"This comprehensive reference volume covers every country in North Africa and West Asia, offering reliable demographic information and original interpretative essays by indigenous scholars and practitioners. It maps patterns of growth and decline, assesses major traditions and movements, analyses key themes and examines current trends."--
Taking the analysis of worldwide Christianity to a deeper level of detail, this volume focuses on Christianity in East and Southeast Asia, covering every country and offering both reliable demographic information and original interpretative essays by indigenous scholars and practitioners. It maps patterns of growth and decline, assesses major traditions and movements, analyses key themes, and examines current trends. As a comprehensive account of the presence of Christianity in every country in East and Southeast Asia, this volume is set to become a standard work of reference in its field.
Thomas C. Oden surveys the decisive role of African Christians and theologians in shaping the doctrines and practices of the church of the first five centuries, and makes an impassioned plea for the rediscovery of that heritage. Christians throughout the world will benefit from this reclaiming of an important heritage.
In seventeen inspiring narratives Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom introduce a new and robust company of saints that has left a lasting imprint on the new Christian heartlands of Africa and Asia. Spanning a century, from the 1880s to the 1980s, their stories demonstrate the vitality of the Christian faith in a diversity of contexts.
Although the origins of Christianity lie in the Near East, Europe and Christianity have an exceptional relationship, since most Europeans perceive Christianity as a Western - more precisely, as a European - religion. The region has seen rapid social change in the 21st century, set off by factors including energy crisis and environmental awareness, poverty and exclusion, falling birthrates and increased migration, changing attitudes to sexuality, gender and family life, and challenges to Europe's idea of itself and place in the global order. Amidst all this flux, this volume focuses on one particular issue: the rapidly changing profile of the Christian faith that has shaped the life of the European continent for a millennium and more.At a time when patterns of Christian life and worship appear to be dying out, yet traces of new life are also appearing, this volume maps out the current reality of Christianity in Western and Northern Europe with all its questions and uncertainties.
The New York Times bestselling history of early Christianity in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East—from “one of America’s best scholars of religion” (The Economist). In this groundbreaking book, renowned scholar Philip Jenkins explores a vast and forgotten network of the world’s largest and most influential Christian churches that existed to the east of the Roman Empire. These churches and their leaders ruled the Middle East for centuries and became the chief administrators and academics in the new Muslim empire. The author recounts the shocking history of how these churches—those that had the closest link to Jesus and the early church—eventually died. Jenkins offers a new lens through which to view our world today, including the current conflicts in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Without this lost history, we lack an important element for understanding our collective religious past. By understanding the forgotten catastrophe that befell Christianity, we can appreciate the surprising new births that are occurring in our own time, once again making Christianity a true world religion.
This comprehensive reference volume covers every country in North Africa and West Asia, offering reliable demographic information and original interpretative essays by indigenous scholars and practitioners. It maps patterns of growth and decline, assesses major traditions and movements, analyses key themes and examines current trends.
This work represents the current and most relevant content on the studies of how Christianity has fared in the ancient home of its founder and birth. Much has been written about Christianity and how it has survived since its migration out of its homeland but this comprehensive reference work reassesses the geographic and demographic impact of the dramatic changes in this perennially combustible world region. The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook of Christianity in the Middle East also spans the historical, socio-political and contemporary settings of the region and importantly describes the interactions that Christianity has had with other major/minor religions in the region.
