Philip Jenkins on the Lost History of Christianity

Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia – and How It Died (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2008), xiii + 317pp, ISBN 9780745953670.

Jenkins’ acclaimed earlier works have documented how Christianity is exploding in unprecedented ways outside Europe and North America in the global south. Here he shows us that if we read our church history carefully enough, we will see that Christianity – in its various forms – has always been a global religion. Perhaps especially helpful for those whose sense of Christian history is predominantly western, Jenkins writes of a time when churches stretched eastwards from Jerusalem to the Pacific, taking in India, Tibet, and China along the way.