“Christianity offers similar stories, and the global Christianity that perished in the late Middle Ages has revived in the past century. China… — 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… — 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… — 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… — 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… — 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… — 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… — 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… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“The violence that began in 1915 killed perhaps half the Armenian Christians in the region. Although the accumulated stories of massacre numb… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Some of the reasons that a modern observer might identify for the church’s decline need not necessarily have been fatal. Over the… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Even when Coptic itself gave way to Arabic, Christianity was too thoroughly naturalized to vanish without a lengthy struggle. Not all the… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Contemplating the extinction of Christian communities, others might also be moved to consider profound issues of meaning, which recall the agonized dilemmas… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Worldly success was a potent force in the growth of Islam, and in the shriveling of Christianity. That fact may be troubling… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Looking at the sweep of Christian history, we are often reminded of this message of the transience of human affairs, and, based… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“In any theological struggle, the first thousand years are always the bitterest.” — 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… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“At the time, I thought my colleague’s views sounded absurdly legalistic: if Christianity had lost all its living and breathing followers in… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“As a Muslim author crowed a few years afterward, Christianity was self-evidently the religion of losers: “[Islam] has blotted out their strong… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“The disasters of the late Middle Ages tore Christianity from its roots—cultural, geographical, and linguistic. This “uprooting” created the Christianity that we… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“In ninth-century Mesopotamia, Muslim exclusivist al-Jahiz denounced the Christians not just for their worldly success, but for their immersion in Arabic culture,… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“The Christian impact on Islam was profound, and can be traced at the deepest roots of that faith. Mosques look as they… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“The more we study the catastrophes and endings that befell individual churches in particular eras, the better we appreciate the surprising new… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“Other Christian communities reported horrendous losses from similar events. Lord Bryce alleged that the Turkish government was pursuing a “plan for exterminating… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“A religion that dies in one area, in the sense of having no known active followers, may have many covert or clandestine… — Philip Jenkins Copy Share Image
“East, Christian communities vanished one after the other, like lights being switched off. Before 1914, Christian pockets were numerous and widespread, while… — 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
