottoman Empire was reaching its greatest expanse, expanding into the Balkans, Greece, and to the very gates of Vienna, to the west the Christian powers were exploring new territories across the Atlantic. In the early part of the 20th century, even as the last vestiges of an ancient Christianity was disappearing from Asia Minor, Christianity was spreading quickly throughout sub-Saharan Africa. He writes in this regard: “the history can be appreciated in its fullness only by acknowledging the defeats and disasters alongside the triumphs and expansions” (p. 261). Although Christians have believed that God speaks through history, too often we neglect to listen to that history. Although these ancient faiths have largely disappeared, we need not lose their testimony. We can give thanks that Jenkins has chosen to reintroduce us to this story.
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