The satirical 2003 film
James’s Journey to Jerusalem tells the story of a naive young African Christian visiting Israel. Like many Christians through the ages, James is desperately anxious to visit the holy city that stands of the roots of the faith, but he can never quite find what he’s looking for. In the land of its birth, Christianity has ceased to be a significant presence. But currents in global trade and migration are raising the question, does God really allow his churches to vanish without a trace?
Actually, the truth is more complex, and so are the implications for theology. While some churches certainly have disappeared, the Holy Land today contains far more Christians for James to
encounter than in many years past—and most of these are from new and rising Christian communities around the globe. However astonishing this may seem, people like James are themselves building a foundation for renewed Christian growth, even in a landscape as hostile as the Middle East.
Christianity has a very long history in the Middle East, and for centuries after apostolic times, churches and monasteries flourished as strongly in countries like Syria and Palestine as they did anywhere in the world. Nor did this success story end suddenly in the 630s, with the coming of the Muslims; Islamic regimes by and large tolerated other faiths. Only very gradually did the Middle East come to have a Muslim majority, and only long after the conquest—after 1100 or so—did Christians come under significant pressure.
From the 1200s, though, Middle Eastern Christian populations began a steep decline, largely due to political circumstances. As rapid climate change devastated the world, so different countries looked for scapegoats to blame for the resulting agricultural and natural disasters. In Europe, Christians blamed and persecuted their Jewish communities. In the Middle East, Muslims persecuted Christians, whose numbers soon shrank to a small fraction of what they had once been. The final blows came in modern times, especially during the turmoil and massacres of the First World War era. Millions of Christians were slaughtered or expelled, leaving countries like Turkey virtually free of any churches.
In our own time, ancient communities are still being wiped out before our eyes. Christian minorities survive and even thrive in Syria and Egypt, but the Arab population of Palestine, fifteen percent Christian a century ago, is about two percent Christian today. Iraq, once the home of a significant Christian minority, will probably have at most a few thousand believers within another decade or two. This is a cultural and religious catastrophe of historic proportions, and nothing can minimize its horrors, or make it any more acceptable to victims who have lost everything.
But during the First World War—at the exact time that the most ancient churches were being rooted up across the Middle East—Christianity began its rapid spread across Asia and especially black Africa. By the end of the century, the number of Christians in Africa and Asia vastly exceeded the membership of the churches in the Middle East. Just as significant, globalization drew these newer African and Asian Christians to migrate around the globe, and they brought their faith with them. In the process, they brought a startling new birth of Christian faith to those ancient Christian heartlands, where pessimists might have thought the faith dead or dying. After reaching the furthest corners of the world, Christianity began to come home.
Photo: courtesy of HarperCollins
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