The Lost History Of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age Of The Church In The Middle East, Africa, And Asia--and How It Died (2008) - Plot & Excerpts
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 monuments 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. In The Lost History of Christianity, Philip Jenkins reveals aspects of the religion that are far from popular knowledge. If widely understood, this Christianity would show the televangelists in their limitations.Here are a few comments made by Jenkins in an interview, which I noted and am offering here.Religions really do die. We think of ancient religions like those of the Aztecs or Mayas, which had millions of followers, not to mention copious scriptures. Also, something like the Manichaean faith once stretched from France to China, but that is now extinct. The Zoroastrian religion is not exactly extinct, but it has gone from being a vast world religion to the creed of a few hundred thousand believers.One thing that strikes me is how much a dead religion influences its successor - how for instance the old Christianity left its mark on the successor faith of Islam.Finally, there is a major theological issue that nobody addresses, the theology of extinction. How do Christians explain the death of their religion in a particular time and place? Is that really part of God's plan? Or maybe our time scale is just too short, and one day we will realize why this had to happen. But as I say, nobody is really discussing these questions.Also, this Eastern world has a solid claim to be the direct lineal heir of the earliest New Testament Christianity. Throughout their history, the Eastern churches used Syriac, which is close to Jesus's own language of Aramaic, and they followed Yeshua, not Jesus. Everything about these churches runs so contrary to what we think we know. They are too ancient, in the sense of looking like the original Jerusalem church; and they are too modern, in being so globalized and multi-cultural.
What do You think about The Lost History Of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age Of The Church In The Middle East, Africa, And Asia--and How It Died (2008)?
An excellent primer for a global perspective of the history of Christianity
—Radi124
Fascinating look at the rise and fall of Christian traditions.
—alina
Great history told in a compelling manner but poor conclusions
—love
