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.

Reading the Bible in Color

In Bishop T.D. Jakes' panel discussion with Christine Caine, Judah Smith, Carl Lentz, Dr. Caroline Leaf, and Ron Carpenter that I shared last week, Bishop Jakes recommended the following book:
Is Christianity the White Man's Religion by Antipas L. Harris. I was so intrigued that I ordered it last week and read it.

I highly recommend this book, as it gives an in-depth, Biblical and historical exploration of how the myth of Christianity being the white man's religion came about—and how centuries of this impacts us today. 

But what stood out to me was Part II, titled "Have we been taught to misread the Bible?". This section, and specifically Chapter 6: "The Color of the Bible" specifically reminded me of the chapter on race and ethnicity in the Bible in Misreading Scriptures with Western Eyes, which I discussed here. In fact... as I re-read this chapter in order to review it on this blog, I just realized that Harris quotes Randolph and O'Brien on this very topic!

Harris points out on page 82 that "... very few people in the Bible had white skin. In fact, most of the central figures in the Bible were people of color and were born in difficult circumstances, including many of the biblical patriarchs and prophets stretching from Abraham to David and, yes, Jesus.... Additionally, most of the authors of the books of the Bible were people of color. In the New Testament, the author of the Gospel of Mark was a Jew from Cyrene, which is located in the modern northeast region of Libya. Most scholars believe that the book of Mark was the first of the Gospel writings, and that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke use Mark as a guide for their outline. This would mean that the author of the first synoptic Gospel was an African Jew" (pages 82 and 83). He goes on to point out, that Apollos, was an Egyptian Jew from Alexandria, and he is believed by some to be the author of Hebrews.

Ultimately, "the Bible features members from a kaleidoscope of ethnicities. From Israelites to Kushites, Egyptians to Babylonians, Romans to Jews, and North Africans to Greeks, the Bible contains rich ethnic threads with accompanying ideological influences" (pages 83-84).

However, it's so easy to miss this as a modern Western reader, partially because some of the clues given don't translate to us (for instance, in the sentence above, a reader might have to look up Kush to know that it was in Africa. The other part (and a big part) is the history of how Christianity became Eurocentric, which Harris describes clearly in pages 85-94. "From Genesis to Revelation, the majority of the Bible in the Bible are from an Afro-Asiatic context with a range of brown skin, thick and thin lips, broad and slender noses, tall and fat structures, and so on. There are indeed people of a European descent in the New Testament, but they have a much less prominent presence than Hollywood would have us believe" (page 97).

I highly recommend Is Christianity the White Man's Religion? because I think it asks a lot of important questions and is a biblically-based exploration of what the modern, Western Church has missed. It's given me so much to think, pray over, and consider as I continue to study God's Word and live for Him. 

In this review, I'm only focusing on one small part because it connects with the topic of both modern-day and ancient Israel, mainly that I encourage every Christian to slow down as they are reading a story or text in the Bible and instead of reading "Apollos from Alexandria" or "the Ethiopian Eunuch" and moving on quickly to the action, to reading the Bible in color.

I'm convinced this will add so much more context and understanding to our comprehension and exposition of the Scripture. Harris is as well, as he calls for more theologians of color (and women), for he states, "We must not continue to trick ourselves into thinking that people's experiences are not important when interpreting Scripture. Of course, we must be faithful to the text, but human experience is as a significant part of interpreting the Word of God in Scripture" (page 73). This is because we all read through the lenses of our own experiences. For instance, as a woman, I might have more questions about stories of women and mentions of women that men might have, an immigrant living in foreign country would read passages about foreigners differently, a single will read differently than a married person or a widow, a child might have a different view than an adult, etc. "Indeed, life experiences inform the questions we bring to the biblical text. Scripture invites all of God's children to the theological task of connecting the narrative of the biblical text with the reader's lived experience" (page 77).

I also wanted to take this time to highlight a friend of mine who is doing this beautifully. Her name is Jennifer Lucy Tyler, and she is passionate about theology and Bible literacy (as well as an author, entrepreneur, and the founder of Soul Circles). I first met her years ago, and in addition to loving her as my sister and friend, have great respect for her walk with God and her calling. She is a leading voice in our generation as a woman who loves the Word, and I hope you check her site out! Click here or on the photo below to learn more about her ministry!

I'm going to end this post with questions to consider, and would love to know what you think in the comments below: Do you read the Bible in color? If you do, how has that impacted your reading of it? How has your life experiences inform how you read it?