A Multitude of all Peoples: the early church in Asia

For the last several weeks, we've peeked at the history of the early church in Africa and the Middle East, based on A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity's Global Identity by Vince L. Bantu. 

I say "peeked" because I just choose small things that stood out to me, in hopes that it inspires you to go read this book and fully explore Bantu's work. 

This week, we're going to explore his chapter on the early church in Asia. Like the previous posts, I'm just going to point out what stood out to me the most:

• Christianity entered Persia through Jewish communities no later than the 2nd century, and over the next 200 years, while Christians in the Roman Empire experienced severe persecution, this was not the case for Syriac-speaking Persian Christians. This means it was safer for Christians to live in places like Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan than in Greece or Italy! (pp. 165-167)
• As Christians from the Roman Empire fled east to the the Persian Empire, the government began to be suspicious of all Christians, connecting Christianity with the Roman Empire. "The Western cultural captivity of the Church began under Constantine, and the Persian Christians were the first non-Western Christians to suffer the consequences of this phenomenon" (i.e. people today thinking that Christianity is the 'white man's religion'). p. 170
• The Nicene Creed is written in the collectivist 'we' versus the Western "I", showing the Eastern influence of thinking in its creation (p. 172). To read more on this topic, check out this post. 
• In the 7th century, the Church continued to expand East, from Afghanistan and Uzbekistan to the earliest Christian mission to China (p. 177). 9th-century Syriac Christian manuscripts have been found in a monastery in China dating back to the 5th century! (p. 191)
• "In the medieval period, the Church of the East experienced some of the greatest missionary success and expansion of any Christian community in history, starting in Persian territory and extending all the way to the Pacific and Indian ocean" (pp. 179-180).
• Mongol leader Ghenghis Khan was tolerant of Christianity in the lands he conquered, including China (p. 212)
• The decline of Christianity in Central and East Asia began with Islamic persecution at the beginning of the 14th century (p. 216).

That's it for this series on A Multitude of All Peoples! What did you think? I'm purposely not covering the chapter on the Church in the Western world for one reason - I want to give full focus to how the church began throughout the non-Western world. However, I do want to leave this series with a quote from Bantu's conclusion:

"The tendency for Western culture to act as the barometer of Christian orthodoxy is a trend that reaches back to the Romanization of Christianity. It is important to recognize and lament the reality of the Western, white cultural captivity of Christianity, and for the people of God to take responsibility for the genocide wrought on countless millions in the name of (Western) Christianity. It is equally incumbent to recall that the Christian faith did not have its beginnings—nor the totality of its history embedded in white supremacy.....

This point is crucial, as contemporary non-Western non-Christians can easily dismiss the rapid growth of Christianity in the non-Western world as simply a function of Western colonialism and US American globalization.... 

Cognizance of Christianity's deep African and Asian roots dispels the common sense of indebtedness of Christianity to the Western world. Rather, early African and Asian Christianity provides an entry point free from Western dominance for a contemporary non-Western convert to Christianity" (pp. 220-221).

and

"The Western, white cultural captivity of the church [the belief that it is the 'white man's religion'] is the single greatest obstacle for people coming to faith in Christ....Christianity was expelled from China twice for cultural, rather than theological reasons....If it is the desire of the Church to exist deeply rooted for the long term for all nations, tribes, and tongues, it is necessary for the Gospel to be stripped of any geocultural association" (p. 225). 

My hope for every reader out there is what I experienced in reading this book: a greater appreciation and understanding of the history of the Church as a whole. It is so rich and way beyond the depths that even Bantu could plumb—although I know I'll be coming back to this book again and again to re-learn and gain greater understanding, as it was too much to take in for a first read-through. This book is definitely going on the shelf! 

I hope you enjoyed this series; I most definitely did! If you are interested in reading this book, you can purchase it here on Amazon!

A Multitude of all Peoples: the early church in the Middle East

For the past 2 weeks, we explored the history of the church in Africa, based on A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity's Global Identity by Vince L. Bantu. I hope those brief posts made you want to get this book and read more about the first African Christians.

Now, we're moving on to the early church in the Middle East!

