Summary Of The Growth Of Christianity By Richard Jenkins

Throughout the book, Jenkins critiques the Eurocentric view that most Christians hold today. This Eurocentric view is partly due to the fact that today the Eastern Church is growing as a result of recent western missionary efforts. Jenkins suggest that the growth seen in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East only appears to be the result of western missionary movements (30). The book begins to explore the idea that the growth of Christianity in the eastern regions of the world are actually the remnants of a once great Eastern Church being ignited once again. This often comes as a surprise to many western believers. In fact Jenkins states that most Christian histories mainly focus on the western expansion and western missionary efforts (31). The

Jenkins focuses on the idea that religions never really die. Not, at least, in a total sense. Jenkins outlines the extreme persecutions that the Eastern Church endured and states there remains today something like “fossils” of the older faith (173). These fossils, as Jenkins calls them, are elements of these churches which still endure to this day. Jenkins makes this point by referring to the former Christian strongholds in the east as having ghost. These ghost effect and “haunt” the religions that replaced Christianity (37). They haunt the new host religion, namely Islam in this book, through cultural holdovers and archeological remains (175). Jenkins even makes a bold statement that many of the beliefs and practices found in Islam find their origin in Christianity (203). The reason is because Christianity was not completely exterminated, but instead parts of Christian beliefs and practices attached themselves to the Muslim thoughts and practices. These two religions, according to Jenkins, are strangely intertwined. This intertwining happened during the attempt to exterminate Christianity. Yet these intertwined beliefs continue on as ghosts. This continuation allows for the rebirth of the church in the regions where the ghost and fossils of the faith

He uses this term specifically to refer to secret Christian populations. These populations remain after the church has been wiped out of an area. The book explains that crypto-Christians are very numerous around the world (37). The societies of crypto-Christians often do not look like regular congregations. One example from the book talked about a secret group of believers that lived in Japan. By will to survive the priesthood had become hereditary (175-76). Yet these crypto-Christians had survived centuries without detection from the Japanese authorities. Though these crypto-Christians are not orthodox, their story serves to explain how a faith can hold out against persecution. This is good news for the global church