Philip Jenkins is well-known for his influential 2002-work, The Next Christendom, in which he explores how the explosive growth of non-Western Christianity is reshaping the nature, practice, and influence of Christianity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In his latest book, Jenkins sets himself a rather different task by exploring what he regards as some one thousand years of lost Christian history in the Middle East, Africa, and most especially Asia. Despite the focus on ancient rather than contemporary history, Jenkins again displays an admiring eye for forms of Christian belief and practice that differ radically from contemporary Western expressions of Christianity. Despite the subtitle, the history of Christianity in Africa is a relatively minor emphasis, as Jenkins’s focus falls primarily on the Nestorian and Jacobite forms of Monophysite Christianity that flourished from the Mediterranean across Asia to the Pacific. Jenkins documents in often striking detail the extent and intellectual vibrancy of these forms of Christianity whose scope dwarfed that of European Christianity for nearly one thousand years. But if Jenkins’s book itself attests that the history of Christianity in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia is not completely lost, his admiration for these unfamiliar forms of faith turns to lament in recording how in these regions Christianity itself was lost, reduced to remnants by the early fourteenth century in the face of Islamic advance, before succumbing to extinction in a series of violent, sometimes genocidal episodes in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

There are several things that are noteworthy about Jenkins’s work. First, Jenkins further consolidates the growing disquiet with the conventional telling of the Christian story as one of progress and steady expansion from the Middle East into Europe and thence to the world. The book of Acts is often read in a way that disposes the unsuspecting to this account, as Jenkins notes, although some like Richard Bauckham have argued that the episode of the Ethiopian eunuch signals the reader of Acts that Luke intends his account of the westward expansion of the gospel through the missionary activities of Paul to be merely representative of the expansion that was taking place in other directions. This is not Jenkins’s point, but he does make a similar one by demonstrating the comparative ease with which Christianity spread eastward at the earliest stages, flourishing to an extent not realized in Europe until many hundreds of years later. Furthermore, not only does the conventional history of steady expansion to the West and then to the rest overlook the early and even more significant expansion to the East through Asia and to the South across North Africa, it also fails to account for the fact that a significant, often untold part of Christian history is a story of retraction and extinction. The history of ancient Christianity in Asia is not a triumphant record of how the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the church, but the story of how an important stream of Christian faith and practice came to a permanent and tragic end.

Second, Jenkins’s account of the displacement of Christianity with Islam in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia follows neither the approach of many conservative Christians that regards Islam as inherently violent nor the more liberal approach that depicts Islam as essentially tolerant and peace-loving. Against the latter, Jenkins argues that Muslim violence against Christian populations in conquered areas is indeed a central feature of the story of Christian collapse, but the reason for this is not an intractable commitment to jihad. Muslim regimes did at times prove remarkably tolerant toward Christian communities under their rule, but they also often suppressed, subjugated, and even eradicated Christian populations whose numbers consequently plummeted. Jenkins is quick to note that such discriminatory practices, even when defended with religious terms, may be readily paralleled by the persecution that often took place under Christian regimes.

Third, in his treatment of Africa, Jenkins’s work may be usefully compared to Thomas Oden’s How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity. In Oden’s account, in terms of theological influence, the expansion of Christianity must be understood as a movement from South to North. In one sense this dovetails nicely with Jenkins’s suggestion that even when Christianity becomes extinct, it may still leave traces, “ghosts” of the past. Perhaps Oden would be happy with this description of what happened with the theology of early African Christianity. Jenkins, however, is not thinking of enduring theological influence but rather of the lasting imprint of Christianity in architecture and even in Islamic religious forms that remained long after the practice of Christian faith was extinguished. Jenkins acknowledges the lasting theological contribution of early African theologians. However, outside of Africa, Jenkins’s contention is not that early Christianity in the Middle East and Asia served as a seedbed for later Christian theology even though the practice of Christianity in those places eventually came to an end. Jenkins argues, rather, that the end of Christianity in the Middle East and Asia brought a theological tradition to an end. More importantly, whereas Oden seeks to establish the African bona fides of early Christianity, Jenkins argues that the reason that Christianity in North Africa collapsed so quickly with the arrival of Islam was that it never really became rooted in local languages and cultures. The early Christians in Africa were predominately Latin-speaking provincials, so when the Muslims arrived, the Christians simply left. Christianity remained a “colonists’ religion,” and “Muslims did not have to eradicate African Christianity, because its believers had already left” (p. 230). The primary exception to this is the remarkable durability of Christianity in Egypt that despite Islamic pressure survives to the present because it was practiced in an African language and marked by African assimilation.

