Reading anything by John Philip Jenkins seems to require going deep into the history of theology, culture and politics. The Lost History of Christianity is no different. This is a scholarly work that is still readable for the average person (like me), but it’s not exactly an easy read.

The book traces the rise of Christianity in Asia and North Africa in the first centuries of the faith. Jenkins does a good job of showing just how significant those inroads were by comparing the Christian Church in places like Tikrit or Alexandria with the Church in Rome or Constantinople. The sheer size of the Church in Asia and North Africa was impressive, not to mention the incredible art, architecture, theology and other benefits that came from the Church in that part of the world.

And now it is all gone. Or most of it, anyway. How did that happen? Jenkins explores this in the second half of the book. He shares his research, as well as his own ideas, as he walks the reader through the slow decline of Christianity in the Middle East and elsewhere. Granted, Christianity is making a huge comeback in Africa and China in particular, but the point of the book is to explore how it was nearly extinguished from those places to begin with.

Yes, the rise of Islam was a big part of it. But so was the lack of connectivity among the churches, who tended to isolate themselves and thus became easy targets of conversion. Jenkins also points out that the church leaders made some poor political choices, aligning themselves with one or another group that hurt the church when power was lost. Persecution was also important.

At first I thought Jenkins would attempt to use the reasons for decline as a warning for the contemporary Church. He resists that, for the most part, and lets the reader draw any conclusions. In my opinion, there are definitely some takeaways from the book, but not as much as you might think. The lost history of Christianity in that part of the world was a unique series of seemingly unrelated events. We can learn from this on a macro scale (i.e. that religions really do decline) but the details do not seem to be completely relevant to where the Church finds itself today.

Ultimately, it’s a good book if you like Church history. A bit thick if you don’t.