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!

A Multitude of Peoples: The early church in Africa (Part 1)

After discussing Antipas L. Harris' Is Christianity The White Man's Religion?, I knew immediately the next book I wanted to explore on the topic of reading the Bible in color: A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity's Global Identity by Vince L. Bantu.

Quite simply, this book took my breath away.

Bantu takes the reader through a thorough description of the history of the Church, starting with the issue of why Christianity is so often associated with the Western world, even "though the majority of Christians now live in the Global South" (page 1). But what I want to focus on are the next few chapters, because the wealth in them is incredible. 

Even just focusing this post on Africa is too much to really fit into one post, so I'm going to write in bullet points below. While I have known that truth behind the premise of this book (that Christianity is a global religion and the non-Western world had a big impact and presence on it throughout the last 2 millennia), I learned a lot. Here are just a few things I learned specifically about the early church in Africa:

• Alexandria and Egypt represent the gateway for Christianity in Africa, which attributes the spread of the Gospel to the Apostle Mark. "Alexandria was one of the largest and most cosmopolitan cities of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity—a meeting point of Hellenistic, Jewish, native Egyptian, and other influences. (pp. 72-73, 74)
• Among the Biblical fragments from 2nd-century Egypt is a fragment of the Gospel of John, which is the earliest material evidence of a canonical New Testament text (p. 73).
• Theologians Clement (Egypt), Origen (Egypt), Irenaeus (Libya), Tertullian (Libya), Augustine (Algeria), and so many more were from Africa.
• The painting of the nativity in the monastery at the capital of Dongola from the late 10th century "represents early evangelization efforts from the Nile Valley Christians of Nubia to cultures further south and west in the African continent. The Gospel had already been spreading along the Nile river from Egypt to Nubia and then Ethiopia. This painting represents the continued spread of the gospel from Africans to neighboring Africans. If the Western church had not condemned, oppressed, and isolated the early African church, leaving it open to Islamic domination, the Gospel may have continued to spread to the extremities of the African continent at an early period. Yet this painting raising the intriguing potential of Western and Central African Christians before the advent of Western colonialism" (page 95).

I'm going to stop here and continue this topic next week, because that's exactly what the above quote did to me when I read it: it stopped me in my tracks. It reminded me of Marvel's Black Panther*, and how it is a powerful, undeniable visual of how Africa's story was violently disrupted by Western colonialism in the worst way. This also includes the history of the African church, which is rich beyond what any of us can fully imagine.

What about you? Were any of the above points new information for you? Does it impact or change your understanding of the early church and the history of Christianity at all? I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments below!

*I wrote this post on Thursday, Aug 27, 2020, and in the writing of it, experienced a renewed desire to re-watch Black Panther. The next night, while staying with a friend, we made plans to watch it on Saturday. After that conversation, I opened my phone and read the shocking news that Chadwick Boseman, the actor playing BP’s main character, King T’Challa had passed away after a 4-year silent war with cancer. Since then, I’ve re-watched the movie 2x, and am still amazed at the incredible- and important- world of Wakanda.

The Livingstone Chronicles: Rift in Time

After learning about Jebel El Lawz and all of the historical findings there, I remembered a set of books I read years ago—that were still on my bookshelf: The Livingstone Chronicles by Michael Phillips.

This series follows world-renowned British archeologist and explorer Adam Livingstone on some daring discoveries and adventures. In fact, the first book, Rift in Time, opens with his discovery of Noah's Ark in Turkey's Ararat region (this isn't a spoiler... it says so on the cover, haha).

Published in 1997, I probably first read this book and its successor (see next post) in the early 2000s. So I didn't remember all of the details; just that it was about an archeologist looking for ancient Biblical things. 

Imagine my shock when I re-read the book and realize that Livingstone and his crew travel to the Red Sea from Cairo, cross over by boat at the underwater land bridge of Nuweiba and head toward the mountain with the burned peak. They are in search of something other than Mount Sinai (I won't say what), but acknowledge that this is likely the place (even after acknowledging and glimpsing the traditional site of Mount St. Catherine's in Jordan), noting things of interest like a plain where people could camp, the fence keeping people out, the many caves in the area, and a split rock. 

Now that I have seen this documentary, I can see Livingstone, Rocky McCondy, and Juliet Halsey climbing to the peak of Mount Sinai and it's pretty cool. And throughout the books are drawings and maps - check this one out:

Wow!

Reading this books as a teen, I loved them because I love archeology, especially Biblical history, and adventure. I kept these books for almost 20 years for this reason, having read them at least 3 other times. But only just now was I able to "see" what the author was talking about. Pretty cool!

I definitely recommend this series (and hope to re-read and review book 2 next week), but I will say that it is written in the "Christian literature style of the 90s", so it's definitely different than the books out there today (pre-internet and shorter attention spans). I love it, even with all the commentary... that's why it's going BACK on my bookshelf!