Jenkins sets forth a fresh and well-crafted argument. However, a few reservations must be registered. First, in relation to Africa, the case for a more extensive and indigenous early Christian presence in Africa may be rather stronger than Jenkins’s work suggests. Jenkins notes that Augustine focused on the cities of Rome and Carthage but “expressed no interest in the rural areas or peoples of his diocese” (p. 230). Nevertheless, there may be more evidence than Jenkins allows for early Christian penetration into the African interior, for greater dissemination of Christian faith in African languages, and for a more lasting Christian presence, even after the Islamic incursions of the eighth century. The fact that Ethiopian Christianity (which Jenkins mistakenly dubs “monophysite”) fits rather poorly in Jenkins’s overall scheme suggests that the broad strokes he necessarily uses in telling a story that spans two continents and more than a thousand years may at times lead to a measure of distortion, especially in his treatment of early African Christianity.

Second, as we come to a greater appreciation of the startling diversity of Christian expression and practice, both ancient and modern, it is important to bear in mind that not all forms are created equal. This is not to say that only the best, “pure” forms survive but rather that doctrine does matter. Jenkins seems to acknowledge this when he cautions against the tendency to regard success as irrefutable evidence of divine favor. But Jenkins is reluctant to explore areas of theological weakness that may have left Christian groups particularly vulnerable to pressure. Perhaps, as Jenkins suggests, it is wrong to regard decline as prima facie evidence of divine punishment for unfaithfulness. Jenkins is uncomfortable with a deity who “would allow his mildly erring servants to suffer massacre, rape, and oppression” (p. 252). But surely it is worth asking whether particular instances of decline may be connected in part with theological commitments. Might the ascetic ideal and attendant mysticism that flourished in the East have contributed to low expectations of the laity and reduced the penetration of Christianity into the worldview of ordinary Christians? Might a Christianity comfortably aligned or even identified with state power have succumbed to a triumphalism that marginalizes the cross as the center of Christian existence? Might a loss of missionary zeal have been not simply a consequence but a cause of retraction? This last question takes on particular importance in the light of one emphasis that is largely missing from Jenkins’s book. In redressing the relative neglect of the mostly forgotten history of Christianity in regions where it experienced decline and disappearance under pressure from Islam, Jenkins does not give corresponding attention to the fact that then as now Christianity often experienced its earlier remarkable expansion and growth in the face of pressure and persecution.

Finally, Jenkins projects a pluralist vision in which he calls for a Christian reassessment of Islam along the lines of the reappraisal that have led many contemporary Christian theologies to “accept the eternal value of God’s covenant with Israel, with the implication that Christian evangelism of Jews is unnecessary and unacceptable” (p. 259). Just so, Jenkins believes a similar reassessment of Islam must now be undertaken. Somewhat wistfully, Jenkins asks whether Christians might “someday accept that Islam fulfills a positive role, and that its growth in history represents another form of divine revelation, one that complements but does not replace the Christian message” (p. 258). One wonders, though, whether such a stance would gut both Christianity and Islam of the dignity of their respective truth claims. If it is possible to say that both are true, then, on its own terms, is either? The heart of the Christian gospel is that God’s self-revelation has reached its definitive and final articulation in the Christ-event. Jenkins has helped us remember an often forgotten history. But if the Christians whose mission gave birth to that history had believed that Christ was but one of several complementary divine revelations, that history would truly be lost, for it would never have happened.

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