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The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia--and How It Died | 
 enlarge | Author: Philip Jenkins
Publisher: HarperOne
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 5643
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.2
ISBN: 0061472808
Dewey Decimal Number: 270
EAN: 9780061472800
ASIN: 0061472808
Publication Date: November 1, 2008
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Product Description
In this groundbreaking book, renowned religion scholar Philip Jenkins offers a lost history, revealing that, for centuries, Christianity's center was actually in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, with significant communities extending as far as China. The Lost History of Christianity unveils a vast and forgotten network of the world's largest and most influential Christian churches that existed to the east of the Roman Empire. These churches and their leaders ruled the Middle East for centuries and became the chief administrators and academics in the new Muslim empire. The author recounts the shocking history of how these churches—those that had the closest link to Jesus and the early church—died. Jenkins takes a stand against current scholars who assert that variant, alternative Christianities disappeared in the fourth and fifth centuries on the heels of a newly formed hierarchy under Constantine, intent on crushing unorthodox views. In reality, Jenkins says, the largest churches in the world were the “heretics” who lost the orthodoxy battles. These so-called heretics were in fact the most influential Christian groups throughout Asia, and their influence lasted an additional one thousand years beyond their supposed demise. Jenkins offers a new lens through which to view our world today, including the current conflicts in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Without this lost history, we lack an important element for understanding our collective religious past. By understanding the forgotten catastrophe that befell Christianity, we can appreciate the surprising new births that are occurring in our own time, once again making Christianity a true world religion.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Finally, a significant update for our Church history! January 2, 2009
As a person with an eastern heritage myself, I yearned for more information on Nestorians in my previous church history classes. And although everyone seemed to be much more aware of the objective view the American evangelicalism, no one really seemed to be knowledgeable when it came to the Christianity of the Eastern hemisphere, nor did they feel the need to know. However, this book sheds a bright light on the continuity of the early church and important lesson that comes with it.
This book answers some of important questions for the Church. Why did the early Christianity in the Far East disappear? What was the true impact of the Crusades on Eastern Christianity in Middle Ages? Answering the question of today's Western interventions in Islamic countries. What could be a potential model for co-existence with other religions?
Jenkins has written a very accessible and relevant book for hot topics of today by shedding a bright light on the past.
 Well Advertised but Written for the Non-professional December 17, 2008
0 out of 9 found this review helpful
The book presumes that groups declared heretical in the 4th century AD, nevertheless carried on while claiming to be authentic Christianity in vast portions of Asia and Africa. I haven't read beyond this point as of yet. I guess I kinda lost interest.
absolutely fascinating December 15, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
My view of the history of Christianity always had been one that began in the Middle East, then quickly spread west, roughly following the outline of the Roman Empire until the Middle East and Africa were lost to Islam. We'd always heard that Thomas the Apostle had gone to India, but it seemed as though that was an anomalous dead end. In the mid- to late-Middle Ages, the "center" of Christianity involved the trials and tribulations of the eventual rival Greek and Latin Churches, with a few tiny sects (Nestorians, Coptics, Maronites) eking out an existence in isolated pockets on the outskirts.
(I do hesitate to use the word "sect," as it so often seems to connote "wayward minority." History is written by the winners - one can imagine a time when the number of Muslims in the world dwarfs the number of Catholics, with the latter being thought of as a heretical version of the True Faith.)
This book lifts Christianity's first-millennium center of mass and moves it a thousand miles to the ESE. It opened my eyes to the fact that Christianity was thriving in Central Asia and further east, including even a major presence in Japan, and for a very long time. Also, importantly, it makes obvious the overriding role that luck plays in the success or failure of the spread of religion. If the Mongols had adopted Christianity instead of Islam, the world would be a different place. (Rather, was it the Almighty's wish that the Mongols adopted Islam and not Christianity!?)
I must say that the author seemed to be awfully repetitive in the first fourth of the book, and I felt as though I was being hit over the head with a hammer. On the other hand, maybe that's not a bad thing, given the nature of the material.
Over all, this was a fairly well written and an absolutely fascinating read.
 Where and why Christianity survived and thrived December 9, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Two thousands years removed from scene, when the Apostle Paul includes Asian Christians in the salutation to some of his epistles, it is easy to read with an ironic and chuckle, knowing that he is referring just to the Byzantine "East", and just for the next 500 years or so until the Middle East would be conquered and converted to Islam. We know that Christianity would only survive and thrive in the Roman west, becoming a European religion; after all, a majority of Americans can trace their roots to that geographic and religious locus.
And we would be wrong, as Jenkins reminds us here in his rediscovery of the early history of the spread and survival of Christianity in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Jenkins shows that Christianity has a mostly forgotten history in Egypt and Ethiopia to the south, and India, China, and even Japan to the east, and that it was successful in different languages, cultures and political systems until the 14th century, with remnants surviving in many places to the present day. These communities would be strong and large enough to lend creedence to the European legends of Prester John, the powerful and benevolent Christian king whose kingdom was always just off the edges of the known map.
Of course, we know that beginning with the Islamic conquests of the 7th century, and increasing with periods of political violence and reprisals in the 14th century, Christianity in these regions was existing in areas where it faced serious limits on growth and survival, and Jenkins tells how these events impacted those Christian communities.
Hugh Kennedy in The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In tells the story of the Islamic conquests, explaining its rapidity in part by its ability to accommodate and subsume conquered peoples and religions without violent reprisals and forced conversions--at first. Jenkins extends this history, pointing out how in those early years Christianity and Islam shared many ideas and even borrowed from each other in those areas where they were in close contact. He also carries the story forward over the next several centuries to the period in the 14th century when reprisals did become common, and offers some reasons for the hardening of Islam into a more directly anti-Christian theology.
Jenkins then generalizes from this history to talk about how and why any religious faith and practice dies or survives under periods of persecution. He also addresses the question of why God would allow such seemingly disastrous results in the history of His church after He has commanded the church to carry His name to the whole world, and promised to protect it. As he concludes, understanding God's role in the history of Christianity requires knowing the complete history (not just its history in European Christian political entities), and thinking in God's timing and standards of success (not our own).
 Golden Age? Of Heresy. December 5, 2008
0 out of 24 found this review helpful
I started the book and realize that what is in front of me is a not very
convincing apologetic for a sort of Christian relativism. I can see why
Mr Jenkins is an ex Catholic in his extolling of the heresies of Nestorianism, Gnosticism, Monophysites and the like. It seems that, for Jenkins, anyone who was dissatisfied with proclamations or rulings on the faith vis a vis Church councils is, well, heroic in breaking off and setting up pseudo churches with bishops, priests, monks, etc. that just make up their own dogmas and doctrines. That's what this book is a history of.
One positive note: Jenkins does shine light on the obvious parallels
between these heretical "churches" and Islam. It's high time a book is published that shows just where Islam got it's beliefs and practices from.
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