“Yet even when such languages did not face direct official sanction, speakers of older tongues knew that they had little chance of getting on in an Arabic world. By the eleventh century, Coptic and Syriac were declining as major languages,… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Language was critically important to the religious transition. The rise of Islam meant not just the eclipse of Christianity but the near annihilation of what had hitherto been the commonly spoken vernaculars of the Middle East and the Mediterranean world:… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Yet even when such languages did not face direct official sanction, speakers of older tongues knew that they had little chance of getting on… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Christianity offers similar stories, and the global Christianity that perished in the late Middle Ages has revived in the past century. China offers an… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Where the African church failed was in not carrying Christianity beyond the Romanized inhabitants of the cities and the great estates, and not sinking… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Christians believe that God speaks through history; and only by knowing that history can we hope to interpret momentous events like the Japanese persecutions… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Perhaps theological attempts to explain the destruction of churches or of “Christian nations” are asking the wrong question, if they judge success and failure… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Another difficulty with the reservation scheme was that it reinforced the popular association of Christianity with foreign imperialism, and thus with enmity to the… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Far from anti-Christian purges ceasing with the official end of war in 1918, they actually intensified during the ensuing war between Greece and Turkey.… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Middle Eastern Christians, in short, tried every possible tactic to survive and flourish, and their efforts have largely failed. Partly, this is a matter… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Besides the missionary theology cultivated by many churches, we also need a theology of extinction.” — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Our accepted chronology of the ancient church is wrong: ancient Semitic Christianity dies out not in the fourth century, but in the fourteenth.8” — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Christianity in this region remained as much a colonists’ religion as it would be once again during the French Empire of the twentieth century,… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Any acquaintance with recent history made nonsense of any claim that God was on the side of Christian states. As one scholar suggests, what… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“For much of the history of Islam, moreover, the Christian world was not noticeably ahead in political or economic power, or in culture. When… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“While nobody can pretend that Christian religious practice is thriving in most of Europe, the situation is nothing as grim as some recent accounts… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
Religion appears in so many contexts in WW1. Religion shaped the national identities and ambitions of several of the key players, especially Germany and… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