Again, there's just so much that Vince L. Bantu shows the reader, and I feel the best way to go about this is to highlight some of the things that stood out to me. Hopefully this will continue to whet your appetite for this incredible book! So first, we're going to start with Israel's immediate neighbors:

• The term "Christian" was first used in Antioch, in Syria, but over the centuries, "there have been many Christian communities various ecclesiastical, national, and ethnic affiliations that shared a common heritage root in the Syriac-speaking world" (p. 119)
• Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic that began in Turkey, and became the dominant language of Asian Christianity, even until the medieval period. The Syriac Bible was translated no later than the 2nd century (could have been at the end of the first century). The Syriac Old Testament is unique because it was translated directly from Hebrew instead of the Greek Septuagint (pp. 120-121) 
• Arabia is one of the regions with the earliest presence of Christianity, because Paul went to what was likely northwest Arabia and Jordan.
• There were Syriac-speaking Persian Christians living in Qatar until the 6th century.
• Some of the earliest Arabic inscriptions date back to 340—2 centuries before the birth of Muhammed—and were Christian in nature. A few even had crosses, and this means the Gospel of Jesus Christ was proclaimed in some of the earliest words written in the Arabic language (p. 147).
• A decade before the "christianization" of the Roman Empire, the Armenian king Tiridates converted to Christianity (302 AD). He destroyed pagan temples and built churches; "it is noteworthy that Armenia, while wedged between 2 larger pagan empires, became the first Christian nation an a time when the notion of a Christian nation would have been inconceivable (p. 151)!
• Mount Ararat is actually in Armenia, not in Turkey like I thought.
• With Greek-speaking Roman Empire on the west, Syriac-speaking Persian Empire on the east, Greek was the liturgical language in Armenia until the 5th century. Armenian was spoken by the people but it did not have a written language—which meant that the majority of clergy were foreigners. Sensing the need for indigenous Armenian leadership and a written alphabet, the Armenian scholar Mesrop Mashtots created an Armenian alphabet and provided the first translation of the Bible in Armenian. He started with Proverbs, and the first words of Scripture written in Armenian were: "To know wisdom and instruction, to perceive words of understanding." Proverbs 1:2 (pp. 152-154)
• The Georgian king also declared his nation a Christian country in the early 4th century, and like its neighbor, Armenia, had an alphabet developed for the purpose of translating the Bible and composing original theological literature (pp. 157, 159).

Talk about a rich, beautiful history of the church in the Middle East! Were any of these facts new to you? How does this impact your view of the fullness of the Church and Christian history? I'd love to hear from you below!

Historic Peace Treaty between Israel and the Kingdom of Bahrain

 Did you hear the news?!

On September 11, 2020, the Kingdom of Bahrain agreed to normalize relations with Israel, joining the United Arab Emirates with their own historic peace deal. THIS IS SO BIG! As the Times of Israel pointed out: "For Israel, after 2 peace treaties in 72 years, there have now been 2 in a month."

That's not all!

• Eastern European country Kosovo, a Muslim majority country, announced a normalization of diplomatic ties with Israel, and will establish an embassy in Jerusalem. Its neighbor, Serbia, is also moving its embassy to Jerusalem.
• Malawi will become the first African nation to place its embassy to Jerusalem.
• Israel is in talks with Central Africa country Chad about possibly opening an embassy in Jerusalem.

WOW! Even though I knew the Bahrain deal was coming, I still am so amazed! What an historic time to be living in! 

What do you think about these latest events in the Middle East? Please let me know in a comment below!

A Multitude of All Peoples: the early church in Africa (Part 2)

Last week we started talking about the history of the church in Africa, based on A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity's Global Identity by Vince L. Bantu. 

I decided to end the post earlier than planned, because the final quote I shared was so powerful I wanted to leave it on that thought.

But now, I want to continue with the list I started, of sharing things I learned about the Church's rich history in Africa:

• The Ethiopian Church, which became strong and flourishing in the 4th century, were committed to the teachings of Scripture and willfully rejected traditional African religion. This is significant giving the commonly held assumption that Christianity's beginnings in Africa were by force and that all Africans who rejected their traditional religion did so by compulsion" (p. 106). This was still true as late as 1468 AD.
• Tertullian, of North Africa, was the first major figure to develop Christian theology in Latin (p.110).
• Perpetua, a noble woman from Carthage at the end of the 3rd century, wrote The Passion of St. Perpetua, St. Felicitas, and their companions, a story depicting the persecution and martyrdom of several North African Christians—including herself and her pregnant slave, Felicitas. "That Perpetua's husband is not directly mentioned, that she refuses the pleas of her father to apostatize, and that the central figures of this early Christian text are female challenged the male-dominant culture of early Christianity. Indeed, if the common proposition of Perpetua's authorship is correct, the Passion is the earliest Christian text written by a woman" (p.111).
• "However, Christianity in North Africa was in large part centered on the wealthy, educated, Latin-speaking, urban population.... Muslim sources in Arabic indicate continuing Christian presence in North Africa for centuries after the conquest... Interestingly, one of the most common terms for Christians in Africa in Arabic was afariqa—indicating a significant degree to which 'Christian' and 'Africa' were synonymous concepts" (p. 117-118).

Wow- these are all really interesting to me. Were any of these facts new information for you? I'm so thankful for the work Bantu did putting this history together! Please let me know below what stood out to you.

Next week, we'll explore the early Middle Eastern church!