The African and Asian church — Christianity before the missionaries

The claim that Christianity is a European religion imposed on the rest of the world is repeated constantly, in universities and on street corners. It is also, as history, simply backwards.

Africa was first

Read the order of events in Acts.

In chapter 8, Philip meets an official of the Ethiopian court on the desert road to Gaza, explains Isaiah 53 to him, and baptises him. He "went on his way rejoicing" (Acts 8:39) — back to Africa.

Europe is not reached until chapter 16, when Paul crosses to Macedonia after a vision. The gospel reached Africa before it reached Europe, and Luke records it deliberately.

Look also at the crowd at Pentecost: the list in Acts 2:9-11 includes Egypt, "the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene", and Mesopotamia, Parthia, Media and Elam — modern Iraq and Iran. Africans and Asians were present at the church's first day. And the leadership team at Antioch, the church that launched the Gentile mission, included "Simeon who was called Niger" and "Lucius of Cyrene" (Acts 13:1) — North Africans.

Egypt

Tradition holds that Mark founded the church in Alexandria around AD 42. Whatever the precise origin, Egypt was one of the great centres of early Christianity.

Alexandria produced the first serious Christian scholarship — the catechetical school of Clement and Origen, the latter perhaps the most prolific biblical scholar of the ancient world. Athanasius, the man who defended the deity of Christ against an empire, was an Egyptian bishop.

And Egypt invented monasticism. Antony went into the desert around AD 270; Pachomius organised communal monastic life; the sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers travelled to Europe and shaped Western spirituality for a thousand years. Almost every monastery in medieval Europe traces its lineage to an Egyptian innovation.

The Coptic Orthodox Church still exists, still uses a liturgical language descended from ancient Egyptian, and still numbers in the millions.

North Africa

Roman North Africa — modern Tunisia, Algeria, Libya — was one of the most vigorous Christian regions in the empire.

Tertullian of Carthage (c. 155–220) gave Latin Christianity its vocabulary, including the word Trinity. The earliest dated document of Latin Christianity is not from Rome; it is the court record of the Scillitan Martyrs, tried in North Africa in AD 180.

Perpetua and Felicity, executed at Carthage in AD 203, left a prison diary — one of the earliest surviving texts written by a Christian woman, and a remarkable document by any standard.

Cyprian of Carthage shaped the theology of the church and of martyrdom.

And Augustine of Hippo, the most influential theologian in Western history, was a North African who never lived in Rome as a bishop. His mother Monica, whose persistence and prayer he credits with his conversion, was a Berber.

Every Western Christian who has thought about grace, sin or the will has been shaped by an African.

Ethiopia

Around AD 330, King Ezana of Aksum adopted Christianity as the state religion — placing Ethiopia among the very first Christian nations on earth, alongside Armenia and before the Roman Empire itself formally converted.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has maintained an unbroken tradition for seventeen centuries. It preserves the Ge'ez language, an ancient liturgy, and a biblical canon that includes books (such as 1 Enoch) preserved nowhere else in complete form.

The rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, carved downward out of solid stone in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, are among the extraordinary achievements of world architecture — built at a time when much of Europe was still constructing in timber.

When British missionaries arrived in the nineteenth century, they encountered a church roughly twelve hundred years older than their own.

Nubia

Between Egypt and Ethiopia, the Nubian kingdoms of Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia — in modern Sudan — converted in the sixth century and remained Christian for around eight hundred years.

Archaeology at Faras uncovered a cathedral with remarkable frescoes, including depictions of Nubian bishops and a Black Madonna. This was a literate Christian civilisation with its own script and church hierarchy, and it lasted longer than most European kingdoms.

It is almost entirely absent from Western church history curricula.

Asia: the Church of the East

The most under-told story of all.

After the Council of Ephesus in 431, the church in the Persian Empire developed separately from Rome and Constantinople — partly for theological reasons, partly because being associated with Rome made you a suspected enemy agent in Persia. It became known as the Church of the East, and it was the most geographically ambitious missionary body in Christian history.

India. The Mar Thoma Christians of Kerala trace their origin to the apostle Thomas in AD 52. Whatever one concludes about that specific tradition, an established Christian community with Syriac liturgy is documented in south India from a very early period — long before any European set foot there. When Portuguese Catholics arrived in 1498 expecting to bring Christianity to India, they found Christians already there, with their own bishops, and promptly tried to bring them under Rome.

China. This is documented beyond dispute. A Syriac monk named Alopen reached the Tang capital of Chang'an in AD 635 and was received by the emperor. In 781 the church erected the Xi'an Stele — a nine-foot limestone monument, inscribed in Chinese and Syriac, recording 150 years of Christian presence in China. It was buried during a later persecution and rediscovered in 1625. It is in a museum in Xi'an today, and you can go and read it.

Central Asia. The Church of the East had metropolitan sees at Merv, Samarkand and Herat. Christianity was widespread among Turkic and Mongol peoples; several Mongol khans had Christian mothers or wives.

At its height around AD 1000, this church may have covered a greater land area than the church of Latin Europe.

The centre of gravity moves back

The ancient African and Asian churches were not a detour in the story of Christianity. For much of the first millennium they were the story, and Europe was the frontier.

The modern picture has returned to something like that older shape. Today the majority of the world's Christians live in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Nigeria has more Anglicans than England. Korea sends more missionaries than most Western nations. More Christians now live in Africa than on any other continent.

Putting this history to use in an actual conversation — with someone who has been told the faith is foreign, or who is weighing it against the religion of their ancestors — is taken up in Reaching African traditionalists with the gospel.

The church did not go to Africa and Asia. In a real sense, it went home.

"A great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne" (Revelation 7:9).