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!